Architecture is an art with public consequences. While it is possible to live with minimal or residual contact with all the other arts, it is extremely improbable that one would not be exposed to the results of the work of architects on a daily basis. Presiding over the planning and development of a building, apart from the interests of client and architect, are strong components of responsibility and social awareness.

Rehabilitation is one of the areas of excellence of the Rebelo of Andrade atelier. With extensive experience in the design of projects all over the country, the atelier has a multidisciplinary team that envisages each building as the outcome of a historical process that is important to be kept and enhanced. Each place has an aura that deserves to be rescued, retrieved from neglect and oblivion. It is this aura that draws the link between past and future, between tradition and novelty, between memory and renovation. Without this care, rehabilitation is a monologue that salvages nothing from times gone by and prepares nothing for the future.

As citizens, we must think of the future that we want to bequeath to the forthcoming generations. As architects, however, we have additional responsibility. At the atelier, we follow a philosophy of ecological description. Building implies a social awareness whose vision looks to the future, based on the reduction of waste and minimisation of the ecological footprint of what we design. Because only the present, and even then, very fleetingly, belongs to us.

 With such considerable and diversified experience in building for the tourist market, the Rebelo of Andrade atelier has designed projects in very different scales and materials, from the Snake Tree Houses and Eco Houses of Pedras Salgadas Park to the Hotel SPA Six Senses, in Vale do Douro, considered the best Hotel SPA of the world.

The best version of our work happens when we take on a project from the beginning to the end, i.e. from the design of the building to the interior decoration. The experience that we have acquired enables us to adjust the most suitable solution to the singularity of each specific need. The overall vision that we have of the construction work gives us the ability to think about the necessary furniture and equipment in a thoroughly detailed manner.

Humanity’s relations with nature requires an effort to harmonise aesthetic, functional and environmental values so that the relationship between constructed and natural is as balanced as possible. For such, humans must think about their place in nature, calling up the immense resources available to order, conserve and preserve the space where they are placed, effectively managing the resources on hand and rationally planning the public spaces. This work very often requires highly specialised external resources, such as landscape designers, water engineers, etc., and the solutions arising from this interdisciplinarity benefit from the best that each brings to the project.

Sometimes a view from outside the work we produce is necessary to discover the way to maximise the potential of a certain product. This is what often happens when we take on the design of furniture and equipment for the buildings project. We move towards the customer and her/his needs and, in partnership with the supplier, conjure up the most suitable solution. This often gives rise to a change of paradigm by the supplier and the introduction of products or ranges of products in its portfolio, as a consequence of team work that produces knowledge and gains for everyone participating in the process.

Urban planning implies creating dynamics of habitability and sustainability, forcing the consideration of the relations between each component to be built and the delicate balance between the different forces – sometimes opposing – that intervene in the design of the project. And it is this equation of variables, that are not always clear, which gives rise to the success or failure of an endeavour of such magnitude.

Project management consists of the supervision and coordination of all aspects of the project, involving architecture and the specialities required for its completion. The project manager must carefully assess the balance between time, cost and quality, estimate the risks of each one of the components and how they interfere in the general outcome and help the teams to achieve an equilibrium giving rise to the best scenario possible. This task entails the search for the most efficient solution, requiring the strategic and analytical skills that enable the correct assessment of each phase of the project, aimed at obtaining a final result of unequivocal quality, minimising costs, risks and errors onsite during construction.

Our partners are invited according to their adequacy to the project and its stage of development, and include services as diverse as electrical structures, telecommunications, water, thermal, climatisation, acoustic and security. We select teams whose equipment and information systems allow them to develop projects under Building Information Model (BIM) system. In this way, the customer has a rigorous management tool that enables them to supervise all the project phases and monitor its management and maintenance in the future.