Casa sem pele

Francisco Nogueira

Casa Sem Pele (House with no skin)

• Architects

In Ribatejo, Portugal, Didier Fiúza Faustino’s Casa Sem Pele, a rural contemporary shelter, strips dwelling down to ground, shade, water, fire, and sleep.

With Casa sem pele (House with no skin), Didier Fiúza Faustino reframes the house as a lived field rather than a sealed object, a threesome, and a prompt to rest, share, and care. Conceived as a rural, contemporary shelter at the edge of cultivated land in Ribatejo, Portugal, it is a manifesto in built form, a house reduced to essentials, then rebuilt as a scene of domestic life.

Set among vineyards, limestone ground, and dense vegetation around a small lake, the project, completed by Faustino and his Paris–Lisbon practice Bureau des Mésarchitectures, tackles the familiar figure of “the house” in favour of an explicit, legible arrangement of domestic acts.

photo_credit Francisco Nogueira — Francisco Nogueira

Approached along an old Roman road, Casa sem pele comes into view on a hillside vineyard, on the banks of a pond lined with willows and bamboo. From the path above, a few steps lead down to a rectangular platform defined by raw concrete walls. This plinth establishes the project’s ground, a thin slab that sets level and perimeter, edged by a short run of steps and a strip that clearly marks its bounds. Inside the rectangle, a gravel bed forms the main surface of occupation. The platform reads at once like a patio, a pier, and a foundation, framing the lake and vineyard as the dwelling’s living horizon.

On this ground field sit three primary elements, each corresponding to one of the customary functions of a house: rest, care, and sharing. Together, they form a deliberately minimal set of components, floor, shade, services, and one enclosed room, that can support daily life without relying on conventional enclosure.

A stainless-steel post-and-beam grid rises above the platform to create a second, equally clear layer. Composed of longitudinal and lateral bays, the structure supports expanded-metal mesh that acts as a transparent sun filter. It reduces glare and heat while keeping the sky present. It is roof-like without becoming a roof, offering comfort without sealing the space.

Rather than hiding utilities in a back-of-house zone, Casa sem pele turns domestic services into architectural coordinates. Low, rough concrete walls appear as freestanding planes that never rise to become enclosure and never support a roof, yet they precisely locate key functions. Two cast-inplace concrete walls arranged in a cross define uses linked to care: shower, toilet, sink, barbecue. Washing becomes a ritual under filtered light. A WC gains privacy through placement rather than full enclosure. A sink occupies another corner condition, bringing the act of maintenance into the open field. Cooking is anchored outdoors, extending domestic life outward as a shared act.

Between these service elements sits a raised square wooden platform, a stage and support for uses yet to be invented. It invites improvisation, hospitality, and the small shifts of everyday life, and acknowledges that living is not only a set of functions, but also an evolving choreography and an act of sharing.

In deliberate contrast to the openness of the platform, the project introduces a single enclosed volume for rest. The only roofed and fully sheltered space is a compact sleeping chamber, a cylindrical assembly of prefabricated curved panels in pink concrete, cut at the top with a circular flame motif. Three sliding glass doors provide access, keeping the interior visually connected to the platform. Warmed by a wood-burning stove, the chamber plays with the idea of the hearth as a place of warmth and refuge, without nostalgia.

Casa sem pele is inseparable from its rural setting. Vineyards, lake edges, seasonal fluctuations, and the intensity of sun and shade are not treated as scenic background, but as the conditions that make the project’s reduction meaningful. By refusing the standard envelope, Faustino aligns the house with agricultural and landscape infrastructures, platforms, pergolas, service points, while insisting that this can still be a fully equipped place to live.

As a built argument, Casa sem pele proposes dwelling as arrangement rather than object, and comfort as calibration rather than insulation.