Housing design provides fertile ground not only to experiment with conventions of residential design, but also to interpret them as investigations in form, materiality and construction in differing notions of socio-cultural dialogue. Collective housing then becomes material manifestations that dwell on a sense of community, of architectural innovation with low-cost materials, or construction, or even formalisation of distinct architectural styles. This tension, between privacy and community, between experimentation and functionality, plays out in the design for a housing complex in Portugal by the French artist-architect Didier Faustino’s studio, Bureau des Mésarchitectures.

Located on Rua dos Mártires, an upcoming area with modern developments in the city of Leiria, the Martires housing complex involves a renovation exercise for a private residence built in the early 20th century and an extension on the same site that incorporates seven apartments as well as a shared private parking zone. The site is located between a wide modern avenue and a narrow old street that leads to the city’s old town, with buildings dating as far back as the 16th century. Responding to the larger context as well as the existing site conditions, the apartment building further emphasises the tension between the new and the old through a rigid material and formal exploration. As the design team states in an official release, the building “serves as a hinge between two urban conditions – a developing area with tall buildings and a narrow street with squat houses” with the façade design negotiating between private and public dimensions of the home.

Viewed from the street, the residential building presents itself as a cohesive whole, with a façade that is closed off to the exterior landscape. This exterior wall is defined by the tensions of solid and void, privacy and publicness, of heft and lightness, all played out through a simple checkerboard pattern that lends the design a distinct geometry, materiality and rhythm while playing on the dialectic nature of the project. The façade’s profile is also emphasised by the curved geometry of the four-storey building.

Created through slightly staggered and rotated vertical planes, the alternating sequence of prefabricated concrete panels and aluminium shading adds a textural distinction to the building. Where on the one hand, the matte finish of the concrete panels lends a certain solidness to the tectonic mass and aluminium feels thin and light. Further, the colour palette was carefully chosen to allow the design to blend into its context. “The design of the façade was driven by two choices: a semi-circular shape that follows the boundaries of the site, on one hand, and the other, the desire to play with plains and voids, roughness and softness, mass and lightness,” Faustino tells STIR. “The curve of the façade almost follows that of the sun. With the checkerboard system and the relief of the façade due to the angle of each panel, the building gets a changing materiality throughout the day.”

The dynamism and tension apparent in the façade are contrasted with the interior structure, deliberately designed to feel light and comfortable. The interior architecture is divided into seven apartment designs, with the refurbishment of the early 20th-century house—featuring a characteristic tiled roof and yellow façade—divided into two apartments; and the new extension divided into five units. These two structures are connected by a common staircase. Due to the distinctive footprint of the structures, each apartment has a unique identity, framing different views of the town or featuring various architectural details of the pre-existing house.

While there is an inherent disquietness in the empty residential interiors, the interior design is characterised by light colours—light grey walls and comfortable epoxy floors—making each space feel airy. This atmosphere is further elevated by the natural light streaming through the generous openings in the external façade. As the designers go on to elaborate, the apartments feature exposed concrete and alpinia stone elements, offsetting the lightness of wooden details such as the birch doors.

This dialectic, between interiority and exteriority, is also palpable in the playful arrangement of the external elements that are distinctive of Faustino’s approach to architectural projects. The housing complex, as per him, “aims to reframe how bodies inhabit the city through our domestic structures” by balancing a feeling of uncertainty with that which is extremely familiar.

The openness of the facade puts the act of living on display, blurring distinctions between the privacy of homes and the theatre of the city, in what the French experimentalist has dubbed an “architecture of disquiet bodies”. Elaborating on this in the context of his first housing project, Faustino adds, “Architecture allows us to create friction, address contemporary questions and design stages for the body: the individual, the social and the collective.”

Project Details

Name: Martires Housing Complex
Location: Leiria, Portugal
Architect: Bureau des Mésarchitectures
Engineering: Gravidade Engenheiros and GLFV, Engineering, Design, Maintenance and Supervision Office
Construction Company: Ergsilva, Construction and Restoration

Area:
Plot area: 518 sqm
Construction area: 383 sqm
Year of Completion: 2024