Jorge Ferreira Chaves


Jorge Ferreira Chaves was a Portuguese architect.
Some authors may refer to him as "Jorge Chaves" or simply "Chaves".
He was one of the architects responsible, in the latter part of the 1940s, for the establishment of the Modern Movement in Portugal.
Professionally active between 1941 and 1981, he is considered one of the most perfectionist Portuguese architects. From 1946, in his office, he developed several dozens of projects for continental Portugal, the island of Madeira, Portuguese Guinea and Angola.
He also collaborated with some of Lisbon's most important architectural offices of the first half of the 20th century: those of Joaquim Ferreira, Miguel Jacobetty Rosa and Porfírio Pardal Monteiro.

Biography

Jorge Ribeiro Ferreira Chaves was born on 22 February 1920, in Ponta do Sol, municipal seat of Ribeira Grande, on the island of Santo Antão in Portuguese Cape Verde.
He was the son of Portuguese civil engineer and inventor Raul Pires Ferreira Chaves and Elvira da Conceição Ribeiro Ferreira Chaves. He was also brother of Maria Helena da Costa Dias. He was also nephews of Maria Alexandrina Pires Ferreira Chaves, Olímpio Ferreira Chaves and João Carlos Pires Ferreira Chaves.
From 1931 he lived in Lisbon.

Education

He studied architecture at the Escola de Belas Artes de Lisboa, having entered in 1935.
In 1941, his degree program was interrupted because of military service during World War II, stationed with Portuguese expeditionary forces on the island of São Miguel in the Azores. He remained on the island until 1944.
He rejoined the School of Fine Arts in 1944 to finish the architecture degree and was awarded the 1946 José Luis Monteiro Prize, which included a monetary stipend for students achieving academic excellence. The prize was significant, since it had not been awarded the previous years, and had accumulated. Simultaneously, in 1946-1947, he attended the Sculpture degree.
In 1948, he graduated in architecture.
In his diploma application exam, in 1953, Jorge Chaves obtained a significant passing grade: 19 out of 20.

Career

His professional career started during the period of 1943-1956; a period which Nuno Portas has designated as the stage of "resistance" in Portuguese architecture and art. From 1944 to 1946, in the final years at university, he collaborated with architect Joaquim Ferreira. During this period, he also collaborated, occasionally, with architects Filipe Nobre de Figueiredo and Alberto Soeiro.
In 1946 he set up his first office together with his graduation classmate Luís Coelho Borges.
He was a member of ICAT - Iniciativas Culturais Arte e Técnica and also of the Sociedade Nacional de Belas-Artes. He participated in four sessions of the EGAP Exposições Gerais de Artes Plásticas by presenting architectural projects. In 1948, he participated in the 1º Congresso Nacional de Arquitectura.
In parallel with project activity in his own office, he collaborated with the office of architect Miguel Jacobetty Rosa, between 1948 and 1952, and did an internship under the direction of architect Hernâni Gandra during 1951.
In 1952 he was invited to the office of the architect Porfírio Pardal Monteiro, with whom he worked in designing the Palácio da Rotunda and Sorel buildings, but especially the Hotel Ritz in Lisbon, "a remarkable work, for its aesthetic wisdom and excellence of material execution ".
During architect Porfírio Pardal Monteiro illness and after his death in 1957, he ensured the continuity of the project of the hotel, by giving assistance to the construction and by heading the phase of execution in a special office built in the site, until its inauguration in 1959.
Although the design of Hotel Ritz was his core activity from 1952 to 1959, he kept his own office to which he was exclusively dedicated after 1959.
Several of his major works, such as the “Pastelaria Mexicana”, the “Palissi Galvani” shop and the Hotel Florida in Lisbon, the Hotel Garbe, the Hotel da Baleeira and the Hotel Globo in the Algarve or the Chamber of Commerce of Bissau in Guinea-Bissau include conceptually integrated visual arts interventions, some created by himself.
The visual artists Jorge Vieira, José Escada, Martins Correia, Paulo Guilherme d'Eça Leal, Sena da Silva, Hein Semke, Querubim Lapa, Mario Costa, António Alfredo and João Câmara Leme were invited to intervene in his works.
In his career, he was accompanied in some of the listed projects, by the associated architects Luís Coelho Borges, Álvaro Valladas Petersen, Anselmo Fernandez Rodriguez, Eduardo Goulard Medeiros, Artur Pires Martins, Cândido Palma de Melo and also by Mario Xavier Antunes, Jorge Herédia, Frederico Sant'Ana and Vítor Sousa Figueiredo, who were internship members of his office and carried on collaborating with him.
His work also developed on the wide urban scale and he had an important role in the development of industrial design in Portugal. For the equipment of his buildings and interior designs, Jorge Ferreira Chaves always designed original furniture or chose mainly Portuguese designed and manufactured fixtures and objects.
From 1978 to 1981, he designed interventions in public buildings, as an Architect of the Ministry of Public Works.
He died in Lisbon on August 22, 1981.

Buildings and projects

Built

Please see of Chaves.

Non-built

Please see of Chaves.

Books

Television