OTIIMA

OODA Previews Some Kind, Any Kind at the Bread & Heart Festival

Otiima — Thu, 28 May 2026 14:08:15 +0000

OODA‘s upcoming book, Some Kind of Romance, Any Kind of Existence, makes its world debut at the Bread & Heart Festival in Tirana, and OTIIMA window frames part of the story.

What does it look like when an architecture studio decides its next book should not read like an architecture book? That’s the question OODA has been considering, and at this year’s Bread & Heart Festival in Tirana, they are giving the world its first answer.

Some Kind of Romance, Any Kind of Existence, the studio’s forthcoming publication, will officially launch in October 2026. Before its release, the book is being introduced in built form as a timber pavilion at Skanderbeg Square, serving as a preview. This pavilion acts as a physical first chapter for a work that blends architecture and fiction.

Architecture as fiction

Most architecture books are retrospectives, a curated archive of completed work, annotated and photographed. Some Kind_Any Kind takes a different path. Conceived as an inner dialogue between Some Kind of Romance and Any Kind of Existence, the publication unfolds like a novel, building a world rather than documenting one.

It's a shift from the archive to the imagination — from what has been built to what architecture, at its most essential, can mean."

OODA

This is a bold and appropriate choice for a studio that views design as interpretation rather than mere execution. OODA does not simply address briefs; they consider what a building seeks to express. The book represents their most direct exploration of this question to date.

The pavilion as a first page

To bring the book’s world preview to life, OODA created a pavilion at Skanderbeg Square as the setting for Some Kind_Any Kind’s first public event. Rather than making a bold architectural statement, the pavilion supports the book as a backdrop that reflects its ideas. Exposed columns, beams, floors, and diagonal supports present architecture in its simplest form, creating a space that highlights the book’s concepts. OTIIMA window frames at two corners mark the entrance and subtly separate inside from outside, and public from private.

The Bread & Heart Festival brings together over 300 international and local teams alongside guests from the arts, media, and environmental sectors to explore how architecture can balance the pressure for new development with the need to protect the land. It’s a context where hard questions have a place, and where materials, details, and construction choices tell a story.

For OTIIMA, being part of OODA’s work shows that a window frame is more than just a technical detail. It is a choice, a statement, and a way to express what we believe about the connection between architecture and nature, and between inside and outside spaces.

We will be in Tirana from June 3 to 5. If you are there as well, come visit the pavilion and see up close what happens when timber, light, and a well-crafted window frame come together in an Albanian square.

About OODA: Founded in Porto in 2010, OODA is an internationally recognized architecture studio specializing in architecture, interiors, and urban design. The firm is known for creating bold spaces that respond to their context. With projects across several continents, OODA strives to balance innovation, functionality, and emotional impact, fostering a dialogue between culture, landscape, and contemporary life in each project.

Architecture that adapts to the landscape: Building on steep sites

Otiima — Fri, 15 May 2026 15:32:02 +0000

Steep terrain resists control. It changes how we think about building, moving the focus from taking charge to working with the land. Architects face a fundamental decision: change the land for the building or let the building fit the land.

More often, architects today choose to let buildings adapt to difficult sites. Using gentle methods means reducing excavation, preserving ecological systems, and revealing forms that are inseparable from their surroundings. Instead of flattening complexity, they work with it.

Here, design is more about understanding the land. Architects follow the land’s lines, respect its slopes, and let the building’s form grow from these limits.

Minimal Intervention as a Design Principle

Traditional construction on slopes typically begins with heavy earthwork, including clearing, backfilling, constructing retaining walls, and grading. However, this approach disrupts natural drainage and alters terrain stability.

The non-invasive design reverses this logic, based on the idea that the terrain should remain virtually intact. Each decision is evaluated based on its impact, such as the amount of soil moved, the number of trees removed, and how water continues to flow.

Recent discussions in the field of architecture show that extreme topography can inspire creative design solutions rather than being a problem to be solved.

