Jorge Mealha Arquitectos

Jorge Mealha opens his office to the describer , and shares his take on a very consequent and interesting set of works.
Awarded several times , the architect Jorge Mealha describes the intentions of his work , his influences and the important role of clients in the design of a work that gets better on every new challenge.

— Office —

"It’s a very small group but making “damages”! It’s affirmative and consequent…very convinced of what is doing
It’s the office of a person that always understood the practice and the university as two things absolutely connected.
It’s amusing the “transport” of things I do in the office to themes I discuss and debate with my students and, the contamination I bring from the investigation in the university with consequences here in the office."

— Approach —

“The profound believe I have is that just like in music, architecture has the ability to interact with the observer, with the visitor, with whom wonders thru her. This relationship has something of emotion, I would say of seduction…This is one of the aspects that in my opinion, lies in the origins of the architectural act.
Our production is born from this, the belief that our work is not indifferent to those using the spaces, and that we can be the craftsmen of some of the suggestions born from this relation.
Architects have this capacity of breaking indifference in a qualified way, in a positive way, of interaction, of accession, of emotion, and this is where our speech is born.”

— Identity in your work —

“In a way we propose what we are, projecting ourselves…I believe there are aspects that are specific of my own expression in architecture and it has to do with a certain addiction to simplicity.
I like to try producing spaces and forms that can have some complexity but where that complexity is the result of the addition and relation of very simple and primary gestures.
A praise to simplicity or the construction of complexity thru the addition of simple elements. Ending up sometimes in “depurated” language, often called minimal, I usually joke about it saying I’m a depurated expressionist.”

— Beginning a project —

“When I start a project, it always has two sides to it:
One is my perspective about the contexts, the dimension, the budget, the place, those are aspects over which I like to meditate about, and sometimes create a narrative…the other fundamental side is the client…the project comes from the reading I do of the clients.”