ARX Portugal Arquitectos

Ílhavo Maritime Museum - ARX Portugal Arquitectos
2003
Ed. Caleidoscópio
22x24; 128 pages
Site: http://www.caleidoscopio.pt

Founded in 1937, the Museu Marítimo de Ílhavo was in a much degraded state in the late 90s. Selected by public competition in 1997, the ARX’s design project gave the building a new architecture, different and enhanced. This book documents in detail this transformation process, in both its technical aspects and its underlying theoretical fundaments.
It includes a foreword by Aníbal Paião (president of the Ílhavo Museum Friendship League), an essay by Jorge Figueira (architect, professor and critic) and also a text by Álvaro Garrido (professor and director of the museum).

ARX Portugal Arquitectos - Nuno Mateus e José Mateus
ArchiNews
2008
Ed. Insidecity, Lda, Lisbon, Portugal
22x24,5; 120 pages
Site: http://www.archinews.pt

Published by Insidecity, this monographic work includes an essay by Professor Carlos Alho and an interview with ARX architects Nuno and José Mateus, where they discuss and unveil both their biography and the central themes of ARX Portugal architecture.  
The monograph presents 11 built projects, a representative selection from the atelier’s production between 1994 and 2008. Among these there are several single-family houses and public buildings such as Escola Superior de Ciências Empresariais (Superior School of Business Science)(94-97) Ílhavo Museum and Library (97-05), Centro Regional de Sangue do Porto (Regional Blood Center of Porto) (98-04), Escola Superior de Tecnologia do Barreiro (Barreiro Superior School of Technology) (01-07) and the Cascais Music Conservatory (03-07).
 

CA:03 - Cascais Music Conservatory
ARX Portugal, José e Nuno Mateus
2008
Ed. Câmara Municipal de Cascais
20,2x29,6 ; 66 pages
Site: http://http//www.cm-cascais.pt/Cascais/Viver/Cultura/Edicoes/cascais_arquitectura.htm

Located in the old Pensão Boaventura (Boaventura Boarding House), the Cascais Music Conservatory benefits from an architecture crossing the different eras of the building’s history.  This project deals with the recovery and remodelling of a residential-type house (originally Chalet Madalena), very common in Costa do Estoril, but also with its extension and adaptation to a new use. 
This book documents ARX design intervention in a great amount of detail and includes texts and essays by ARX, Luís Santiago Baptista (architect, professor and critic) and Miguel Azguime (musician).
 

ARX Portugal - A Second Nature
1993
Editorial Blau, Lda, Lisbon, Portugal
16,3X24 cm ; 64 pages
Site: http://webcapas2.bookhouse.pt

8 projects for 8 competitions constitute the grounds for this book on ARX Portugal’s early work. Dealing mostly with projects that were never built, conceived within amazingly short time spans, this small book is essentially on the architects’ main focus for each designing process: the development of a central idea. As such, being a persistent research subject for ARX, this reflection goes further into the world of possibilities set within the representation of Ideas itself. A Second Nature contains texts by ARX Portugal and an introduction by Fréderic Levrat (architect and professor).
 

Real-Reality
1993
Ed. Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, Portugal
15,5 X 30,5 cm ; 148 pages
Price: 10 €
Site: Loja CCB - http://www.ccb.pt

First published in 1993, for the opening of Centro Cultural de Belém, this is the catalogue for the architecture exhibition that was assembled and held there for that founding moment. Conceived by ARX Portugal, the exhibition was in fact a site specific installation comprising eight projects + 1: eight essay-projects ( their representations, the “fictional” reality); plus one project, the House in Melides (1989-1993), finally granting access to the built format (the “real” reality).
This exhibition, besides the specific questions for each project, addresses not only the idea representation itself but also the possibilities of conditioning perception. The 1993 printed copies have constituted a canvas for the intervention of visual artist Carlos Augusto Ribeiro, a piece that is fragmented in the distribution process and becomes collective property of 1993 buyers. Includes introduction by José de Monterroso Teixeira (historian) and essays by Alexandre Marques Pereira (architect and professor) and José Augusto Mourão (Dominican, professor and essayist)