Profile

João Luís Carrilho da Graça is an architect, having graduated from the Lisbon School of Fine Arts in 1977, the same year he began his professional career. In academia, he served as an assistant lecturer at the Faculty of Architecture of the Technical University of Lisbon from 1977 to 1992. Later, he worked as a professor at the Autonomous University of Lisbon from 2001 to 2010 and at the University of Évora from 2005 onwards, coordinating the architecture departments at both institutions until 2010. He was also a visiting professor at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura of the University of Navarra in 2005, 2007, and 2010 and has been invited to participate in seminars and conferences at various universities and international institutions.

Throughout his career, he has received numerous distinctions, including the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres from the French Republic in 2010, the Prémio Pessoa in 2008, the Bienal Internacional da Luz-Luzboa Award in 2004, the Order of Merit from the Portuguese Republic in 1999, and the International Association of Art Critics Award in 1992. He was also awarded the Piranesi Prix de Rome in 2010 for the musealisation of the archaeological site at Praça Nova of São Jorge Castle, the FAD Award in 1999, and the Valmor Prize in 1998 for the Pavilion of Knowledge of the Seas at Expo’98. Additionally, he won the Secil Architecture Award in 1994 for the Lisbon School of Social Communication. Furthermore, he was nominated for the Mies van der Rohe European Architecture Prize on several occasions, including in 1990, 1992, 1994, 2009, 2010, and 2011.

Among his most emblematic works are the Lisbon Cruise Terminal, the musealisation of the archaeological site at São Jorge Castle, the Pedestrian Bridge over Ribeira da Carpinteira in Covilhã, the Lisbon School of Music, the Theatre and Auditorium in Poitiers, France, and the Pavilion of Knowledge of the Seas at Expo’98.