Nuno Melo Sousa
(Portugal)Nuno Melo Sousa (1988) lives and works in Penafiel, northern Portugal, since 2012.
He draws and sometimes paints too, but he mostly draws: on walls, on papers and on tables as the slowness of the act of building leaves him yearning for the immediate.
Nuno has taught at INDA – Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, at the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio, Switzerland and is currently teaching Projecto IV at the Porto School of Architecture – FAUP.
He has led workshops like Porto Academy 2021, UdGirona International Workshop 2025, has exhibited his drawings and has lectured at several universities and venues.
Nuno won the 2023 BigMat International Architecture Award for small scale with Tâmega house and is nominated for the EU Mies Award 2026 with Corcet.
Writing and playing music is a therapy and Nuno plays drums and synth with Muay, and he likes to draw on-site rather than in CAD.
One, two, three, more, many tables
Becoming Embodied
A roof can be a table.
With legs, arms, feet, supporting bodies light or heavy, opaque or diaphanous, smooth or rough.
A plane with four legs. Or just three. Or two attached to the ground with a tabletop on top.
They create spaces above, where we perch to see beyond.
They shelter spaces below, where we lie in the shade or in fear of rain and wind.
Tables for sitting and making, for conversation and shelter, for reflection or sleep.
Spatial structures of steel, iron, plastic, concrete, fabric.
Inside or outside: other buildings, in the park, on the beach, on the hill or mountain.
For action or leisure.
The project is conceived as an ongoing experience, in which experimentation on site is fundamental to learning, and the time spent in the place where things are built is necessary for what is built to gain the breath of consistency.
As “bone” attitude, we shall reflect on place and purpose, making the design emerge in response to the question as a synthesis: the archaic, the possible, the capable, or even the technological – that of ingenuity and virtue.
