The Architect's Chair #5 competition Honorable mention winner - Fabio Baldo

We’d like to take the opportunity to introduce you to the Honorable mention winner of our The Architect's Chair #5 competition – Fabio Baldo from Portugal!

Fabio Baldo

Please tell us about your company (when it was founded, where it is based, how many employees, etc) Alternatively, if you do not have a company, please give us some insights on your own professional/academia background.

Bamansure is a brand of unique lights, furniture, and objects made to order and in limited editions. Beyond its collections, Bamansure manufactures custom-made furniture and lights, offering tailored solutions for interior designers and end customers. From its initial collaboration with local craftsmen in Bamansure, a small village on the coastline of India, the project evolved with the contamination of new cultures, knowledge and techniques. Now based in Lisbon, Bamansure engages directly with local materials and artisan techniques to craft a deeply personal narrative. Each piece emerges from a poetic yet rigorous process, bridging between tradition and technology, sensibility and technique, manual skills and machines. Created in 2024 as a side project by architect Fabio Baldo alongside his architectural practice, Bamansure also develops interior projects and commissions collaborations to explore and share unique personal narratives and stories. Currently, the studio is run solely by its founder, with additional collaborators joining on a project basis as needed. Looking ahead, Bamansure aims to consolidate its activities and grow into a permanent business in the near future.

Brief information about the projects that you/your company have been involved with. For instance, what scale have you focused on/preferred, any significant projects where the company/ individuals have been Involved?

At the architectural scale, I am currently preparing the start of construction for a three-storey family house built in a hybrid structure of concrete and timber. I am also developing the execution project for three small houses on a hillside overlooking the ocean in the Azores Islands. These are beautiful commissions to work on, but they began almost five years ago and have taken a long time to reach this stage due to various factors. And here comes the role of Bamansure where ideas can be developed, tested, and realized in a much shorter time with better economic sustainability. For this reason, it is now my primary focus and not anymore a side-project. Through Bamansure, I am about to begin the decoration project of a hotel in Lisbon, as well as the interior renovation of a private house in Italy, while continuing delivering the isolated commissions I receive for lights and furniture. In the future, I aim to further articulate my work through galleries and design fairs. As a long-term goal, I hope to become more dedicated to production rather than project. One project that particularly embodies the essence of the studio is "Flores", an interior renovation of an open, vaulted ground floor space in an existing 19th century building, for a showroom of textiles and artisan-made products. The design is inspired by the quiet beauty of an autumn day in the front garden, where suspended leaves evoke stillness and fragility.

What does architecture mean to you and what is the role of an architect in your society?

Difficult answer in few sentences. So let's try to make it easy. I think it is the background of human activities which frames or which is framed by nature and should read the world through the lens of its time: social aspects, economy, and our evolving impact with the natural world. Maybe an opportunity? Insight of a change? Expression or simply necessity? The role of the architect today feels distant from what we were taught at university. Just think of what was our role during the 20th century and now. Now it is almost irrelevant. Architecture is a creative practice strongly bounded with technique, managment, and law, a multidisciplinary field that unfolds over long timeframes and is often difficult to value within today’s accelerated systems. It needs time and quality, but is always running against them. And yet, what we build today will remain. It is what will be seen by the next generations contributing to culture over time. A greek poet who I really love said that the ""The landscape is not, as some conceive it, a simple collection of land, plants, and waters; it is the projection of the soul of a people onto matter." I add that architecture is an extension of it.

Why do you participate in architecture competitions?

I haven't participated to many, actually ver few. I don't have enough time and resources for it. However, I see them as a great opportunity to showcase your work and compare it with that of colleagues from other countries. Honestly, it is also a chance to recover part of the investment you make while creating something and to get more visibility.

What advice would you give to individuals who struggle to decide whether it would be beneficial for them to participate in architecture competitions?

Make an evaluation cost/benefists...and in the end just trust your instinct, if it's positive, just go for it!