photographer marc goodwin brings us behind the doors of porto’s architecture studios

architecture studios of porto through marc goodwin’s lens

Continuing his global exploration of architects’ workspaces, Archmospheres photographer Marc Goodwin turns his lens to Porto. Traveling across the city, Goodwin visited a diverse group of architecture studios, many housed in carefully renovated buildings that speak to Porto’s layered urban fabric. This latest series highlights the character and daily life of each practice, from young collectives to long-established offices, offering a glimpse into the spaces where projects take root. Through Goodwin’s thoughtful photography, the distinct personalities of each studio — and their relationship to the city’s historic and contemporary architecture — come quietly into view.

Nuno Melo Sousa | all images © Marc Goodwin

architectural affairs

Architectural Affairs is a contemporary architecture studio founded by Portuguese architect, curator, and academic Andreia Garcia. With a strong foundation in interdisciplinary research and curatorial practice, the firm engages in projects that rethink the relationship between architecture, the city, and the environment. Known for its critical and conceptual approach, Architectural Affairs operates at the intersection of design, pedagogy, and cultural discourse — extending Garcia’s vision for architecture as a tool for sustainable, inclusive, and forward-thinking change. Before the studio moved into the 1970s-era building, captured here by photographer Marc Goodwin / Archmospheres, the space served as a garage and art gallery.

Architectural Affairs

ata atelier

ATA Atelier is an architecture practice based in Porto, founded in 2021. The firm works out of a previous retail space in a building designed by Depa Architects. Focusing on using analytical methods to guide its design process, the team pays particular attention to how architecture relates to place. ATA explores key themes such as typology, materiality, form, and space, aiming to create thoughtful, functional responses that align with both project needs and the surrounding urban context.

ATA Atelier

atelier da costa

Located in Póvoa de Varzim, a short drive from Porto’s historic center, ATELIERDACOSTA inhabits a space of quiet transformation. Once an empty shell, the studio was reimagined by its own team within a contemporary building originally designed by architect Jean Pierre Porcher in 2008. Like its architectural work, which often reveals a thoughtful attention to landscape, light, and community — as seen with its Casa de Férias project — ATELIERDACOSTA’s workspace reflects a spirit of careful calibration. Its approach tends toward clarity and warmth, balancing sturdy material choices with a sensitivity to surroundings that extends from their residential designs to the everyday atmosphere of its practice.

ATELIERDACOSTA

Atelier Local

Located in Valongo, just outside of Porto, Atelier Local occupies a quietly storied building that once served as a bakery, grocery store, and residence. Renovated by the studio in 2020–2021, the early 19th-century structure now reflects the thoughtful sensibility of João Paupério and Maria Rebelo, who founded the practice after formative experiences in Brussels and Porto. Since establishing its workspace, the studio has continued to deepen the dialogue between research and practice. The space echo its architectural approach — grounded in history, yet attentive to the subtle possibilities of renewal.

Atelier Local

colectivo mel

Located in a former private house dating back to around 1890, colectivo MEL has made its home on Rua Dr Alves da Veiga since 2014. The architecture studio describes itself as a ‘wandering architecture office,’ open to projects that seek to meaningfully improve the world. From its Porto base, MEL approaches design as a catalyst for collaboration between technicians and users, encouraging dialogue, dismantling preconceptions, and fostering community action. The practice is rooted in conscious, responsible work that respects both people and the environment, reflecting a belief that ‘work must signify a pleasure and a creative act.’

colectivo MEL

CREA — Arquitetos

In a 19th-century building once home to a school and faculty, CREA — Arquitetos has occupied its compact 30-square-meter workspace at Praça Coronel Pacheco since 2014. As part of UPTEC’s Creative Science cluster, the Porto-based studio sees its space not just as an office, but as a ‘daily site of reflection and experimentation.’

From the beginning, CREA has sought to blur the boundaries between architecture and other artistic and social expressions, cultivating a practice that, in their words, acts ‘as a support where imaginaries and experiences are transmuted into the context in which they are inserted.’ This sensibility carries through their projects, which range from collective housing to socially oriented facilities, all guided by a focus on sustainability, circularity, and shared use.

Diogo Aguiar Studio

Tucked along Rua Miguel Bombarda in Porto, Diogo Aguiar Studio (DAS) occupies a 1970s building once used as a garage and later as an art gallery. Since moving into the roughly 250-square-meter space in 2022 — shared with Architectural Affairs — the studio has continued to hone its dual practice across art and architecture. Founded in 2016, DAS is known for its geometric, material-driven approach, designing everything from small buildings to immersive installations in public space.

‘Our interests lie in the material and sensorial exploration of immersive architectural or artistic spaces,’ the team notes, often through abstract and elementary compositions that explore the tensions between light and shadow, interior and exterior, emotion and rationality. From within this layered and reflective workspace, Diogo Aguiar Studio continues to shape projects that view architecture as both a built reality and a speculative investigation into space itself.

Diogo Aguiar Studio (DAS)

EXPERIMENTAL

In a former motorbike workshop on Rua da Fontinha, EXPERIMENTAL operates from a 270-square-meter space that captures the studio’s energetic approach to architecture. Founded in 2020 by Elói Gonçalves and António Mesquita, the Porto-based practice embraces a fast, hands-on design philosophy, blending the rawness of industrial spaces with a reverence for nature. Its workspace, set within a 1978 building of unknown authorship, reflects this spirit — pragmatic yet open to invention, a fitting backdrop for a team that sees creation, planning, and construction as parts of a continuous, accelerated process.