Building Lightly on the Ground

One of the most straightforward responses to a steep site is to minimize contact with the ground.

Buildings constructed on piles or point foundations only touch the ground where necessary. This allows the slope to continue beneath the building, helping to protect vegetation and maintain the natural flow of water.

The architecture appears to float, anchored without dominating the site. This structure also connects the interior space to the surrounding terrain, making the site appear as a continuous surface.

Praia Verde House | Atelier Central | © Fernando Guerra

Stepping with the Slope

Buildings tracing the contours of the land transform the terrain into a series of spaces. Each level marks a shift in elevation, forming platforms, terraces, and steps.

This approach eliminates the need for large retaining walls and reduces excavation, allowing for the creation of a space that is intimately connected to the way people move through the landscape. The building conveys a sense of gentle circulation as one ascends or descends, always following the natural shape of the terrain.

The latest houses built on slopes demonstrate how stepped designs preserve the natural slope and create fluid interior spaces.

Spanning the Landscape

Under certain conditions, the ground must not be disturbed.

Ravines, dense vegetation, and fragile ecosystems require a different approach: transposition. In this way, interventions such as bridges, flyovers, and elevated structures allow architecture to cross the land without changing it.

Here, the structure becomes the sole point of contact. The building behaves less like an object placed on the ground and more like an extension that traverses it, connecting points in space without occupying everything in between.

Paradoxically, some of the most structurally ambitious solutions result in the least disturbance to the ground itself.

Maybourne Rviera | Wilmotte & Associés Sas-d’Architecture | © We are contents

Vertical Concentration

When building outward is not possible, architects design upward instead.

Vertical cores and compact towers help reduce the building’s footprint and limit ground disturbance. On steep sites, stacking spaces on top of each other is not just efficient, it also makes sense. Each floor matches a different elevation, often taking advantage of views, access, or natural light.

The building sits within the landscape, and its hallways and stairs connect the ground to the upper levels.

This approach works especially well on sites with many limits, where keeping the natural shape of the land is important.

Fragmented and Distributed Forms

Not all sites can be resolved with a single volume.

In complex topographies, fragmentation becomes a strategy of precision. Instead of one large structure, multiple smaller pavilions are placed across the site, each positioned according to local conditions.

This approach minimizes grading and allows architecture to occupy natural clearings without altering them. It also creates a more intimate relationship between building and landscape, where movement between volumes becomes part of the architectural experience.

The result is not a singular object, but a constellation of spaces embedded in terrain.

Villa H2 | Vicent Coste | © Florent Joliot

Designing with Constraint

No matter the strategy, one thing stays the same: constraint is a way to find clarity.

Steep terrain means you cannot stay neutral. Every decision stands out, whether it is structural, spatial, or environmental. Here, non-invasive design is a careful discipline.

As climate awareness and ecological responsibility change what matters in architecture, designs that minimize intervention will continue to shape the most important work on sensitive sites.

The landscape is no longer a surface to build on. It is a system to build with.

AL08 House | Estudio Cano | © Tomeu Canyellas

Architecture of Respect

The best architecture on steep terrain does not try to stand out from the landscape. Instead, it fits in, sits gently, and moves with care. It only stretches across gaps when needed and breaks apart when that brings clarity. This approach creates a building that feels like it has always been part of the place. This design is focused on its true connection to the site.

Back to Nature | Kengo Kuma in Lisbon with OTIIMA

Otiima — Wed, 06 May 2026 07:43:58 +0000

On the evening of May 2nd, one of the most influential architects of our time took the stage at Museu do Oriente to speak about the relationship between architecture and the natural world. OTIIMA was proud to be part of it.

Setting the scene

There are few occasions in which a city becomes the right stage for a conversation that feels both urgent and timeless. The conference Back to Nature, organized by Espaço de Arquitetura and held at the Museu do Oriente in Lisbon, was one of them. On the evening of May 2nd, Japanese architect Kengo Kuma addressed an audience of architects, engineers, and cultural figures, united by a shared interest in the direction that contemporary architecture must take.

