concrete panels overlap across didier faustino’s mártires housing complex

Mártires housing complex by Bureau des Mésarchitectures

Didier Fiúza Faustino from Bureau des Mésarchitectures has completed a housing complex in Rua dos Mártires, Leiria, Central Portugal. Wedged between a wide modern avenue featuring new construction and a narrow old street that leads to the city’s historic district, the residential project combines the renovation of a pre-existing small house with a new extension. It features seven apartments as well as a shared private parking zone. The four-story building is a hinge between these two urban conditions – a developing area with tall buildings and a narrow street with squat houses. This urban friction is addressed with a paneled facade of precise geometry, materiality, and rhythm. The curved footprint and overlapping concrete panels of the building address both sides of the site’s conflicting realities.

all images © Francisco Nogueira, courtesy Bureau des Mésarchitectures

renovated 20th-century house with new extension in portugaL

Prior to intervention, the early 20th-century house boasted a characteristic tiled roof and yellow facade, which Bureau des Mésarchitectures (see more here) has now transformed into two apartments, a two-bedroom on the ground floor, and a one-bedroom above. Meanwhile, the new extension of the Mártires Housing Complex includes five apartments: two four-bedrooms, two two-bedrooms, and one three-bedroom. Both old and new layers are connected by a common stairwell. Meanwhile, the facade of the extension building features a very strict grid combining lightweight and moveable elements –golden windows and aluminum shutters – and heavier, fixed elements – natural deactivated precast concrete panels. Sometimes open and sometimes closed, the building works as a living structure in constant flux, which becomes especially noticeable as sunlight travels along the curving facade, coloring it with ever-changing hues and reflections.

a paneled facade of precise geometry wraps around the Mártires Housing Complex

didier faustino’s warm and soft design takes over each flat

Inside the Mártires Housing Complex, each apartment has its own identity, reinforced either by surrounding views of Leiria or architectural details of the pre-existing house. Some of the flats exude a cozy and intimate atmosphere, with small windows connecting to the interior backyard of the building, while others are generously open to the outside with big windows and roof terraces. Despite these differences, the team at Bureau des Mésarchitecture has defined all interiors by soft colors: light gray walls, comfortable epoxy floors, and wall paintings. They feature exposed elements of the concrete structure, birch doors, and furniture mixed with alpine stone, offering a warm and soothing ambiance.

the renovation of a pre-existing small house with a new extension

‘The building manifests and negotiates some of the major tensions of urban housing, such as the interplay between protection and openness. The structure clearly belongs in the city; its expressive facade serves as a gesture of publicness and could be mistaken for a different typology, such as a school or gallery. But the project also serves to shelter its inhabitants from the outside, a key feature of any domestic architecture. In this sense, [we aim] to reframe how bodies inhabit the city,’ concludes the team at Bureau des Mésarchitectures.

light gray walls, comfortable epoxy floors, and wall paintings