Carla Juaçaba, Eduardo Souto de Moura, Nuno Sampaio, Francis Kéré and Marina Tabassum are among the keynote speakers of the 27th World Congress of Architects

On July 18, UIA2021RIO will bring the Portugal-Brazil Dialogue, with the presence of keynote speakers Eduardo Souto Moura, Carla Juaçaba and Nuno Sampaio.

Eduardo Souto de Moura was born in the city of Porto, in Portugal. Even before graduating in architecture at the School of Fine Arts of Porto, in 1980, he had worked with great names of Portuguese architecture, such as Álvaro Siza Vieira. In 1981, he won the competition for the project of Casa das Artes, a cultural centre in Porto, which has revealed his talent worldwide. In his hometown, he was also responsible for the project of the Porto Metro. Another great works of his are the Municipal Market of Braga, the Paula Rego Museum, in Cascais, and the pavilion for the Serpentine Gallery in 2005 at the Kensington Gardens, in England. He has been a visiting professor at the architectural schools of Paris-Belleville, Harvard, Dublin, Zurich and Mantova. Souto de Moura is one most prize-winning Portuguese architects. In 2011, he won the Pritzker Prize; in 2013, the Wolf Prize; in 2017, the Piranesi Award; and, in 2018, the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale.

Carla Juaçaba is a Rio-born architect settled in London, where runs the Carla Juaçaba Studio. In 2013, she won the first arcVision Award for Women and Architecture, held in Italy. She worked on several residential projects such as: Casa Atelier (2001), Casa Rio Bonito (2005), Casa Varanda (2007) and Casa Mínima (2008). In 2012, she designed the Humanity Pavilion for the United Nations Conference on Sustainability Rio+20 at the Copacabana Fort. In 2018, she won the AR Emerging Architecture Awards and she was invited by the Vatican to participate in the XVI Venice Architecture Biennale, where she designed one of the ten chapels in the Santa Fe Pavilion, alongside iconic names in architecture such as Eduardo Souto de Moura and Norman Foster.  A regular presence in the academic world, she lectures at the Graduate School of Design (GSD) at Harvard; the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) at Columbia University; and the Academia di Architettura Mendrisio in Switzerland. She also attended a workshop at the IUAV University in Venice (2014) and sat on the jury of the BIAU Ibero-American Biennial in Madrid (2012 and 2019).

Nuno Sampaio has had his professional practice as an architect with his own office since 2000 and, among other projects, he is the author of the reconversion of the Historic Center of São Martinho de Mouros and the Exhibition Project of the Museu Nacional dos Coches with Paulo Mendes da Rocha. He was Master and Guest Professor at ETSA Barcelona at the Universitat Politecnica da Catalunya (UPC). In parallel to his professional practice, he continues to work in the defense and promotion of architecture, having participated in the Order of Architects, in the Lisbon Architecture Triennale and in various national and international exhibitions and seminars. He is president of Urban Strategy – Innovation Laboratory and director of Casa da Arquitectura, in Matosinhos, Portugal.

In addition to highlighting Portuguese and Brazilian productions, cultural influences and the exchange of experiences between architects from both countries, Eduardo, Carla and Nuno will pay tribute to architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha, president of the UIA2021RIO Honor Committee, who died in May, to 92 years old.

Also on Sunday, the Congress will bring two other keynote speakers: Diébédo Francis Kéré, from Burkina Faso, and Marina Tabassum, from Bangladesh.

Born in 1965 in Gando, a village with a population of 3,000 in Burkina Faso, a small African country, Diébédo Francis Kéré got his Architecture degree at the Technical University of Berlin and is now globally recognized because of his visionary and socially relevant work. While he was a student, he set up the association “Schulbausteine für Gando” and was able to raise funds to build the first school in his village, making him win the international award Aga Khan in 2004. In the following year, he founded the office Kéré Architecture in Berlin. His projects in Africa – schools, cultural centers, villages – got him acknowledged as an agent of social transformation. Kéré values sustainability, the use of local methods of construction and community participation.   Responsible for projects in countries with very different cultures, such as Mali, Yemen, China and the United States, Francis Kéré collects a series of titles and awards. In 2009, he won the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture; in 2010, the BSI Swiss Architectural Award; and, in 2014, the Schelling Architecture Award. In 2017, he took part on the project of the renowned Serpentine Gallery, in London.   Some of his projects are the Burkina Faso National Assembly, the Beijing Pavilion, the Zhoushan Harbour (China), the National Park of Mali, and the Volksbuhne Satellite Theater at Tempelhof, in Berlin. 

Marina Tabassum was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where she graduated in 1994. The following year she founded the Urbana studio. She won the first Prize in the National Competition for The Independence Monument and The Liberation War Museum, given by Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina (1997), and the Architect of the Year Prize, given by Indian Vice President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat (2001). In 2004 she was finalist for the Aga Khan Award and won the Anannya Top Ten Awards (2004). In 2005 she founded the office with his name and began teaching at BRAC University. She also teaches at the University of Asia Pacific and has been Director of the Academic Program at the Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements since 2015. In 2016, she won the Aga Khan Architecture Prize for the Bait-ur-Rouf Mosque project in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In 2020, Tabassum was listed by Prospect magazine as the third greatest thinker of the COVID-19 era. In 2021, he won the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Award.