A practice in Espinho, since 1997

1+1 Arquitectos was founded in 1997, in Espinho, by Alexandre Sousa and Isabel Lopes. More than two decades on, it is still where it began — and still works on the same principle: a project is resolved with rigour, not with style.

Across more than 200 projects, the practice has worked at very different scales and in very different types — from the single-family building to the urban intervention, from the commercial space to the industrial unit. That range is not dispersion: it is what lets us recognise, in a new brief, a problem already solved in another context.

Having architecture and engineering in the same team means design decisions are taken with an awareness of their consequences for construction, from the first sketch, rather than corrected later by someone who was not in the first conversation.