Aires Mateus

When you visit a site for the first time, what are you actually looking for to feel confident to take the project on?

When an architect looks at a place, they see it through the lens of the transformation they've been asked to create. Looking at a hillside to build a house is not the same as looking at it to build a hospital. Our vision is always one of potential transformation.

What does designing a private home in nature teach you that a public building cannot?

Every program has its own interest. A private house involves a deep connection with the client, which helps us make the project more unique. That is perhaps the most defining factor: the deepening of the work through a dialogue with someone.

Portugal is having an architectural moment internationally. From the inside, what is driving it?

Portugal possesses a long architectural heritage based on great rationality. It begins with what is known as 'Chã' (Plain) architecture, the style that allowed a small nation to span the globe, building mainly religious structures where efficiency was paramount. This efficiency is the guiding thread of our architecture, finding its ultimate summary in the work of Álvaro Siza. We, as Portuguese architects, carry on this legacy: a rationality that balances local circumstances with global concerns, resulting in a deeply logical architecture.

Alentejo is drawing people looking for a different pace of life and relationship with the land. How do you experience the region, and what does it ask of the architecture you build there?

We must distinguish between the inland Alentejo and the coastal Alentejo. The Alentejo is a low-density, wide-open southern region that invites a particular relationship with time. This notion of distension and this connection to time also shape the design when working within this geography.

Is there a place in Portugal that most people outside the country don't know, that has genuinely shaped how you think about space?

My memories are closely tied to the south, a coastal Alentejo and an Alentejo found along the more aristocratic route between Lisbon and Madrid. I drew most of my influences from the surprise of forms. My memories are deeply linked to a whiteness molded by a warm light.

Is there a material or brand in Portuguese architecture that deserves more international recognition?

I think some materials deeply characterize Portugal. The tile is perhaps a material so inherently ours, and yet we have not yet learned to reconcile ourselves with it. It may be that, over time, we will make it more and more a signature material.

What is the practice working on now, and is there a landscape or building type you haven't yet had the chance to work in?

At the moment, the studio is working across many landscapes, even on projects across all five continents. However, there are so many landscapes in the world, so many we would love to work with, that our idea is to keep discovering new places.