Home to me is… “a place that gains its meaning by being inhabited”.
Design to me is…: “to give signicance to the act of building.”
A design project that you love and why… “The church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, in Rome, that illustrates spatial liberty”.

Five lesser known facts/trivia about you and your work… Ruins : a relationship with the romantic side of life. Borromini : the subject of spatial liberty. Richard Serra : the rigor and the weight of matter. Lisbon : the city where all my life comes together. Fernando Pessoa : the fact that we all of us are heteronyms of ourselves.

Manuel Aires Mateus was born in Lisbon in 1963 and graduated from “Faculdade de Arquitectura / U.T.L” in 1986. He started collaborating with the Archictect Gonçalo Byrne in 1983 and started developing projects with his brother Francisco in 1988. The ofce Aires Mateus was then established independently by the two brothers.

The scale and the number of projects have been prolic, resulting in several national and inter-national awards. The visibility of their work has got them to be invited and accepting lecturing and teaching at several institutions. Among these are the Graduate School of Design in Har-vard, The Accademia di Architetura in Mendrízio as well as several others in Portugal. numerous prestigious awards.

AIRES MATEUS is an architectural design rm based in Lisbon and has two ofces with 30 collaborators and experts from diverse elds like engineering, economy, contractors and promoters. The scale of work ranges from large master plans to the decoration of small projects.

www.airesmateus.com