Interest in art generates passion of construction

He starts off the conference with a retrospective of his career, how it developed, what inspired him and where his desire to be an architect came from: it draws from art and the desire to build, rather than from the technical aspect.

He begins by presenting several housing projects; be it a new construction in a No Man's Land area to the East of Tavira, or the rehabilitation of an old villa in the very middle of a magnificent Portuguese landscape, Ricardo Bak Gordon's architecture interacts with its environment.

Despite a very simple and refined appearance, this architecture is no less complex in terms of its design. For the “twin houses” project, for example, designed for the artist Pedro Cabrita Reis, the two houses look like almost identical constructions in the countryside, but as Bak Gordon explains, he imagined and designed them very differently. A real desire to break with the landscape is evident, but without ever giving the impression that the construction is not in its place. To the contrary, its blends perfectly into its environment thanks to the choice of simple materials and sober colours.

The colour white is common and predominant in most of Ricardo Bak Gordon's projects. Long white facades are broken only by some irregularly distributed openings. Yet the architect also demonstrates how he can adapt to larger scale projects, for the full redevelopment of a seafront development in Maputo, Mozambique.

The harmony of Ricardo Bak Gordon's projects is characterised by his simple and restrained choice of materials, which translates into a timeless architecture.