A small studio for slow buildings.

Eleven architects and makers, one long table, and a habit of visiting every site each week.

Architect drawing by hand at a long table in the studio

The studio on Rua da Boavista — Friday crit, 2025

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Story

Est. 2009

We started in a former bakery with one drawing table and one rule: never take on more work than we can visit every week.

Tomás Reis and Inês Moura opened Lunaro in 2009, after a decade working for larger offices in Porto and Basel. The first commission was a kitchen. The second was a school.

Seventeen years later the studio is still deliberately small. We design four to six buildings at a time, do our own models in the basement workshop, and keep the same structural engineer, the same concrete supplier and the same photographer — a 35 mm camera loaded with black-and-white film.

Most of our work is in Portugal: houses on difficult sites, cultural buildings, and old structures nobody else wanted to keep.

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Values

What we hold to

Light first

Every project starts with the sun path. Rooms are placed by the hour they should receive light, not by habit.

Keep what works

The greenest building is usually the one already standing. We repair before we replace.

Fewer, better

We limit how many projects we take on, so the partners can stay on every one of them.

Built to age

Lime, oak, stone, unsealed concrete. Materials that look better with weather and use.

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People

Hover a portrait

The people at the long table.

Six of the eleven. Photographed in the studio, in the same window light, on the same roll of film.

Still draws the first section of every project by hand, usually on the train to Porto.

Tomás Reis

Founding partner

Models sun, wind and carbon for every scheme. Swims in the Atlantic all year round.

Amara Okafor

Head of research

Ran a joinery workshop before architecture. Can tell oak from chestnut blindfolded.

Inês Moura

Partner

Builds the studio’s light models and insists on testing every lamp at 1:20 first.

Leonor Vaz

Interior architect

Leads our adaptive reuse work. Collects old door handles from every building we save.

Rafael Lobo

Project architect

Spends three days a week on site. Knows every concrete supplier between Braga and Faro.