Testimony

— Delfim Sardo

Professor & Curator

Móveis e Imóveis, assim devia rezar a placa na porta. Também se executam trabalhos de palco. Por estas áreas tem repartido a sua actividade: móveis, casas e cenários. Todas as peças são sólidas, bem construídas e valem o lugar que ocupam. O seu trabalho é rigoroso e conciso,  … com um certo luxo nortenho.

Our philosophy

— Design & Discipline

From sketch to building site, our perserverance in understanding the needs, requirements and contextualization of the client has been a constant, always understanding the client as an active and participating element, whether in the elaboration, or accompaniment of the entire project, whatever it is.

In order to realize the objectives requested of us in each new project, we conceive and make readily available all the appropriate technologies and human resources needed for their development and completion. The Value-Price ratio is optimized according to our permanent search for an effective cost control in the construction, maintenance and management of buildings.

The intervention of the multidisciplinary team that composes CNLL® may assume diverse forms and solutions. Both the accumulated experience in this field, through hundreds of projects of all shapes and sizes, type, scales and complexities, and the full attention which we have dedicated to quality and flexibility in devising solutions, explain the wide range of our offered services:

— Large institutional and corporate construction;

— Urban and tourism equipment;

— Residential complex and single-family homes;

— Commercial and industrial spaces and services;

— Urban planning and urban projects;

— Set-design for the most important national theaters and television;

— Equipment and furniture design, trademarked by us.

Testimony

— Edson Athayde

Advertiser

I must confess that I’m not really a specialist in furniture. I’ve lived, for instance, for four years in an apartment where the only pieces of furniture existing were a sofa, a bed and a TV set (by the way, is a tv set a piece of furniture?). I’m only mentioning it, to say it clear that my enchantment for the Nuno’s creations goes a bit beyond the fact that I find it beautiful. As I don’t value much the useful things, to catch my attention, a piece of furniture has to be something very noble, very personal, very creative.

I may seem a bit sceptical, but to me, as a rule, a table is only a table, a cupboard is merely a cupboard, the same way that a cow is just a coe and a chicken is not more than a pile of feathers. Thence, I was somehow stunned when I found out that a table could help to illustrate concepts, philosophies, even of the person who bought.

I met the creator and its creatures at the same time. Nuno was having a meeting with a common friend and had a Catalogue with some of his furniture. Right there I decided that it would be Nuno’s furniture to fill the geographic empty spaces of my life. It so happened with my first enterprise (organised around a table designed by Nuno), it so happened with my apartment, it so happened with my second enterprise and, I hope, it will happen again with my third and fourth.

As you may see, I’m a sort of Nunodependent, and be careful, besause you may become the next one.

As you may see, I’m a sort of Nunodependent, and be careful, besause you may become the next one. And if I were you, I’d leave this catalogue immediately, before you become permanently enchanted, and begin questioning the decoration of your entire place. Your furniture is not worth being compared to Nuno’s. Just as you are not worth being compared to Tom Cruise or Claudia Schiffer.

But, if my advice is still on time, don’t get upset. Until today, nobody has died for having a good taste. Or, such as my uncle Olavo would say: “The important is not to like beautiful things. The important is that the beautiful things like you”.

in Colecção Nuno Lacerda Lopes, 2000

Testimony

Não sei se é um grande argumento de venda, mas não é fácil viver numa casa com os móveis do Nuno. Não que eles sejam desconfortáveis, já disse que não, pelo contrário. É que de vez em quando sentimos inveja deles. Explico: desde há muitos anos, tenho no meu apartamento algumas peças nunonianas (há até mesmo um móvel baptizado com o meu nome, coisas do criador, que tem a ma­nia de dar nomes de pessoas às coisas, um cristão novo ao revés, capaz de chamar um pedaço de madeira de carvalho de José, quando todos sabemos os Josés é que costumam ser de Carvalho, Pinho ou simplesmente Barrote). Pois bem, dou­-me bem com as minhas cadeiras, mesas, armários do Nuno, eles costumam ser tranquilos, quietos e, apesar de móveis, não vão nunca a lado nenhum. Porém, quando recebo visitas, acabo por durante alguns minutos tornando-me acessó­rio irrelevante da minha própria casa. Os convidados não se coibem de elogiar a estética do mobiliário e, creio, concluem rapidamente que tal nível de beleza me é imerecido. Nessas horas penso seriamente em por fogo no apartamento. Depois vou numa loja qualquer e compro um mobiliário incaracterístico, desses prontos a usar, de preferência feio, melhor ainda, com inclinações kitch. Mas pen­so melhor e acabo por não fazer nada disso. Sento-me numa das minhas (dele) belas cadeiras, acendo um cigarro, tomo um bom vinho e recolho-me na certeza de que, afinal, o que é bonito vicia.

Testimony

— Ricardo Pais

Theatre Director

It’s important to highlight the constant sense of construction that Nuno Lacerda uses in his works, in his projects, in his life: he knows very well the subject itself, what he draws knows how it will be built – and the many years that he registers as a professor of this and other disciplines at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto prove it. This fact is differentiating, even more so from the perspective of the scenographer, when we imagine, for example, the apparently unstable balance of a brutal 9m high wall like that of the Great Theatre of the World, clearly Nuno Lacerda’s reference scenography.

In Italy, when something is broadcast that is being seen live, it is said to occur in contemporary. This comes to mind in relation to Nuno, because the sensuality that characterises him and with which he works, for example, drawings by raised hand, which should be very austere things – and are indeed so – at the same time as the hand slides almost compulsively on the sheet of paper, has a lot to do with his very close attention to everything around him and happening in the moment, “with time”, as a consequence of time. And that is being contemporary, before and after any enrolment in any School, in any Aesthetics, in any Knowledge, in any Philosophy. That is to be alive while we are virtualizing.

Excerpt from an interview conducted in 2020