The Pessoa Prize awarded to Manuel Aires Mateus

Portugal’s most prestigious cultural recognition in the arts and sciences, the Pessoa Prize, has been awarded this year to Portuguese architect Manuel Aires Mateus, professor at the USI Academy of Architecture.

For the third time since its establishment, the jury of the Pessoa Prize honours a Portuguese architect. Recognition was given in the past to Souto Moura and Carrilho da Graça. During the award ceremony geld in Lisbon on Friday, December 15, the jury paid homage to the architect by describing his work as “an outstanding integration of the modern, abstract and contemporary, while drawing from a collection of vernacular Portuguese shapes and materials. The structure of shapes and volumes is innovative. It is designed by subtracting from matter, forming full and empty spaces, succeeding in establishing continuity between past and present”.

Among the number of works by Manuel Aires Mateus, the architect became internationally known for the projects of the new Cultural Centre of Lausanne, and the Centre of Contemporary Creation Olivier Debré of Tours, France.

At USI Academy of Architecture, Mateus runs two design studios both on a Bachelor and Master level, as well as the Diploma Work 2018, centred on the city of Bergamo.

For more information on the academic offer of the Academy of Architecture: http://www.arc.usi.ch/it/didattica