On inheriting a thirty-five year studio and quietly building a different model.
Most architecture firms design. Some also build. Very few do both — and fewer still own what happens after.
My parents founded GAVINHO in 1990. A small architecture studio. Rigorous, personal, rooted in craft. I grew up inside it. Then I joined it. Then I started to change it. Not because what they built was wrong — because the world changed, and I saw a different possibility.
Over the past years I have been quietly building something larger. We created our own construction company — not to scale, but to control quality end to end. We started developing our own properties. We built a cognitive operating system that turns project communication into structured truth. We are now working on two of Lisbon's largest hotel projects.
And we are just getting started.
People ask me what GAVINHO is today. My honest answer: an ecosystem that creates. Architecture, construction, real estate, technology, hospitality. Each part feeds the next.
Thirty-five years of foundation. A completely different future. This is what I am working on. I will be sharing it here.