Our designs are inspired by multiple sources and are built in different places around the globe. This particular vision and our huge experience allow us to understand that the focus of the project is not about style or shape but about someone, about people and their needs.

Our clients always display a key role in terms of design development: our projects are fully customized, to suit not only the client’s desires, but also his emotions and feelings.

Based on our firm philosophy, we continue to pursue architectural designs that can make a difference. As experts in diverse areas, we provide full architectural design services and consultancy services during the construction phase, allowing us to be involved in the projects from start to finish.

We always try to comply with sustainable and efficient design, so that we can provide to our clients healthy and happier lifestyles.

To think of a school is to think of free and open spaces, spaces for sharing, places for experience and therefore for culture. A school should be a place for relationships, open to meeting people, to the constant exchange of knowledge and ideas and, consequently, a place that stimulates the incessant desire for change. As a result we have designed various buildings, with various programmes, with various shapes and in various contexts.

We always start out with the aim of interacting with the place, the territory and the people who live there, revisiting the idea of open field, of a space without walls and barriers. This would create an invitation to enjoy the space, encouraging people to walk through it, opening up the “library” to the community, the canteen to the population and the gardens to common use, thus recreating to some extent the expression and desire for continuity established in our other projects.

From the various design and construction experiences, we take away that the act of designing a school pertains essentially to the people and how they feel, how they try to understand and make their world understood.

We develop projects with visionary strategy and expansion margin.

Every place on Earth is in constant change – growing, degenerating, regenerating – with their own problems and challenges. Depending on what country you are, we are facing now very opposite problems, which goes from excessive growth of population, to the declining number of births or the aging of population. At the same time, urban planning design is a complex task and involves measures related with space, mobility, landscape, economy and, also, anthropology.

Having all that in mind, CNLL’s experts on Urban Planning address all this special, social and environmental challenges in their projects and offer a wide variety of services, since design proposals to consulting, sharing our profound knowledge and experience.

In addition to this and considering the growing rhythm of the change happening in the world every day,  it is essential to ensure the connection between people and nature. The key for this issue is landscape design, a service that CNLL architects provides in several scales and forms, since private gardens to huge public spaces.

We seek to upgrade our clients’ quality of life, as well as to maximize the benefits of humans relation with environment and the ecosystem.

Transformation is encouraged, the goal is to transform the Museum into School, the exhibition gallery into workshops, classrooms into meeting and dissemination hubs, the cinema into arts depot or fitness centre.

The school, the museum, the exhibition gallery, the library, the shops… their purpose is not essential, what matters is their ability to adjust to different requirements and different uses over time.

The environment cannot be dissociated from the interior, just as the people are not. The most important thing is not to separate the building from the environment, but to acknowledge the place, the people and the surroundings, the blend, the transparency and the invitation to participate and confront ideas and generations, in a way that encourages a meeting of values, a place for the old and a place for the new, and to project a shared culture.

In this sense, whatever might be the program and complexity of the building, the approach is always the same, we start by interacting with the place, the territory and the people who live there, revisiting the idea of an open field, a space without walls and barriers. This would create an invitation to enjoy the space, encouraging people to walk through it, opening up the “library” to the community, the canteen to the population and the gardens to common use, thus recreating to some extent the expression and desire for continuity established in our other projects.

From sports centers and stadiums to airports and industrial buildings, our approach and carefulness to the details, the program, the people and the surroundings is always present and essential to the scope and final result of the project.

CNLL architects has since its establishment expanded to other regions, becoming an international office operating from Porto (Portugal), Angola, Singapure, Brazil and South Africa.

Our staff has a wide experience of working in multi-disciplinary teams on international projects with different scales and complexities. With a vast portfolio of works in different countries such as Europe, Africa, Asia and South America, our team adapts to the needs of the culture where it is intervening, making sure that the project is suitable for the location and is according to the local requirements.