Rehabilitation and Conversion into Apartments — Martires da Liberdade
- Renovation & Repurpose, Residential, Project & Construction
- Rua dos Mártires da Liberdade, Porto, 2010
The reinterpretation of a Porto bourgeois house
The rehabilitation project in Mártires da Liberdade brings life and purpose back to an old bourgeois residence from the late 19th century, once a symbol of prestige and social representation, now transformed into a set of 9 urban apartments adapted to new ways of living in the city.
Memory as a starting point
The building, vacant and deeply degraded, still retained the features that defined its original character: the generous proportions of the rooms, the precision of the carpentry, the decorative stuccos, and the elegance of the tall windows.
These pre-existing elements became a guide for the new intervention — an exercise in interpretation and continuity, where the spatial hierarchy of the old house guided the layout of the new apartments.
The project
The ensemble is organized into seven T1 apartments and two T0, distributed across the four floors of the building.
The first floor, once the noble floor, was transformed into a spacious "open space" loft, preserving the scale and brightness that characterized it.
On the upper floors, of more contained dimensions, intimate apartments were born, where comfort and natural light define the domestic atmosphere.
All floors and the roof were completely renovated, ensuring the thermal and acoustic performance required for contemporary living.
Light, detail, and authenticity
The central staircase, a structuring element of the house and a symbol of its former social organization, was fully restored and enhanced through a vertical lighting installation, which reinforces the spatial perception of the void.
Period details were preserved and reinterpreted, reintroduced whenever symbolic coherence and the expression of the space demanded it.
The "loggia" on the main facade, recovered in its entirety, returns to the apartments the enjoyment of the outdoors and the visual relationship with the city.
Enhancing the existing
The rear facade was upgraded, freeing it from precarious additions and recovering the original reading of the building.
The project also stood out for its construction precision and technical coordination, which allowed compatibility between historical authenticity and contemporary functionality, giving coherence and meaning to each space.
Summary
Beyond a rehabilitation, the project of the Apartments in Mártires da Liberdade is an exercise in balancing memory and contemporaneity, where architecture rescues the building's history and translates it into a new way of living — elegant, sustainable, and urban. It is a reflection on how heritage can be reused.
Memory as a starting point
The building, vacant and deeply degraded, still retained the features that defined its original character: the generous proportions of the rooms, the precision of the carpentry, the decorative stuccos, and the elegance of the tall windows.
These pre-existing elements became a guide for the new intervention — an exercise in interpretation and continuity, where the spatial hierarchy of the old house guided the layout of the new apartments.
The project
The ensemble is organized into seven T1 apartments and two T0, distributed across the four floors of the building.
The first floor, once the noble floor, was transformed into a spacious "open space" loft, preserving the scale and brightness that characterized it.
On the upper floors, of more contained dimensions, intimate apartments were born, where comfort and natural light define the domestic atmosphere.
All floors and the roof were completely renovated, ensuring the thermal and acoustic performance required for contemporary living.
Light, detail, and authenticity
The central staircase, a structuring element of the house and a symbol of its former social organization, was fully restored and enhanced through a vertical lighting installation, which reinforces the spatial perception of the void.
Period details were preserved and reinterpreted, reintroduced whenever symbolic coherence and the expression of the space demanded it.
The "loggia" on the main facade, recovered in its entirety, returns to the apartments the enjoyment of the outdoors and the visual relationship with the city.
Enhancing the existing
The rear facade was upgraded, freeing it from precarious additions and recovering the original reading of the building.
The project also stood out for its construction precision and technical coordination, which allowed compatibility between historical authenticity and contemporary functionality, giving coherence and meaning to each space.
Summary
Beyond a rehabilitation, the project of the Apartments in Mártires da Liberdade is an exercise in balancing memory and contemporaneity, where architecture rescues the building's history and translates it into a new way of living — elegant, sustainable, and urban. It is a reflection on how heritage can be reused.