Livestream | Portugal Edition

Information about the speakers

Cristina Guedes was born in Macau (China), and graduated Architecture in 1992 at FAUP – Faculty of Architecture of University of Porto. She currently teaches as Guest Professor in USI, Mendrisio, Switzerland. CG has been invited to national and international conferences, juries, exhibitions and critics in various faculties such as ETH Zurich, TU Wien and Polytechnic of Lausanne among others, and was commissary of Portugal at the IX BIAU New Geographies, at Rosario, Argentina 2014. She was honoured by the Royal Institute of British Architects by becoming International RIBA Fellows.

Cristina Guedes founded the studio Menos é Mais with Francisco Vieira de Campos in 1994 (Oporto). The ability to do more with less is their greatest asset, seeking to balance the “economy” of means with the “richness” of the materiality and emotional involvement of the users. Their works are pragmatic responses to specific contexts. This is best typified in the Cable Car complex in the Historic Site of Gaia (shown in the 2016 Venice Biennale underlining the question “is it possible to create public space within a private commission?”), and in the Archipelago Contemporary Arts Centre in the Azores island of S. Miguel (shown in the 2018 Venice Biennale” Public Without Rhetoric”).

Menos é Mais have won the 2020 SECIL Award, the BIGMAT’17 International Architecture Award and the 2017 TEKTÓNICA Award. They received the most prestigious Iberian award, the FAD Prize, in Barcelona, and the BIAU Award, in São Paulo. They were also shortlisted for the RIBA International Prize and the Mies van der Rohe Prize. www.menosemais.com

Ana Luisa Soares is a Portuguese architect, founding partner of fala atelier in Oporto. She graduated from FAUP (Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto) and did an exchange program at Tokyo University. Prior to establishing her practice, Ana Luisa collaborated with international offices, such as Harry Gugger Studio in Basel and Toyo Ito & Associates in Tokyo. She has been a visitor professor at several schools as HEAD Geneva, University of Toronto FA, TU Munich and Munster FA, Bratislava’s Faculty of Architecture.

Since 2013, as part of FALA, she has been lecturing and teaching all around the world, in diverse geographies such as London, Paris, Berlin, Milan, Venice, New York, Chicago and Sidney, among many others. The atelier’s work has been exhibited at the architecture biennials in Venice and Chicago, the Serralves Foundation and the Pavillon de l’Arsenal in Paris, and in single exhibitions in Panama, Italy, Macedonia, France and Portugal. fala’s work has been widely published in international media platforms, including DOMUS, l’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui and the Architectural Review. The atelier published ’01’, a collection of early projects by the atelier and AVproyectos #098 is dedicated to its work; the international architecture magazine 2G dedicated its monographic issue #80 to fala’s work.

Among other honors, fala was awarded the spotlight award by the Rice University and selected as one of the 50 most relevant young offices in the world by DOMUS magazine in 2020. www.falaatelier.com