18/023
pontoatelier
Architecture Studio
Madeira
18/023
pontoatelier
Architecture Studio
Madeira
«For us, architecture is in everything – even when eyes wide shut»
«For us, architecture is in everything – even when eyes wide shut»
«For us, architecture is in everything – even when eyes wide shut»
Please introduce yourself and your office.
We are a young studio of three architects Ana Pedro Ferreira (Funchal87), Pedro Maria Ribeiro (Évora87) and José Gustavo Freitas (Santana89) that studied in Évora and Milan, worked in Lisbon and now living at Madeira Island looking to the world. (It’s a great perspective from here).
What are your experiences founding pontoatelier and working as self-employed architects?
It’s like crossing an ocean.
How would you characterize Madeira as location for architects who want to start their own practice? How is the context of this place influencing your work?
It’s hard to imagine how a little Island, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, has so much to look and find. (The vernacular systems of constructions, the materials on it, the history of the place, the traditional ways of doing it, the complex topography, the paradises and lush vegetation that constructs the architecture).
Far from architecture schools, architecture critic, it gives us a hard job, like young architect generation to find a way of doing a local and contemporary architecture.
At the same time, the distance gives us the chance to dream, and at the same time looking for information inside and outside borders. We work between our images and the images of the past, to understand the present and draw for the future.
How would you characterize Madeira as location for architects who want to start their own practice? How is the context of this place influencing your work?
It’s hard to imagine how a little Island, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, has so much to look and find. (The vernacular systems of constructions, the materials on it, the history of the place, the traditional ways of doing it, the complex topography, the paradises and lush vegetation that constructs the architecture).
Far from architecture schools, architecture critic, it gives us a hard job, like young architect generation to find a way of doing a local and contemporary architecture.
At the same time, the distance gives us the chance to dream, and at the same time looking for information inside and outside borders. We work between our images and the images of the past, to understand the present and draw for the future.
What does your desk/working space look like?
What is the essence of architecture for you personally?
For us, architecture is in everything. (Even when eyes wide shut) So, as architects we need to know something about everything. In that sense, architecture it as to be contemporary with history, speak trough silence, be in past, present and future at the same time.
Your master of architecture?
A City: Venice, a dream city that can be an utopic reality
A Person: Álvaro Siza for sure, for everything that represents.
A Book: We like to find architecture in non-architecture books Jorge Luis Borges, O Imortal
A Building: We have so many! but since our university times, the buildings and plans of Boullée and Ledoux. When you think you’ve invented something new, they’ve already done.
How do you choose to present architecture? And Why?
We think that each project has its own story to tell. And this story, it’s always different and it is an idea of something. So we try to tell the story with collages, that not represent the reality, but try to evoke the Imaginarium and at the end it happen to be the reality.
What has to change in the Architecture Industry?
We believe that our architectural work evolves through time, an evolution in architecture works better in the most conservative work area of mankind. Architecture evolution is a re-interpretationof itself. Remember that a door is a door, a window is a window… it depends how you draw…
What is the essence of architecture for you personally?
For us, architecture is in everything. (Even when eyes wide shut) So, as architects we need to know something about everything. In that sense, architecture it as to be contemporary with history, speak trough silence, be in past, present and future at the same time.
Your master of architecture?
A City: Venice, a dream city that can be an utopic reality
A Person: Álvaro Siza for sure, for everything that represents.
A Book: We like to find architecture in non-architecture books Jorge Luis Borges, O Imortal
A Building: We have so many! but since our university times, the buildings and plans of Boullée and Ledoux. When you think you’ve invented something new, they’ve already done.
How do you choose to present architecture? And Why?
We think that each project has its own story to tell. And this story, it’s always different and it is an idea of something. So we try to tell the story with collages, that not represent the reality, but try to evoke the Imaginarium and at the end it happen to be the reality.
What has to change in the Architecture Industry?
We believe that our architectural work evolves through time, an evolution in architecture works better in the most conservative work area of mankind. Architecture evolution is a re-interpretationof itself. Remember that a door is a door, a window is a window… it depends how you draw…
What is the essence of architecture for you personally?
For us, architecture is in everything. (Even when eyes wide shut) So, as architects we need to know something about everything. In that sense, architecture it as to be contemporary with history, speak trough silence, be in past, present and future at the same time.
Your master of architecture?
A City: Venice, a dream city that can be an utopic reality
A Person: Álvaro Siza for sure, for everything that represents.
A Book: We like to find architecture in non-architecture books Jorge Luis Borges, O Imortal
A Building: We have so many! but since our university times, the buildings and plans of Boullée and Ledoux. When you think you’ve invented something new, they’ve already done.
How do you choose to present architecture? And Why?
We think that each project has its own story to tell. And this story, it’s always different and it is an idea of something. So we try to tell the story with collages, that not represent the reality, but try to evoke the Imaginarium and at the end it happen to be the reality.
What has to change in the Architecture Industry?
We believe that our architectural work evolves through time, an evolution in architecture works better in the most conservative work area of mankind. Architecture evolution is a re-interpretationof itself. Remember that a door is a door, a window is a window… it depends how you draw…
What is the essence of architecture for you personally?
For us, architecture is in everything. (Even when eyes wide shut) So, as architects we need to know something about everything. In that sense, architecture it as to be contemporary with history, speak trough silence, be in past, present and future at the same time.
Your master of architecture?
A City: Venice, a dream city that can be an utopic reality
A Person: Álvaro Siza for sure, for everything that represents.
A Book: We like to find architecture in non-architecture books Jorge Luis Borges, O Imortal
A Building: We have so many! but since our university times, the buildings and plans of Boullée and Ledoux. When you think you’ve invented something new, they’ve already done.
How do you choose to present architecture? And Why?
We think that each project has its own story to tell. And this story, it’s always different and it is an idea of something. So we try to tell the story with collages, that not represent the reality, but try to evoke the Imaginarium and at the end it happen to be the reality.
What has to change in the Architecture Industry?
We believe that our architectural work evolves through time, an evolution in architecture works better in the most conservative work area of mankind. Architecture evolution is a re-interpretationof itself. Remember that a door is a door, a window is a window… it depends how you draw…
Project
«SOCALCO» turismo rural
Calheta
2018
SOCALCO = humanized landscape, raised ground level on the hillside supported by the wall
The first architecture is geography.
We want to understand the characteristics of the place and be able to form a new layer, a new time and build landscape.
The kitchen, the mother house, the rooms and the tank/pool try to humanize the landscape in harmony with traditional elements in an attempt to dominate the territory for cultivation.
Architecture by pontoatelier
Ana P Ferreira
Pedro M Ribeiro
José G Freitas
Project
«SOCALCO»
turismo rural
Calheta
2018
SOCALCO = humanized landscape, raised ground level on the hillside supported by the wall
The first architecture is geography.
We want to understand the characteristics of the place and be able to form a new layer, a new time and build landscape. The kitchen, the mother house, the rooms and the tank/pool try to humanize the landscape in harmony with traditional elements in an attempt to dominate the territory for cultivation.
Architecture by pontoatelier
Ana P Ferreira
Pedro M Ribeiro
José G Freitas
