a temple, luminous & tranquil
I am an architect, visual artist, and art educator based in Copenhagen, working across art education, fine art research, and experimental architectural photography. I hold a Master’s degree in Architecture from the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto (FAUP), where my thesis "Light Shadows of Serenity" received commendable honors and was a finalist for the Archiprix Portugal's Best Architecture Thesis (2025).
Through the years, my professional trajectory has rooted itself in co-participatory artistic processes, specifically in collaboration with museum's education programs. Parallel to that, I am the co-founder and creative director of "caalm", an emerging art & architecture studio resonsible for designing site-specific public art works, such as the "do Mar" - an urban art route co-created by local communities in the coast of Portugal.
I have designed and facilitated workshops in experimental art processes for major Nordic art institutions, including the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Denmark) and the National Museum of Norway. In 2026, as a LINA Fellow with Forecast, I led a walk-in camera obscura and light-painting workshop at Radialsystem in Berlin.
My practice aims to employ architecture not merely as shelter, but as a perception-enhancing instrument - a sanctuary where light, physical space, and human consciousness interact. By placing small groups inside inhabitable camera obscuras and darkroom environments, I seek to build tangible spaces for revealing latent realities, states of deep presence, gentle emotional resonance, and shared creation in answer to the ever increasing illusion and unsustainable cult of the need for progress.
'a temple' develops the concept of a walk-in pinhole camera tent, into a custom-built, multi-user dome pavilion, contextually designed for sensory exploration and ecological mindfulness. Originating from a Master’s thesis on architecture, photography, and mental health, the methodology was first tested through small-scale pinhole devices and later realized as a light-painting workshop with Forecast at Radialsystem in Berlin (2026). This proposal marks the intuitive next step: scaling the experience into a structure designed for collective expression in natural (or urban) landscapes.
The proposed pavilion accommodates small groups inside a darkroom cupola equipped with a radial array of adjustable apertures that adapt to the sun’s trajectory. Strategic placement of refractive elements (crystals, prisms, and reclaimed glass) interacts with the inverted ambient light, turning it into living, shifting projections across central easels. Inside, participants do not merely observe; they paint the projected imagery into physical existence. Using brushes dipped in developer and fixer chemistry directly onto photosensitive paper and large-scale shared canvases, the collective darkroom process transforms fleeting atmospheric phenomena into permanent artifacts.
In an era dominated by digital immediacy and ecological alienation, 'a temple' serves as a slow, spatial ritual that reveals us the experience of the (un)seen. Placed on forest floors, floating on water bodies, or sited in contested urban spaces, the pavilion functions as both an architectural installation and a participatory laboratory.
Building on ongoing educational and social art projects - including work with Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, and ceramic murals of marine art in Portugal - this proposal strives to offer LINA Members an adaptable framework for public engagement, site-specific spatial interventions, and experimental pedagogy on the threshold between matter, light, and the human psyche.