Plan of «O Comércio do Porto» Housing Estate, October 1899.

Start of project 1899

Date of commencement of work 1899

Opening date 1905

Promoted by the proprietors of the daily newspaper O Comércio do Porto, and built on municipal land which was handed over for municipal management after the work was completed, this housing estate falls within the politics of the involvement of civic society in social philanthropy and, in particular, in the promotion of healthy living conditions for the city.

With this willingness to serve as a model of hygiene in its polítics of reversing the poor living conditions of the workforce, the project was based on the models of affordable housing existing at the turn of the century. However, these were models which did not experiment with the potential of communal housing. Each house has two faces, at right angles to each other, so that a grouping of four houses forms a single unit. This grouping is designed as if it were just one house, so that each grouping suggests the appearance and size of one house, thereby avoiding the caricatural character that the building of individual units might have produced.

(translated by Gill Stoker)

Bibliography
CARDOSO,  António, O arquitecto José Marques da Silva e a arquitectura no Norte do País na primeira metade do séc. XX, Porto, Faup-publicações, 1997, pp. 119-121.

Location
Porto, Rua da Constituição/Rua da Serpa Pinto — Monte Pedral
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