OTIIMA was honored to sponsor the event, and to witness firsthand a reflection that resonates deeply with our own values: the conviction that the built environment should not stand apart from nature, but exist in deliberate and thoughtful exchange with it.

The architect

Founder of Kengo Kuma & Associates, Kengo Kuma’s body of work spans some of the most celebrated architectural commissions of the past three decades — from the Japan National Stadium, built for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, to the V&A Dundee in Scotland, the first design museum in the United Kingdom outside of London.

What distinguishes Kuma is sensibility. His architecture is defined by a consistent pursuit of lightness: a desire to dissolve mass, to allow materials to breathe, and to create spaces where the natural and the constructed become indistinguishable. His material vocabulary, like stone, wood, bamboo, washi paper, is rooted in craft and in place, yet his practice is unmistakably global.

Kengo Kuma in Portugal

The conference carried particular resonance given Kuma’s growing presence in Portugal. His intervention at the Centro de Arte Moderna of Fundação Gulbenkian in Lisbon and the reconversion project at Matadouro do Porto speak to an architect who approaches Portuguese territory as an encounter with its history and materiality.

For those attending the conference, this local dimension added a layer of immediacy to his reflections. Kuma’s ideas were visible, tangible, and walkable.

Back to Nature

Under the theme Back to Nature, Kuma explored what he sees as one of the central responsibilities of architecture in our time: the reconstruction of a sensibility toward territory and environment that industrial modernity has gradually eroded. Nature, in his framework is the very condition of architecture’s meaning.

He spoke of porosity, of materials that age with dignity, of buildings that respond to the surrounding environment. And in doing so, he offered something rarer than technical expertise: a coherent philosophy, expressed with clarity and conviction.

Explore the highlights of the event through our gallery:

Creating Not to Die: A Conversation with Filipe Marques

Otiima — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 08:31:28 +0000

Filipe Marques is an artist who inhabits the edges between life and death, between suffering and form, between silence and image. In this interview, we move through the densest layers of his artistic practice: pain as a structuring force, the refusal of redemption, and creation as an ethical act of resistance against the unbearable.

Memory and pain are recurring themes in your work and artistic reflection. How do you find inspiration in these experiences to create pieces that engage with such deep emotions?

All true creation emerges from a confrontation with what cannot be spoken directly. Pain, trauma, and despair—they are not just thematic categories but fundamental forces. My work, born from suffering, is a form of doxa. Suffering is not noble; it is corrosive, dirty, and intimate. Yet, when transformed into art, paradoxically, it gains beauty, not because it beautifies horror but because it shapes and contains it. My work imposes form on chaos, and in that, there is something sacred. Even if temporary, even if futile. That is why I speak of the creative act as a substitute for suicide: one creates to avoid dying. Or rather, one dies little by little in creation, until the body no longer needs to fall. Art as the last breath. In this scenario, my work is the body still pulsing while everything else fades. It does not save but postpones. It does not heal but bears witness. Perhaps it is this: creating, like leaving a candle burning in an empty room, knowing no one will return. Some suicides happen long before the body falls. And some works are epitaphs written during life. It is in this space that my work finds its most tragic value: it does not console; it accompanies like a loyal shadow to the edge of the precipice.

Filipe Marques, Old Cities Enclosed By Ancient Walls, 2022

We know you have a close relationship with various forms of artistic expression, including dance, theater, and poetry. How do these languages influence your practice and the outcome of your work?

Hope has historically been a cornerstone of metaphysical, religious, and ideological traditions. It functions as a motivating force, a promise of change, and a principle of continuity. Yet, in the face of trauma, suicide, and historical disasters, hope can feel not only inadequate but also inappropriate. In such moments, hope might be viewed as a means of domestication, a way to preserve order amid the unbearable. My work, however, rejects any idea of salvation. It is created despite catastrophe, not as a response to it. In this context, redemption is not even an option. Language has already endured fire—it’s ash, fragments, ruin. If hope exists, it resides in the smallest act of naming loss, of keeping memory alive. There is no promise left behind. Only an “after” marked by absence. Art does not save. But it prevents forgetfulness. This is not redemption, but a fragile form of justice. The utopia of connection is replaced by the silence of death. The endless goal of my work continues, not as a form of salvation, but as a final escape from oppressive language. My work emerges from the failure of hope, and it is precisely this that grants it political significance. Hope can also be regarded as a disease. It’s the worst form of enslavement. The only true clarity is that of honest despair.

