Padre Cruz Quarter – Pilot Block

The Lisbon City Council launched a rehabilitation plan for the various types of housing built in the Padre Cruz quarter, starting in 1959. This project, which replaces the highly degraded masonry houses, was developed on a slight slope, where direct access to twenty dwellings of different typologies was designed at the lowest and highest levels, and also through stairs. The project organises autonomous housing units in a complex that acquires a collective housing scale. There are no indoor common areas, although infrastructure and outside access are shared. The different interstitial volumes and spaces are integrated by the uniformity of the constructive solutions, especially the ceramic cladding, which determines the proportions and dimensions of the entire building and the exterior openings.