a+u 23:10 637

a+u’s October issue features fala, an architectural practice based in Porto, Portugal, led by 4 partners, Filipe Magalhães, Ana Luisa Soares, Ahmed Belkhodja, and Lera Samovich. Founded in 2013, fala is celebrating their 10th anniversary in 2023. Most of their built work, primarily residential, is located in and around Porto. Porto has been their testing ground, where they have responded sensitively to the specific culture and situation of the city (and its real estate), and sublimated the particular solutions they developed into their own architectural language. All of fala’s actualized works are included here. fala asserts, “We see architecture less as the assembly of buildings than the building of an assembly.” Therefore, for them, these 54 buildings, together with the remaining 150 or so unrealized projects, form an archipelago – a collective system. This issue arranges their projects into 7 themes, each with text from fala and their generation of architects. This introduction to fala’s practice and its trajectory – and their use of brick, mortar, paper, and screen – confronts head-on the current era of the architect’s profession.

Text in English and Japanese.