(“Text as submitted by architect”)
João Pedro Escaleira Amaral
Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Brazil were the four countries where he worked before creating the AMATAM Studio. He is a travelled architect, an enthusiastic cook, and a proud father. João had the opportunity to study in Rome, where he did Erasmus at La Sapienza University in 2004 with a merit ranking and finished the Bachelor of Architecture in 2006 at FA-UTL.
He started working in the Netherlands at the SVP-Architectuur office in Stedenbouw. In Portugal, he collaborated with Intergaup and Artestável, having left the last one to pursue a Master’s Degree in Advanced Urban Design Studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, for which he received a scholarship from the Geisendorf Foundation. In 2012, he challenged Manuela to create Estúdio AMATAM.
Manuela Dias Tamborino
1.54m of objectivity, enthusiasm, and dedication make Manuela a highly motivated architect. After five years working at Saraiva and Associados, a scholarship awarded by the Swiss Federal Government took her to Zurich for a year to attend and complete a Masters in Advanced Studies in Urban Design at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH).
After winning a contest for favelas urbanization in São Paulo (Renova SP), she spent 6 months in Brazil representing Colectivo Urbano, the team responsible for developing the urban plan for Cabuçu de Baixo 5. She returned to Portugal in 2012 and decided to create Estúdio AMATAM, together with João.
Practice Ideology
At Estúdio AMATAM, the designers are passionate about challenges, but above all, what drives them is the ambition to overcome them. They embrace each project as if it were the first, an opportunity to enhance the initial intentions of their clients into an end product that translates originality, efficiency, charisma, and contributes with added value.
“Our motivation comes from the possibility to create content, form, and soul for the challenges that are posed to us, translating them into projects, models, and built works. Our projects are unique and specific, seeking to take advantage of all the tools within our reach, both technological and empirical, so in genesis, they are more than projects; they are integrated and transversal solutions that respond to functional, technical, and aesthetic parameters. But above all, they are also sensorial projects because the spaces must be felt, and Estúdio AMATAM loves to contribute so that people feel good in the spaces they design.”
Estúdio AMATAM is a small studio of dedicated, enthusiastic, and creative professionals. They work in a wide range of areas, from design to architecture and urbanism, both with formal and informal strategies, and have already developed projects for different countries. Their projects cover all scales and are always supported by multidisciplinary teams that guarantee their full realization of the goals proposed to them.