All the media I explore and find refuge in help me survive my own desire to die. Thus, even while denying redemption, I find in these media a space where the unbearable can be contemplated, never fully redeemed. Hope, as a framework of meaning, is rejected not out of unnecessary pessimism but because of an ethical commitment to acknowledging suffering. Redemption will not come. And my work makes no promises. Yet it exists. It still exists. And that act, even without salvation, bears the power of lucidity. Perhaps, in the end, that is the only true form of dignity in a godless world: to keep speaking what burns, even when everything has already been consumed.

What is the role of vulnerability and resistance in your creative process and in how you communicate with your audience?

My work may offer an ethic rooted in vulnerability and interdependence. The artist without God does not seek personal redemption but connection within a network of existence. My work often functions as a space for sublimating melancholic pain—a way to make the unbearable bearable.

Yet there comes a point where creation no longer redeems but instead intensifies pain: producing becomes the only way to inhabit despair. One can see in my work the constant presence of melancholy as a companion to creation. Its language, across different media, does not heal but sustains it at the edge of the abyss. My aim with my work is this vision: by exposing a vulnerable body, I invite the audience to share responsibility.

Filipe Marques, Old Cities Enclosed By Ancient Walls, 2022

Thinking about the impact of your work, what legacy would you like to leave for future generations, both artistically and socially?

Speaking about suffering is not merely an aesthetic exercise or a subjective necessity—it’s primarily an ethical act. My work engages with suicide, trauma, and the destruction of the subject and inevitably calls forth the presence of the other: the one who listens, survives, and remembers. The other as spectator, accomplice, absent. This other is the dead, the absent, the collective victim who can no longer speak. My work serves as a form of unauthorized testimony—it speaks for those silenced by history. The legacy of a suicidal artist is not limited to the work they leave behind but extends to the abyss their absence opens. From the testimony of the unspeakable, born of despair, arises an unavoidable question: what remains when the creator chooses the absolute silence of death? It is a battlefield between memory and the unspeakable, marked by a dense, hermetic quality that points to a limit-experience. My work can offer a paradoxical remedy to despair: the beauty of form and color, the rhythm of corrosive thought, and the stylistic elegance that transforms existential nausea into art. An aesthetics of the limit—creating to keep myself alive, even if only briefly. When death arrives, it will not erase the image; instead, the image will gain an aura of definitive witness: an ethical cry and an act of resistance embodying the paradox of feeding on my own despair. The ability to turn death into language can crystallize my life, casting an aura around my work; ultimately, this is the power of creation. It is not about glorifying extreme acts but about an ethical and aesthetic inheritance: proof that even in the face of the unbearable, art can transform pain into memory, silence into image, and finiteness into permanence.

About Filipe Marques

Filipe Marques is an artist known for his thought-provoking exploration of human emotions and instincts. His work often explores themes such as fear, survival, and the darker side of human nature. Marques has been involved in several projects with OTIIMA, bringing his unique perspective to architecture and art.

The Women of Bauhaus

Otiima — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 07:44:00 +0000

Over a century after its founding, the Bauhaus still influences how we think about design, architecture, and the built environment. Its legacy is everywhere: in clean lines, purposeful form, and the radical idea that beauty and function are inseparable.

But there’s a story within that story that rarely gets told the way it deserves.

The women of the Bauhaus didn’t just attend one of the most progressive schools of the 20th century. They helped define it, even as the institution itself offered a certain resistance along the way.

