Tiago do Vale Architects

Tiago do Vale Architects

Short description

It’s not completely wrong to say that there’s an informality to Tiago do Vale’s architecture.

There’s a refusal of sorts to schools, currents or movements -even to the modern movement, at least in a rationalized way- a bit like when Távora said that “style doesn’t matter, what matters is the relationship between construction and life”.

This doesn’t mean that this practice’s design is shallow: quite the opposite, its design is supported by deeply critical, discerning and genuine answers to each circumstance, answers more focused on appropriation, sensibility and continuity with the built culture, avoiding acritical formal or conceptual limitations that impoverish the range of possibilities for the project. That’s where the cohesion of this body of work comes from.

What this practice proposes, in the end, is to stop architecture from being a circularly self-referencing object, both in its design and its thinking, and to make it part and product of the wide culture where it is inscribed.

Besides the architectural practice, this office has engaged with editorial projects and ventured into the organization and curating of architectural events (such as the International Architecture Congress of 2014 or the "Mesturas" between Spain and Portugal), lecturing and writing on architectural matters around the world.

It has been the recipient of the DNA Paris Design Awards, the Architecture Masterprize, the Baku International Architecture Award, the Muse Design Awards, the Blueprint Awards, the Architizer A+Awards, the American Architecture Prize, and the ArchDaily Building of the Year Awards, among others.