Site Specific Arquitectura

With an attitude that not only searches as it nurtures various collaborations in the design of new projects, the office Site Specific architecture by the hand of Patricia Marques and Paulo Costa presents an approach that sets the tone.
Contributing to redefine the role of the architect today, the office proves the added value of an enlarged and informal structure, a multi-disciplinary vision to address different programs and projects.

— Approach —

“...Basically as I was saying, with 3/4 years as an office it's hard to define ourselves because we are still finding our course. Maybe as independents it would be easier to follow the natural course we had but no.
Here we are still discussing different points of view, spread apart, with the objective of finding our own path, and finding our own work, and so far we are happy with that. Of course it's a process...how can I say this, it's not easy, it's not linear. The work is very much discussed, with different points of view, in the approach to work itself."

— Different views - one identity —

“We have as principle, something we bring to this, to have more people taking part in the conception of a project.
It's not something that just comes out from this two heads. There's people that, not making part of the office, are always very present in our work.
People with whom we talk and advance a lot, with whom we make partnerships, like Nuno Gusmão from P-06, a design office. We work a lot with him, and there's a series of inputs he brings that we take advantage of.
It's not just the two of us, we like this idea of getting outsiders when there's a chance for it."

— Start —

“To create this very informal team, going out of the limited scope of the office, and of the architects at work kind of thing, and extend that to a broader field of other people and other things that can help solve the project.
That comes from being fortunate not to repeat programs and works. Works keep coming up, and they are in fact very different from one to another. That makes us, on every new project, to go back to understand how it’s done this time, and with this conditions.”

— Architecture in Portugal —

“Architecture in Portugal is very good, we never had so much people of all ages doing incredible things,
and with the ability to do so.
We have so much people doing interesting things right now, and with that ability. And on that matter we are a particular country, as a result of investments made in the past, and of people that lead the way it must be said.
The country is as it is, but architecture itself is incredible, we have colleagues doing fantastic things and awards keep happening, and I think we are very well prepared."

— Influences —

“We try a lot to go from experience, to try and do more than what you see on books or online, that is getting almost excessive, the references we go back more often are the ones we've been on. The ones we truly experienced.
But beside all of that,our references are, more than what we see, are what we went through. The places we've been, buildings we've been…There are buildings that, it's rare the project where those buildings don't come back to us. Some things are just recurrent, things that were so outstanding in this visits, sometimes even from architects that we don't...It's this experience more physical, less empiric but more sensory. It's more common that we go for this"