The Last Nuclear Bomb Memorial #6 competition Honorable mention winners - Bessa Pinto Arquitetos

We’d like to take the opportunity to introduce the Honorable Mention winners of the The Last Nuclear Bomb Memorial #6 competition - Carlos Manuel Da Silva Bessa Pinto and Ana Leonor Peixoto Nogueira from Portugal!

Carlos Manuel Da Silva Bessa Pinto and Ana Leonor Peixoto Nogueira

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.

After nearly two decades of architectural practice, Carlos Bessa Pinto founded Bessa Pinto Arquitetos in 2024 as a conscious return to closeness, to architecture understood as an attentive, sensitive, and carefully measured act. The studio emerges from the desire to work with time, precision, and thought, allowing ideas to mature through reflection rather than urgency. This position is embodied by a small and deliberately composed team, where the design process is continuously questioned, discussed, and refined, and where control over each project is both rigorous and intimate. The practice is currently formed by Carlos Bessa Pinto and Ana Leonor Peixoto. Though recent, the team is grounded in shared references, common intentions, and aligned ways of thinking. From the outset, participation in international architectural competitions has been embraced as a parallel territory of exploration, a space to test ideas through demanding and speculative programs, often distant from the pragmatic realities of commissioned work, yet essential to the studio’s architectural inquiry.

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 present, the studio is developing projects in the fields of single-family and collective housing, hospitality, and services. The predominantly small and medium scale of these projects allows for close involvement and rigorous control of the process, enabling a higher degree of detail and ensuring a more faithful realization of the intentions set out by the studio. Within this context, the Rural Hotel stands out as the most significant project to date, offering a privileged opportunity to apply, in an integrated manner, the principles, values, and sensibilities that guide the practice of the studio.

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

Architecture is feeling. It is material and immaterial. Without feeling, there is no architecture. The role of the architect in society is to give. To give space, to give shelter, to give meaning, to make you feel. Architecture is, above all, an offering to others.

Why do you participate in architecture competitions?

International architectural competitions are embraced as a parallel terrain of exploration, a place where ideas are free to be tested against demanding and speculative programs, distant from the pragmatics of commissioned work, yet fundamental to the studio’s ongoing architectural inquiry.

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

I believe it is fundamental, since the practice of architecture depends on this kind of stimulus and exercise. A discipline as challenging as architecture should always be seeking to be provoked. Competitions present challenges that differ from those we encounter in our everyday work. They are an excellent opportunity to put ourselves to the test and to validate the ideas that define our practice.