The Fine Print of Quality

When Walter Gropius opened the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1919, the school declared itself open to all, regardless of gender. It was a bold statement for the time. Women enrolled in significant numbers, drawn by the promise of a new kind of education that treated art, craft, and design as equals.

The reality, however, was more complicated.

Most women were quietly steered toward the weaving workshop, which was considered “feminine,” less prestigious, and far removed from the architecture and industrial design tracks that carried the most cultural weight. It wasn’t written policy. It was structural bias, enforced through subtle discouragement and institutional gatekeeping.

What happened next says everything about the women who refused to accept that framing.

Anni Albers: Weaving as Architecture

If the Bauhaus establishment thought the weaving workshop was a consolation prize, Anni Albers transformed it into one of the school’s most forward-thinking laboratories.

Her textiles were structural explorations of material, sound absorption, light, and tactile experience that anticipated the concerns of contemporary interior architecture. Her work on acoustically functional wall hangings for trade union buildings was, in essence, applied design research.

Albers went on to become one of the first textile artists to have a solo exhibition at MoMA. Her thinking about the surface as a designed system—not an afterthought—remains profoundly relevant to how we approach material specification in luxury interiors today.

Annie Albers | 1- Josef & Anni Albers Foundation 2- Art is a word, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Gunta Stölzl: The One Who Led

Gunta Stölzl became the only woman to hold the title of Bauhaus Master, eventually directing the weaving workshop itself.

Her approach to textiles was architectural in sensibility: rigorous, analytical, and concerned with how materials perform in space. She introduced Jacquard loom techniques to the school and pushed her students to think beyond pattern and toward structure.

In a school populated by celebrated male masters, Stölzl’s achievement remains extraordinary and still underrecognized.

ID card of Gunta Stölzl from the Bauhaus, with the word "student" crossed out and the word "master" written in & "Slit Tapestry Red/Green" by Gunta Stölzl | 1- via Wikimedia License Under Public Domain. Image 2- Jennifer Mei, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Lilly Reich: The Collaborator Who Wasn’t Just a Collaborator

Lilly Reich never enrolled at the Bauhaus. She came to it through her professional partnership with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and their collaboration produced some of the most iconic design work of the 20th century.

The Barcelona Pavilion. The Tugendhat House. The Barcelona Chair.

For decades, these were cataloged almost exclusively under Mies’s name. Scholarship in recent years has worked to restore what many design historians now acknowledge: Reich’s contribution to the spatial and material decisions in these projects was substantial.

She was a skilled and independent designer in her own right, with a precise understanding of how fabric, color, and material transform the experience of a space. That her legacy was absorbed into someone else’s is a pattern repeated across the careers of many women in modernism.

Lilly Reich & Weissenhof chair by Lilly Reich and Mies van der Rohe | 1- design TOP 100, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons | 2- Hiermit erkläre ich in Bezug auf das Bild B 42.jpg (Weißenhof-Stuhl), dass ich der Fotograf oder Inhaber des ausschließlichen Nutzungsrechts bin. Ich erlaube, das Bild unter der freien Lizenz Bild-UN zu veröffentlichen.Mir ist bekannt, dass damit in urheberrechtlicher Hinsicht Dritte das Recht haben, das Bild gewerblich zu nutzen und zu verändern.Mir ist bekannt, dass ich diese Einwilligung üblicherweise nicht widerrufen kann und kein Anspruch darauf besteht, dass das Bild dauernd auf der Wikipedia eingestellt wird.Mir ist bekannt, dass sich die Unterstellung unter eine freie Lizenz nur auf das Urheberrecht bezieht und es mir daher unbenommen ist, aufgrund anderer Gesetze (Persönlichkeitsrecht, Markenrecht usw.) gegen Dritte vorzugehen, die das Bild im Rahmen der freien Lizenz rechtmäßig, auf Grund der anderen Gesetze aber unrechtmäßig nutzen.16.02.2007, Christian Drescher (TECTA OHG), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Marianne Brandt: The Woman Who Broke Into Metal

The metal workshop was considered one of the Bauhaus’s most prestigious and it was almost exclusively male. Marianne Brandt walked in anyway.

