Luís Tavares is a Brazilian architect and co-founder of Arquipélago Arquitetos, an architecture studio established in 2013 in São Paulo. Alongside Marinho Velloso, he has developed projects across multiple scales, from furniture design to urban interventions, with a focus on sustainability and material research. Their work integrates traditional Brazilian construction techniques, particularly rammed earth (taipa de pilão) and wood, into contemporary architecture.
Tavares and Velloso graduated from the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of São Paulo (FAU-USP), a school deeply rooted in Brazil’s modernist tradition. Their practice combines the rationalist principles of the São Paulo School with low-carbon construction. Casa Cunha, their first project using rammed earth, set a precedent for further explorations of natural construction methods. Cinema da Praça, a restoration and modernization of a historic cinema in Paraty, merges contemporary design with cultural heritage.
Arquipélago Arquitetos has received international recognition for its work. Casa Cunha was a finalist in the ArchDaily Building of the Year Award in the Residential Architecture category, highlighting the firm’s commitment to sustainable design. Tavares and Velloso continue to integrate regional building techniques with modern methodologies, creating architecture that is both environmentally responsible and culturally grounded.
What inspires you?
The possibility of stimulating new imaginations in people through projects, connecting them with internal meanings.
What inspired you to become an architect?
Architecture is a profession in which you are always in formation, always developing, maturing, and reinventing yourself. It is a continuous education. I say this to express that the decision to become an architect wasn’t an “inspiration” from the beginning, but rather something that is continuously inspiring, renewed with every project.
How would you describe your design philosophy?
Archipelago is an architecture studio based in São Paulo, founded in 2013 by Luís Tavares and Marinho Velloso. We understand architecture as a form of reasoning, and in this sense, we develop projects at all scales with equal emphasis, from furniture design to urban design.
We graduated from the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of São Paulo (FAU-USP), and therefore, we have a modern foundation from the so-called São Paulo School, which has shaped architectural practices for decades, especially through the use of reinforced concrete. At the same time, we belong to a new generation that seeks to find a responsible way of working with natural resources and carbon consumption. We seek dialogue with the masters of crafts from rural Brazil and their knowledge, believing this to be a viable path for greater results. The use of earth and wood in construction is ultimately pivotal in this search.
With this pragmatic and research-driven approach, we have discovered latent construction techniques from the interior of Brazil, still alive today, such as rammed earth (taipa de pilão) and wood—constructive resources that are efficient in hard-to-reach places; as well as cultural expressions of historical intelligence that should be reintroduced into contemporary architecture.
What is your favorite project?
Casa Cunha is our first project using rammed earth. Since then, four other projects have followed, which are much more mature, but I believe that Casa Cunha has this factor of being the first experience, learning something new, which makes it my favorite.
What is your favorite architectural detail?
It’s difficult, I really enjoy details, especially when they transcend pragmatism and can have their own expression and communicate. I would select an object, more than a detail: the wood-burning stove. It’s incredible how an old oven can have so many details and wisdom to function. Additionally, it connects us to a more ancestral sense of cooking, close to the fire.
Do you have a favorite material?
The favorite material is the one that fits perfectly into each situation of each project. Working with earth, when it makes sense, is always a magical and exciting universe.
How do you see Earth in Architecture?
Earth is the most abundant material on the planet, so it should be considered as a necessary and providential resource in the built environment. Earth can be used raw, through stabilization, making it a powerful ally in low carbon consumption, which is urgently needed in contemporary architecture. Beyond this push for the future, earth carries a historical and cultural ballast in its matter: a human identity of the various techniques used in all continents of the world.
What is stopping architects from embracing this potential carbon-free material?
Perhaps it’s just a matter of knowing the material and its construction techniques, without any prejudice that could place it within an old and nostalgic paradigm. We have few architecture and engineering courses that truly present earth as a possibility, even though it is standardized, while materials like steel and concrete have broad bases in the university structure. It might be a formative issue that needs to be provoked to receive new paradigms.
What is your process for starting a new project?
We try to place ourselves in a position to absorb what each context can offer us. We listen more, investigate, and learn from the builders, the culture, the climate, the vegetation, and the ground of the site. This process has led us to explore new places in a broader way and inform our architecture. After this, we always have the foundation to start the drawings themselves, but we already recognize this research as architecture when we conceptually structure each project.
How do you balance function and creativity in your designs?
Both can and should go hand in hand. The exercise of creativity is actually a way to externalize our imagination; as architects, we need to care for our imagination as if it were a chest with a treasure. We should be sensitive to the world around us. Then, function is something pragmatic, inherent to the exercise of design.
How does the environment influence your work?
In a fundamental way. We have to design considering the environmental comfort and performance of each building, establishing specific strategies. The Casa Cunha project came about after the publication of a previous project of ours, Casa ML. Casa ML is a light wooden house, elevated from the ground, positioned in a damp and warm clearing in the middle of the Atlantic Forest, and is hard to access, in Paraty. Therefore, we proposed an architecture made of lightweight wooden pieces and thermo-acoustic tiles that would fit into the client’s truck.
Although the clients of Casa Cunha approached us because they were interested in Casa ML, the formal result is quite different. However, the issues between both projects are similar: Casa Cunha was also hard to access, and we had to deal with the climatic factor, in this case, the cold. Thus, the architecture was made from the resources of the land itself, its earth, resulting in the concept of semi-burying the project to improve the relationship with the cold.
How did Casa en Cunha influence your work?
Casa en Cunha represents an important research milestone in the office’s collection of works. We understand each project as a research endeavor, where we always elaborate some questions, and the development process is, in fact, the construction of answers to each specific theme in each story. In a broader horizon, these investigations form a certain history, allowing us to guide each process in a more continuous but non-linear way.
In Casa en Cunha, we worked for the first time with earth construction technologies, and the process was so valuable and stimulating that we ended up using it in four other projects afterward, as the same sense of its use was found in different contexts. I believe we will continue, at the start of each new project, always questioning the possibility of the construction technique being earth, stemming from Casa Cunha.
What advice would you give to young architects?
Architecture is not a 100m speed race, but a long marathon, where resilience is key.