EXPERIMENTAL

FAHR 021.3

At FAHR 021.3, the workspace reflects the studio’s boundary-pushing spirit. Founded in 2012 and known for its conceptual work between art and architecture, FAHR moved into its new Porto headquarters in 2023, transforming a former garage built in 1976 into a 326-square-meter studio. The renovation, designed by the team itself, preserves the building’s utilitarian origins while opening it up to experimentation and collaboration. True to its name — derived from the German word Erfahrung (experience) — FAHR approaches both its work and environment as a laboratory for new perceptions, crafting provocative, often unexpected interventions.

fala atelier

Set within a renovated 1930s house in the heart of Porto, fala atelier’s workspace embodies the spirit of quiet transformation that runs through the studio’s work. Since moving into the 200-square-meter space in 2018, the team has reimagined the anonymous building with the same playful precision seen across its projects — where everyday materials, curved geometries, and layered transparencies redefine familiar structures. Known for dissolving conventional boundaries between public and private, structure and ornament, fala’s approach reveals a fascination with the theatrical potential of architecture. In its workspace, as in their designs, clarity and ambiguity coexist, offering a gentle yet deliberate framework for experimentation.

fala atelier

Joaquim Portela Arquitetos

Founded in 1997, Joaquim Portela Arquitetos approaches architecture as an ongoing laboratory, where every project builds carefully on the lessons of past processes. Since 2019, the studio has been based on the ground floor of a building designed by Eduardo Souto Moura in Porto’s Rua São Bartolomeu, adapting the 247-square-meter space with an interior renovation of their own design. Reflecting the atelier’s philosophy, the workspace is shaped by a spirit of continuous refinement, supported by a team of professionals selected for their alignment with the studio’s detailed standards.

Joaquim Portela Arquitetos

Marques de Aguiar Arquitectura e Urbanismo

MAG operates from a compact 90-square-meter space within a former 19th-century house on Rua Raúl Brandão. The workspace was thoughtfully redesigned by the architects themselves, Manuel and Marta Marques de Aguiar. The studio carries forward a familial and professional legacy that began in 1997, blending time-honored design sensibilities with contemporary tools like BIM to shape projects that are both precise and personal. Whether crafting a home, a workspace, or a vacation refuge, MAG’s work is rooted in attentive collaboration, often leading to long-term relationships with clients who return to ‘challenge us with new dreams.’ The intimate scale of its Porto workspace echoes the team’s measured and responsive ethos.

murmuro

Inside a modest 1990s office building in central Porto, murmuro operates from a compact 50-square-meter space that reflects the studio’s focused, deliberate approach to architecture. Founded by João Caldas and Rita Breda, the group embraces a process-oriented practice rooted in collaboration, where discussion becomes a method of discovery rather than consensus.

Its projects emerge from an openness to reframe the original brief, drawing insight not only from architectural discourse but also from curatorial research and interdisciplinary experimentation. In this way, the studio’s workspace functions less as a static headquarters and more as a site of inquiry which bridges the built environment with the broader cultural contexts that inform it.

murmuro

Nuno Melo Sousa

Found inside a former garage in Penafiel, just outside Porto, architect Nuno Melo Sousa has carved out a quiet, reflective workspace where drawing remains at the center of architectural thinking. Since moving into the 100-square-meter space in 2012, designed by José Manuel Soares, the atelier has gradually become both a testing ground for ideas and a site of collaboration.

Melo Sousa, who studied at FAUP and expanded his perspective through time at TU Delft and Balkrishna Doshi’s studio in Ahmedabad, approaches architecture with the immediacy of a sketch — his drawings, often rendered directly on walls or scattered across tables, offer a counterpoint to the slow process of construction. Today, alongside Diogo Veiga and Ana Dias, whose contrasting rhythms shape the studio’s daily atmosphere, the atelier continues to evolve as a space for experimentation, precision, and conversation.

Nuno Melo Sousa

oitoo

Hidden inside a former warehouse on Rua António José da Silva, Oitoo’s Porto studio embodies the practice’s enduring commitment to reuse and reactivation. The 1970s structure had stood vacant since 1974 before the architects transformed it in 2017 into a shared workspace with a sunlit backyard garden. Founded in late 2017 and operating between Porto and Lisbon, Oitoo draws from experience across European cities — London, Milan, Basel, and beyond — balancing design execution with critical spatial inquiry.

The studio’s work is rooted in an architectural duality: a hands-on office tackling projects of varied scales and functions, and an observatory that reflects on overlooked urban and territorial potentials. In both areas, Oitoo navigates the local with a global sensibility, advocating for adaptive reuse that meaningfully reintegrates spaces into contemporary life.

paulo moreira architectures

Located in a renovated 1955 warehouse designed by José Júlio de Brito, Paulo Moreira Architectures has made its home at Rua dos Clérigos 44 since 2018. The Porto-based studio, founded by Paulo Moreira in 2011, works across architecture, research, and cultural projects, with a strong sensitivity to historical contexts and public spaces.

Its portfolio ranges from residential and educational commissions to urban interventions in areas marked by social deprivation and conflict, often in collaboration with an international team. The studio’s workspace, spanning 175 square meters, reflects the layered, site-specific approach that underpins much of its work — thoughtful, precise, and attuned to the realities of place.

Paulo Moreira Architectures

summary

In a modest 100-square-meter space in a former industrial building from 1980, SUMMARY’s Porto studio reflects the firm’s clear-eyed pragmatism and experimental drive. Since relocating here in 2019, the team has used the setting not only as a workspace but as a testing ground for the prefabricated construction systems that define its architectural approach. Founded within the University of Porto’s Science and Technology Park, SUMMARY continues to bridge academic inquiry and real-world application, developing streamlined building strategies that challenge conventional timelines and construction norms — all from a quiet corner of Rua Monte Cativo, in a structure originally engineered with utilitarian precision.

SUMMARY

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photographer: Marc Goodwin / Archmospheres | @archmospheres