Initially met with resistance from her peers, she pushed through and eventually became the workshop’s acting director. Her output was remarkable: the Kandem bedside lamp, designed in collaboration with Hin Bredendieck, became one of the most commercially successful products the Bauhaus ever produced. Her ashtrays, tea sets, and light fixtures combined geometric form with usability, creating objects that felt inevitable, as if they couldn’t have been designed any other way.

Brandt understood that industrial design wasn’t about imposing aesthetics onto function. It was about finding the form that function had always implied. That discipline — rigorous, unsentimental, attentive — is exactly what separates enduring design from decoration.

Marianne Brand & Marianne Brandt's Ashtray (1924) | 1- Benita Martin, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons 2- Dedalo1972, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

The Ideas Outlasted the Erasure

The women of the Bauhaus were working within systems designed to minimize their contributions. Some were redirected, some were credited as collaborators when they were co-authors, and some were simply written out of the record.

But their ideas persisted, and their formal intelligence and understanding of how space, material, and human experience connect is woven into the foundations of modern design.

Great architecture has always come from those who pay close attention to how people actually inhabit space. Who treat every surface, every threshold, every material decision as meaningful, and refuse to separate beauty from use.

That’s Bauhaus value. And it’s one the women of the Bauhaus understood, perhaps more deeply than anyone.

The windows of Siza by Mário Martins

Otiima — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 11:00:00 +0000

In the latest edition of the OTIIMA Journal, architect Mário Martins invites us to look beyond the obvious and rediscover one of architecture’s most elemental features: the window. In his article “The Windows of Siza,” he reflects on the mastery of Álvaro Siza Vieira, whose work transforms openings into light and meaning.

Now available in full on the our blog, this text is a tribute and an exploration of how windows can transcend function to become instruments of architectural expression.

A great deal has already been said about windows and their role in architecture. What more could I add, except a few words about someone I consider one of the greatest creators of windows in architecture?

I would like to praise the mastery with which Siza Vieira draws, incorporates, and transforms the “window” into architecture, achieving this with an apparent naturalness, almost as if it were unplanned. However, I believe that each window takes shape and matures throughout the design process until it becomes an integral part of the built work. Siza has designed large and small windows—square, round, oval, triangular, elongated, horizontal, vertical, and expansive glass openings. Each one serves a purpose beyond merely conceptual reasons.

Serralves Museum | Álvaro Siza Vieira

The triangular window at Serralves adds a distinguished touch, contrasting with the seemingly irregular rhythm of the colonnades at the Portugal Pavilion or the small openings of the Chapel at Monte. The ventilated window, located near the ceiling and offering no view, filters the gentle morning light that fills the prayer space. In contrast, the narrow opening cut into the façade near the floor allows a sliver of light to enter in the late afternoon, pointing toward the altar. As this building lacks artificial lighting, the window takes on even greater importance, serving as a metaphorical connection to more ancestral architecture. Through his windows, Siza’s work encapsulates the entire history of architecture.

Souto de Moura, who openly admits to struggling with window design, though I don’t think that’s entirely true, has frequently praised Siza’s talent in this regard. Carlos Castanheira, coauthor of some of Siza’s projects and someone who knows him and his architecture well, often says: “Siza is a Renaissance man… a true humanist. There’s no one like him.” I would add, symbolically, that Siza is also the last of the Mohicans. A man of arts and knowledge, he is a creator who masterfully designs urban spaces, buildings, objects, and the experiences of people, always driven by the same dream—sculpting “things,” landscapes, and windows. Through the immateriality of the “window,” he reveals his talent as an architect and his dream of being a sculptor.

Boa Nova Tea House | Álavaro Siza Vieira | João Morgado, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Siza has windows that watch, windows that dream, and all of them inspire us to dream as well. Perhaps that’s why, in his own words, “windows are instruments for sculpting light.”

