EB 32- Nuno Melo Sousa architect

En Blanco 32 is dedicated to the work of Portuguese architect Nuno Melo Sousa, one of the most distinctive emerging voices in contemporary Portuguese architecture. Through a selection of projects developed over the last decade, the issue explores an architectural practice that combines formal experimentation, constructive precision and a deep relationship with landscape.

The volume brings together critical essays and extensive graphic documentation that reveal the key ideas behind Melo Sousa’s work: a serene and restrained architecture capable of engaging the territory without imposing itself upon it, operating through material, structure and constructive logic. As highlighted in the essays included in the publication, his architecture is based on a direct relationship with the design and construction process, where collaboration with craftsmen, builders and clients becomes an essential part of the architectural development. 

The publication presents a selection of works that allow readers to follow the evolution of his practice from its earliest built projects. Among them are Room in Pala (2014), a minimal domestic intervention that reorganises an existing house through a new skylit living space; the House in Tâmega, where a concrete volume adapts to a complex topography while establishing a strong relationship with the river landscape; and the Engenho I Shelter, a contemporary reinterpretation of an agricultural ruin built with stone and timber.

The issue also includes projects such as Quintela House, where a structural concrete grid organises the domestic space, the Burra House in the Douro region — a delicate transformation of an existing rural structure — and experimental proposals such as the Chapel in Barrancos, where architecture, landscape and symbolism are articulated through a powerful geometric abstraction.

Throughout the volume, the reader discovers a practice grounded in precision, economy of means and the use of drawing as a conceptual tool. Melo Sousa’s projects demonstrate how architecture can emerge from clear gestures and elementary structures capable of producing rich spatial experiences.

En Blanco 32 therefore offers a comprehensive overview of a still young but already coherent architectural trajectory, situating the work of Nuno Melo Sousa within the broader context of contemporary Portuguese architecture while highlighting his particular way of linking construction, landscape and architectural thought.