A studio for light.

Sanavi is a practice of twelve architects, model makers and conservators working from a former printworks on Rua do Almada. We take on few projects, and we stay with each one from the first sun study to the last site visit.

Plaster masterplan model with miniature trees

(01) Story

We started in 2011 with one client, one house and one rule: never draw a window before you know where the sun will be.

Tomás Varela founded the studio after ten years in the office of Álvaro Siza, where he learned that a building is mostly made of what it leaves out. The first commission, a house in Foz do Douro, took three years and was published in eleven countries.

Today we work across Portugal on homes, cultural buildings, civic spaces and the careful repair of old ones. We still build every design as a white card model, and we still test it under a single lamp every Thursday at five.

(02) Principles

Four rules we have never broken.

Light first

The sun study comes before the brief, the plan and the budget. It decides where the rooms go.

Fewer, better openings

One well-placed window does more than five large ones. We would rather frame light than flood a room with it.

Materials that age

Concrete, stone, lime and oak. Nothing painted, nothing that needs replacing in ten years.

Keep what exists

The greenest building is the one already standing. We repair before we rebuild, and we reuse what we remove.

(03) People

The people at the drawing table.

Tomás Varela

Founding Partner, Architect

Inês Sá

Partner, Architect

Rui Monteiro

Associate, Model Maker

Marta Oliveira

Heritage Architect

Leonor Dias

Studio Director

(04) Timeline

Fifteen years in six moments.

2011

Studio founded on Rua do Almada with two architects and a model table.

2014

First completed house, in Foz do Douro, published in eleven countries.

2017

Pavilion for Shade built for the Guimarães Design Biennial.

2019

Chapel of the Slot consecrated on the feast of São Pedro.

2022

Matosinhos Library opens; heritage team formed with Marta Oliveira.

2026

Prémio Secil de Arquitetura for the Matosinhos Library.