The architect Carrilho da Graça distinguished by the Nuno Teotónio Pereira Prize 2022

The architect João Luís Carrilho da Graça has received the Nuno Teotónio Pereira 2022 award for his project for the Iberian Museum of Archeology and Art, in Abrantes, according to information published by the Institute of Housing and Urban Rehabilitation (IHRU ).

Awarded by this public institute, the distinction was presented on Monday, during a ceremony at the Museum of Electricity, in Lisbon, as can be read on the IHRU website.

The prize was awarded to the Pessoa Prize in 2008 in the area of ​​rehabilitation of the equipment building for the rehabilitation and adaptation project of the Convent of São Domingos at the Iberian Museum of Archeology and Art, in Abrantes.

Inaugurated in 2021, the Iberian Museum of Archeology and Art, housed in the Convent of São Domingos, is designed by the architect João Luís Carrilho da Graça, with the museography of the 'designer' Nuno Gusmão and the museology of Fernando António Batista Pereira and Luiz Oosterbeek, indicates the architect studio, in a press release made public today.

The project "develops from a dialectic that seeks to clarify the pre-existing conventual complex", according to the studio, "from the programmatic and logistical hypotheses inherent in the construction of museological conditions in a historic building".

Organized around the original cloister, "the spaces of the convent are revealed and explored by the project of an unexpected architectural quality and flexibility that most highlighted the need for restoration, rehabilitation and infrastructural endowment of the building to be guided by a formal silence, and a functional occupation adapted to the spatial and structural characteristics of the whole”, describes the studio.

The building has technical services and support for the operation of the museum, exhibition spaces for collections and specific funds deposited with the Municipality of Abrantes, such as the municipal collections of archeology and art of the municipality , the Estrada collection, the collection of the painter Maria Lucília Moita and the Figueiredo Ribeiro Contemporary Art Collection.

Born in Portalegre in 1952, João Carrilho da Graça is the author, among other projects, of the Museu do Oriente, the archaeological musealization of the Praça Nova do Castelo de São Jorge, the Superior School of Music of the Polytechnic of Lisbon and the Graduate School School of Social Communication, completed in 1993, winner of the Secil Prize the following year.

Carrilho da Graça graduated from the Superior School of Fine Arts in Lisbon in 1977 (currently the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Lisbon), the year in which he began his professional activity.

He has been nominated several times for the European Mies van der Rohe Architecture Prize (1990, 1992, 1994, 1996, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2019), and distinguished by the Valmor Prize for the Pavilhão do Conhecimento dos Mares ( 1998) and for the School of Music (2008).

His work as a whole has already received several distinctions, including that of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), in 1992, the Order of Merit of the Portuguese Republic (1999), the title of Knight of Arts and of the Letters of the French Republic (2010) and Medal of the French Academy of Architecture (2012).

The Nuno Teotónio Pereira Prize, the oldest in the real estate sector in Portugal, promoted by the IHRU, changed its name in 2016 to pay tribute to the architect Nuno Teotónio Pereira (1922-2016).

This prize was created to distinguish and encourage good practices in the fields of action of the IHRU in terms of urban rehabilitation and scientific production.

In the 2022 edition, prizes were also awarded, in the Rehabilitation of residential buildings variant, for the House in Rua Álvares Cabral (project by Inês da Silva Pimentel), the Rehabilitation/Conversion of an office building for housing and commerce (Contacto Atlântico Arquitectos) and rehabilitation of buildings for affordable income on Rua Infante D. Henrique (André Eduardo Tavares, honorable mention).

In the variant Rehabilitation of the Urban Complex or Requalification of the Public Space, Avenida Condestável D. Nuno Álvares Pereira (Paulo Tormenta Pinto), the Center for Arts and Creativity (Municipality of Torres Vedras, honorable mention) and the Bairro do Sobreiro (Nuno Lopes and Sofia Mota, honorable mention), and in the Works of Scientific Production section, the works of João Manuel Chaves de Barros Santa Rita and Mariana Sofia Abranches de Aguiar Antunes.

AG // MAG