N. 229 Aires Mateus 2018 2025. Digital

Aires Mateus have more than 30 years of experience in architectural design, urban planning and rehabilitation of historically significant buildings. The studio is headed by brothers Manuel and Francisco Aires Mateus. The scale of work ranges from large masterplans to the decoration of small projects, including every scope in between. The studio is involved in all the stages of project development, from the initial steps to the handover of a building to the client. For this reason, it is common practice to work with experts in the fields of enginee-ring, landscape, architecture, or economics, with contractors and promoters, as well as to have a close and productive relationship with public bodies and community stakeholders.

The relation between the acts of designing is intimately connected with all the information that circles around it. Architecture can never be a decontextualized discipline, because lasting architecture is not born from one's hands, but from a large and precious complicity of distinct wills. This means that Aires Mateus is permanently in contact with consultors on the different stages of a project, a way of working by having all of their key staff profiting with the information from the consultants.

This is the fundamental act of designing, like sharing and solving concerns with the promoter or the future end users of a building that they anticipate when developing a project.

Aires Mateus' activity maintains close ties to academic pursuits and research. Their work addresses and develops various associated themes including architectural quality, construction as a cultural act, the social importance of public space, the poetic role of spatiality, beauty as a force capable of capturing human desires, and the ability of architecture to reconcile the paradoxes between construction and abstraction, while embracing its role as a container and support for the life that develops within it. With nearly 60 collaborators, including architects, designers, artists, landscape architects, and engineers, Aires Mateus' practice is organised into different studios with specific profiles and skills. The scale of the studios ensures that each project is developed in a context of proximity, concentration, exactitude, and dedication.

Ph.: Juan Rodriguez