Launches website with new and improved format.
Sixteen years after the birth of the architecture office, ARX Portugal opens up its website in both Portuguese and English versions. It presents, under a totally renewed design (proj. R2), the essential information on the projects, awards, publications and participations in several initiatives related to Architecture.Founded in 1991 by Nuno Mateus and José Mateus, the collective of architects ARX very soon conquered a distinguished place in Portuguese architecture, at the same time it was gathering progressive international recognition. ARX’s architecture does not follow a fixed language or lexicon. In each new context the aim is to find the right “words” for a specific language. More than to look for similarities between each project and the previous one, it is in the exploration of each case’s particularities that the potential for discovery, for the creation of the new, resides. This approach opens up inevitably and obviously to a very broad field of research. Not having to work within a static set of presuppositions, the architects choose a more experimental path where they try out new concepts, born from whatever thrills them or holds their attention. When questioned about the nature of the architecture they make, they often quote the Brazilian poet and philosopher António Cícero: “what matters is not so much to write something new. It is to write something that reading doesn’t age.”
Nuno Mateus (b. 1961) graduated in Architecture (1984) in the FAUTL (Faculty of Architecture of the Technical University of Lisbon. In 1987 he finished his “Master of Science in Architecture and Building Design”, at Columbia University, New York. He worked with, among others, Peter Eisenman in New York and with Daniel Libeskind in Berlin. He has been teaching in several Schools of Architecture and was, from 2004 to 2007, Head of the Architecture Department of the Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa (Autonomous University of Lisbon). Guest Professor at ESARQ-Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (ESARQ – International University of Catalonia) in 2005-7, he has been invited to constitute jury on several national and
international awards.
José Mateus (b. 1963), graduated in Architecture (1986) in the FAUTL (Faculty of Architecture of the Technical University of Lisbon. He is vice-president of the South Regional Section of the Portuguese Architects Guild and was General Curator for the 1st Lisbon Architecture Triennial in 2007. He lectured in several Schools of Architecture and was guest lecturer, in 2005-2007, at the ESARQ – Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (International University of Catalonia), in Barcelona. Author and coordinator of the semi-annual magazine Linha (Architecture, Design and Landscape) of the weekly newspaper Expresso, he also authored and coordinated two seasons of the Tempo e Traço television series for Sic-Notícias, besides his regular participation on the radio (TSF), with the program Na Ordem do Dia. He has been invited, at home and abroad, to be jury member in many awards, from which we specially mention the Architecture Prize of São Paulo Biennial in 2003, and the EUROPAN- Spain, in 2007.
Nuno and José Mateus gave lectures in several countries such as Portugal, Spain, USA, Hungary, UK, Brazil, Belgium, Italy and Japan.
ARX was already distinguished with several national and international awards, and its work is often mentioned in reputable international magazines such as A+U, Wallpaper, AV, Architectural Review, Space, 2G, A10, Techniques & Architecture, WA — World Architecture, or the Portuguese arq./a. In 2007, CTT-Correios de Portugal emitted a stamp depicting the Maritime Museum of Ílhavo, as part of a collection on Portuguese contemporary architecture. ARX’s work was also object of a monographic exhibition, “Realidade Real” (Real Reality), which opened the Centro Cultural de Belém Exhibition Centre (proj. Vittorio Gregotti), in June 1993. Since then, it’s work has been presented in several countries as part of collective or individual exhibitions.
Through this renewed website one can follow closely the work being done by this office, the only one selected from Siza Vieira’s homeland to feature in the July’s issue of Wallpaper article “101 of the world’s most exciting new architects”. www.arx.pt
Contacts:
Press: Bruno Gonçalves, arxportugal@arx.pt
Projects: Paulo Rocha, paulorocha@arx.pt
Phone: +351213918110
