

São Cosme do Vale, a parish within the municipality of Vila Nova de Famalicão, in northwestern Portugal's Braga District, is the location of an equestrian center by Visioarq Arquitectos (Nuno Poiarez, Pedro Afonso, Vicente Gouveia). The idea was to i
Successive operations of dubious quality, carried out in the course of recent decades, had disfigured a 16th-century farmhouse, and in adapting it for use as a family residence the objective was to restore original elements of the construction, conso
In the parish of Santa Margarida da Serra of Grândola, a municipality in the southwest of Portugal’s Alentejo region, this remote house strikes a contrast with the harsh landscape of dry vegetation and a smattering of cork and holm oaks. With a built
In the municipality of Grândola, which belongs to Setúbal District in Portugal’s Alentejo región, stands this 375-square-meter residence built by the Lisbon firm Bak Gordon. The house is all clad in lime mortar and insulated with cork from the outsid
On the premise of fusing architecture with the landscape in the city of Lagos, in Portugal’s Algarve region, RCR arquitectes – Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem, Ramon Vilalta – designed this construction for the Palmares golf resort, with the restaurant Al
Campo de Ourique lies on one of the seven hills of Lisbon. Thanks to its location and to the geological composition of its subsoil, it is one of the areas that best resisted the catastrophe caused by the earthquake and ensuing tsunami in 1755. A slow
An old timber wharf stands the test of time in the Sado estuary nature reserve in Comporta, one hour south of Lisbon. Its identity remains beyond the material resistance of its construction. The project stems from the silent respect for this solid es
In the town of Barreiro, in Setúbal, the remains of two old warehouses, unified into a single space, are integrated in the project as the outer enclosure of the house. Outside, the ruin appearance and the traces of the past are maintained. Meanwhile,
Located in Grândola, a small municipality in the district of Setúbal, this daytime civic center for the elderly is part of the social services network of the Santa Casa da Misericórdia: a Portuguese institution founded in the 15th century, and that p
A natural platform in the Melides mountains, just a few kilometers from the coast, provides the site for this holiday rental home, promoted by Primosfera: a Lisbon-based company which assesses the construction of properties with the same dedication a
Centuries ago the Tagus River estuary was the widest. The space available along the riverfront of the Portuguese capital has multiplied after subsequent interventions carried out over time. In this strip of land reclaimed from the water stands the ne
The great Alqueva Lake, located on the frontier of Extremadura and the Portuguese Alentejo, is the largest artificial lake in Western Europe, with an area of 250 square kilometers and more than 1,160 kilometers of interior coast. Since the inaugurati
This new school complex is located in a low-density neighborhood on the outskirts of a small town by the Tagus River. The shape of the volume is determined by two essential factors: the functional requirements of the program and the anonymous urban c
Throughout its history, the Alcântara neighborhood in Lisbon, located by the Tagus River and at the foot of the iconic 25 de Abril Bridge, has undergone several transformations that have altered its natural landscape, with the proliferation of roads
Known for the famous medieval castle after which it is named, the municipality of Leiria spreads by the banks of the Lis River. This compact single-family house goes up on a hill on the outskirts of the city, on a site in a high position overlooking
The project is an obsessive play of grids and patterns. Stripes of white and green define the perimeter of all living spaces and dots of black marble appear in circulation areas. The back facade is carefully composed with thin lines and two marble st
Despite the limited space of the site and the regulations, the project generates complex interior spaces that emerge from the peculiar intersections with the different levels. The white piece is covered with marble dots and lines, crowned by pink chi
A distorted box that is both ordered and apparently erratic houses five apartments of complex spatiality. A regular grid of windows and balconies defines the perimeter, and a frieze of triangles, dots, lines, and semi-circles is applied on top of the
With more levels and windows than it should, the house combines the rigid rhythm of small openings with an ordered interior where living spaces unfold left and right from the central staircase. The last floor stretches under a vault...
Spaces are assembled out of small gestures; curvy walls, color stripes, and painted doors produce different compositions for each one of the three levels. The facades oppose one another: one is ordered and heavy; the other is light and playful...
Fifteen equal but different apartments inside a predefined volume; a variety of formal gestures, flying columns and double height spaces alter the rational distribution of the program. The three facades have different expressions...
The old house is rebuilt around an off-centered chimney. A set of broken walls and green doors evolve around it, and each room is the result of pure spatial improvisation. The small back facade is a delicate composition hidden from the public...
