Information System of Bartolomeu Costa Cabral

Bartolomeu Costa Cabral in his workspace, June 2019.

"Architecture must speak to people, it must be a company, must give meaning to the created spaces and only thus can we speak of its humanisation. I believe that in the works that i have been doing throughout my professional life, there exists a constant relationship with people". (Bartolomeu Costa Cabral, The Ethics of Things, 2019)

Bartolomeu Costa Cabral, one of the most important Portuguese architects of the present day, was born in 1929 in Lisbon, where he lived and worked, having received his Architect´ s diploma in 1957 from the Lisbon High School of Fine Arts. Still a student in 1954, he joined the Studies and Urbanisation Office of Lisbon City Council, where he remained until 1959. He began his professional career in the workshop of Nuno Teotónio Pereira, with whom he designed the Águas Livres Block (Lisbon, 1959), a collective housing building classified as a Monument of Public Interest. Between 1962 and 1967 he did an internship in Paris, at the Centre Scientifique et Technique du Batîment; in London, at the Greater London Council; and in Lisbon, at the National Laboratory of Civil Engineering. From 1960 to 1963 he was architect of the Federation of Pension Funds and from 1969 to 1996 he worked at the GPA Atelier of the Architects Maurício de Vasconcelos and Luís Alçada Baptista, having been responsible for the design of public buildings, such as the Headquarters of the Portuguese Authors Society (Lisbon, 1971), and for university and polytechnic education, such as the University of Beira Interior (Covilhã, 1973-93), the University of Minho (Guimarães, 1986), the Agricultural High School of Bragança (1986) and the Agricultural High School of Santarém (1988).

Of his extensive work, highlights are the Castelo Primary School (Lisbon, 1960), the Set of 600 dwellings in Olivais Sul (jointly with the Architect Nuno Portas, Lisbon, 1961), the Set of 300 dwellings in the Olivais Sul district (jointly with the Architect Nuno Teotónio Pereira, Lisbon, 1963), the Pego Longo district, as part of the SAAL operations (Sintra, 1975-1995), the Technological High School of Tomar (1988), the Faculty of Engineering of the Portuguese Catholic University (Sintra, 1996-2002), the Central Library and the Wool Museum of the University of Beira Interior (Covilhã, 1998-2003), the Quinta das Conchas Station of the Lisbon Metro (2002), and Single Family Homes in Lisbon and Beja.

Besides his exceptional activity as an architect, widely published, he taught at the Lisbon High School of Fine Arts and held management positions in the National Union of Architects and in the Portuguese Section of the International Union of Architects.

In 2019, Bartolomeu Costa Cabral gave his professional archive to the Marques da Silva Foundation, consisting of more than one hundred and thirty designs representing his extensive activities, from public and private buildings of different programmes and scales, architectural competitions, urbanisation plans and furniture. This archive is in the treatment phase but already available for consultation in the FIMS Digital Archive.

(translated by Gill Stoker)

Bibliography: Bartolomeu Costa Cabral. 18 works

Exhibitions: A Ética das Coisas. Bartolomeu Costa Cabral arquitetura 1953-2012 | Tomar (2019); Oeiras (2020).
Prizes:  AICA 2019