Architectural partnerships formed by classmates and couples, married or not, are quite frequent. More rare is the team based on fraternal ties, such as that which unites Manuel (1963) and Francisco Xavier (1964) Aires Mateus. Graduates of their native city’s architecture school, these Lisbon siblings have lived largely parallel lives, hardly even varying in the year in which they received their degrees. Both worked for a time in the studio of Gonçalo Sousa Byrne and each landed a teaching post at the Universidad Autónoma. Such coincidence in career and family is perhaps the key to the at once intensive and extensive output of their practice, set up in 1988, in which competition victories and direct commissions alternate with an almost predictable regularity...
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