Layers of lines and dots are vigorously wrapped around a narrow and tall urban building. A system of concrete columns crosses all levels, allowing for different spatial narratives but maintaining a physical coherence. Glass brick walls and doors defi
I was born in Matosinhos, in 1933, into a large family. We were five siblings, common at the time, and twelve people living at home, starting with my grandmother, who had come from Brazil as a widow with six children. We ate all together and converse
I believe it was John Cage who once told me, “When you start working, everybody is in your studio – the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas – all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one b
Whereas the precondition for the urge to empathy is a happy pantheistic relationship of confidence between man and the phenomena of the external world, the urge to abstraction is the outcome of a great inner unrest inspired in man by the phenomena of
Looking at the past and the future at the same time, the Roman god of thresholds and transitions sums up well the profuse career of Manuel and Francisco Aires Mateus, two brothers and two studios that use geometry to take in each project a path that
1953-2019 The architect and critic Manuel Graça Dias died in his home city of Lisbon on 24 March. Graduated in 1977 from the ESBAL of Lisbon, he started teaching at the schools of architecture of Lisbon and Porto, where he completed his PhD in 2009.
Saïd Hejal (Kronos Homes), who recently presented the project for two towers in Valencia with Ricardo Bofill, has commissioned Eduardo Souto de Moura – currently the subject of an extensive exhibition at the Casa da Arquitectura in Matosinhos – to ca
For years the field of action of Álvaro Siza (Matosinhos, 1933) has extended beyond the boundaries of his native Portugal, transferring the master’s ideas to a variety of contexts in Europe, America, and recently also Asia. It is in this latest stage
The jury of the first Leon Battista Alberti Prize, formed by representatives of the Politecnico di Milano, the Alberti Foundation, and Mantua City Hall, has unanimously voted to hand the award to the Portuguese architect João Carrilho da Graça, ackno
Álvaro Siza has designed a €7.5 coin in honour of fellow Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura, which will be put into circulation in Portugal on 12 December 2018. The silver alloy coin features an abstract outline of the crown of a tree
Mine was a normal childhood, in a conservative and religious family of northern Portugal – my family is from Braga. My uncles, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers were educated, they all studied Greek and Latin in Coimbra, or medicine and psychiatry
After a long period of decadence, the stately old Lisbon evoked by the actress and fado singer Amália Rodrigues has become a popular destination that already threatens to eclipse foci of tourist obsession like Venice and Barcelona. An unbeatable exam
Articulated by images, objects, and ideas rather than by buildings, the Lisbon Triennale questions the essence of architecture in the world today.
In the fifties and sixties, the house was the experimentation laboratory through which modernity was introduced in Spain and Portugal, but also subjected to revision.
Modernity turned each house into a manifesto, and the history of architecture in the 20th century can be summed up with domestic constructions that became milestones in a journey of discovery. This tradition of expressing the aesthetic intentions of
Is there such a thing as ‘Portuguese architecture’? In the early decades of the 20th century, modern architecture was for the Portuguese an aspiration postponed, considering the political and cultural circumstances of the period, with its tendency to
Portugal was rescued by the EU in 2011, and Spain the following year, so the two Iberian countries seem to be departing from Europe like the stone raft that Saramago imagined, breaking off from the continent as a crack opened in the Pyrenees. But tha
Un muro perforado acoge el conjunto de viviendas para personas mayores en Alcácer do Sal, Portugal, diseñado por los lisboetas Aires Mateus. Posado sobre un encinar cuya pendiente entierra parcialmente el programa, el edificio se pliega en torno a un
La arquitectura del nuevo Pritzker no se funda sólo en su coherencia constructiva o en su expresividad formal, sino también en su distancia irónica y crítica respecto al presente: un anacronismo que la hará perdurar.
João Luís Carrilho da Graça construirá la terminal de cruceros de Lisboa. El proyecto ganador —que ha competido con las propuestas de Aires Mateus, Vázquez Consuegra y Zaha Hadid, entre otros— organiza el espacio urbano liberado en el borde del río e
En un extremo de la península portuguesa de Tróia, entre el río Sado y el Atlántico, el estudio Promontório ha finalizado la renovación y ampliación del Tróia Design Hotel. El proyecto ha supuesto la restauración de un edificio de trece plantas const
El jurado de los Premios FAD ha entregado el premio en la categoría de Arquitectura a la Estación Biológica de Garducho en Mourão (Portugal), del joven João Maria Ventura Trindade. Levantado un metro por encima de la cota más elevada del terreno y or
Tras la casa en la costa de Mallorca (véase AV 127), Álvaro Siza ha terminado en Sintra, Portugal, un proyecto residencial con el que vuelve a ensayar un tipo de casa de vacaciones fragmentada en varios volúmenes abiertos al paisaje marino. En esta o