fala is an architecture practice.

founded in 2013, and based in porto, portugal, the atelier is led by filipe magalhães, ana luisa soares, ahmed belkhodja and lera samovich.

PUBLICATIONS
Ceci n’est pas um portrait, fala + atelier local, 2024
a+u #637, fala, 10/2023
Drawing Matter, series on drawings, fala, 10/2022
Butterflies, fala, Libria, 5/2022
2G #80, fala, 12/2019

EXHIBITIONS
Villa Baizeau, Carthage, 2024, collective exhibition
The hand and the machine - Hånd og maskin, the National Museum, Oslo, 10/2023, collective exhibition
Pictures, Architekturgalerie, Stuttgart, 04/2022, solo exhibition
Lisbon Architecture Triennale, Lisbon, 2019, collective exhibition
Cats & columns, Casa da Cerca, Lisbon, 2019, solo exhibition

AWARDS
spotlight award 2020, rice university; winner (fala)
big mat award 2025; finalist (082)
secil prize 2023; finalist (082)
prémio manuel graça dias; honourable mention (082)
prémio jovens arquitectos 2025; winner (082)

GALLERY GALLERY TALKS

(GG)How was Fala born?
(FALA)Fala was born in Japan, in a small capsule of the Nakagin Tower, with only Filipe and Ana present in the room. That was already more than ten years ago. It was born out of curiosity, stubbornness, luck, and many other things. It is anything but static. The office changes; it grows and shrinks. It speeds up and slows down. It is pushed and pulled in different directions by various actors. It is a collective, a plurality of voices. It is an adventure but also a routine. It can be boring and exciting at the same time. It exists through buildings, projects, images, texts, photographs, wireframes, and many other things.

(GG)What role does representation play in your practice and why do you think your collages, specifically, have somehow managed to become a trademark and make their way into the subconscious of Architects (and not only) all around the world?
(FALA)Looking back at the very beginning of our practice, collage was a simple yet powerful tool to navigate the tedious task of producing competition proposals. It was vague enough and punchy at the same time—friendly, recognizable, almost relatable. Rendering was neither a skill we had nor something we were particularly interested in. It was also a moment when practices like Dogma, OFFICE, Baukuh, Point Supreme, and others were carrying out similar experiments in that kind of representation. But for us, the tool exhausted itself relatively quickly. We drifted further and further away from central perspectives, started cropping objects in Photoshop, and applying textures. Like any tool, it has been an ongoing experiment, which at this moment has taken the shape of what we call “flat perspectives.” Most probably, it will transform into something else within the next five years.

(GG)You have become a reference in your own right, but what are your references and what is your attitude towards the work of others
(FALA)References are constantly present, be it a façade by Hasegawa, a plan by Rossi, or a corner detail by Lütjens Padmanabhan. They come from different contexts, times, and places. They coexist in one space, in one project. They compliment each other but also clash and collide. They become more and more precise in a sense that, images are collected to figure out a specific moment, an element, or a detail. A few years ago, references were gathered at a start of a project, and now it happens more towards the middle and end. Even when the project is done, we keep adding relevant images to the folder. They are a consequence of a stream of curiosity that follows us, makes us figure out projects that might have seemed doomed at first.

(GG)And again, given that you are widely involved in Academia, do you feel a sense of responsibility towards students, towards the new generations of architects?
(FALA)One of our main concerns when teaching is to bring the experience as close as possible to the conditions of actual practice. The many limitations and challenges of that reality—the plurality of the process, the involvement of multiple parties and teams, the presence of context, client, and budget. The blunt execution drawing that resolves typical details: wall layers, doors, windows. But also, the joy of navigating that process. How to carry the clarity of a concept from beginning to end. How to bring together the measurable and the immeasurable. A living space should respect the minimum required square meters, but it should also suggest a certain sense of the surreal. It must have a glitch, a mistake, an element that disrupts the everyday in a positive way—an actor that sets the stage for the potential chaos of life around it.

(GG)Let’s finally talk about this series of wireframe drawings: you make no mystery - and this should perhaps tell me something about your attitude towards reference- that you have been inspired by the work of Shinohara and Hasegawa. How did you discover it and what struck you about it?

(FALA)We discovered these drawings while delving deeper into the work of both Shinohara and Hasegawa. At first, their approaches seemed similar, but in fact they were quite different. Both were early experiments using basic software and bulky computer screens. Both rendered their projects as skeletons, suggesting a radically new way of reading an object.

Our wireframe drawings are closely connected to single-line plans and sections. We begin by introducing a degree of simplification in a two-dimensional project, which is then translated into a fragile 3D model built entirely out of lines. The use of color came from our series on rules and exceptions: blue represented grids and repetitions, while pink marked disruptions within the system. The skeleton is then populated with hatches, patterns, columns—whatever is happening in the project—offering a new reading that is neither a drawing, nor a render, nor a collage. All at once, and none at all.
Through the wireframe, the viewer is able to grasp all aspects of the project—extracting plans, sections, and even hints of materiality. Presented against a black background, these images become a kind of X-ray, where one can experiment with viewpoints: opting for conventional perspectives or choosing to see the house through the mass of a suspended column.