And Siza, as always—sharp, disarming, and deeply intelligent—declares: “Good architecture has no windows. Designing windows is very complicated.”

It’s almost as if he’s suggesting that this text may not make sense. And perhaps it doesn’t; it may fall short of fully conveying the depth and quality of Siza’s work. Carlos Castanheira is right: “There’s no one like Siza.” Least of all his windows. To conclude with the words of another great architect, Oscar Niemeyer: “A window is not just an opening, but a frame for time, light, and life.”

Written by Mário Martins Architect

About Mário Martins
Mário Martins is a Portuguese architect based in Lagos, Algarve. Known for his sensitive approach to place, he designs projects in dialogue with the landscape and Mediterranean culture. With award-winning works in Portugal and abroad, he is recognized as a prominent figure in contemporary Portuguese architecture.

OTIIMA expands its international partner network

Otiima — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Architecture happens through collaboration among engineers, architects, installers, and specialists who work with discipline.

We believe excellence is not scalable without rigor. For that reason, our international growth has never been based on volume. It has been based on alignment.

Today, we are opening applications to expand our global partner network.

A network built on high standards

OTIIMA systems are designed to disappear visually while performing at the highest technical level. Ultra-minimal sightlines, large spans, demanding climates, and complex customizations are the standard.

Delivering this level consistently across different markets requires shared vision and values.

Our partners are companies capable of representing OTIIMA’s philosophy locally, technically, commercially, and culturally.

This is a curated network.

Gulbenkian Modern Art Center | Kengo Kuma & Associates + OODA + VLDA | © Fernando Guerra

Across climates and cultures

Architecture is influenced by its context, including factors such as climate, regulations, construction culture, and aesthetic preferences, which differ from country to country. However, the performance of a building should remain consistent.

Our partner network spans multiple regions, all committed to delivering minimal architecture with precision and reliability, regardless of location. This consistency protects both the project and the brand.

A selective expansion

We are currently evaluating new markets and strengthening our presence in strategic regions worldwide.

Companies that believe their expertise, positioning, and operational standards align with OTIIMA are invited to submit a partnership application for review.

Every application is assessed individually, and selection is based on technical capability, strategic fit, and long-term vision.

Apply for a partnership

If your company is prepared to represent a global minimum standard of responsibility, we invite you to apply.

Explore the partnership criteria and submit your application here.

Smiljan Radić Clarke Wins the 2026 Pritzker Architecture Prize

Otiima — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 13:55:10 +0000

Smiljan Radić Clarke, the Santiago-based architect, has been named the 2026 Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, architecture’s highest international honor. Radić’s work is celebrated for its originality, sensitivity to context, and emotional resonance.

Radić approaches each project as a unique inquiry. He avoids a repetitive style, instead responding to the specific history, culture, and conditions of each site. His designs are deeply grounded in human experience, whether partially embedding buildings in the ground, orienting them to natural light and wind, or reimagining existing structures.

The 2026 Jury Citation highlights his focus on fragility, stating, “His buildings appear temporary or deliberately unfinished—almost on the point of disappearance—yet they provide structured, optimistic, and quietly joyful shelter.” Radić’s architecture encourages reflection and invites occupants to interact with light, materials, and space in intimate, thoughtful ways.

His projects range from private houses to cultural institutions, each marked by precise construction and careful material choices. At the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London (2014), the translucent fiberglass and the heavy local stone create a partial enclosure that filters light and connects visitors to the park. At Teatro Regional del Biobío in Concepción (2018), a semi-translucent envelope considers light and acoustics with prudence.

The House for the Poem of the Right Angle (Vilches, Chile, 2013) | Images: 1- © Cristobal Palma | 2- © Smiljan Radić | 3- © Gonzalo Puga | 4- © Smiljan Radić

Radić’s residential work also emphasizes the human scale and emotional experience. The House for the Poem of the Right Angle (Vilches, Chile, 2013) offers contemplative space through carefully oriented openings. Pequeño Edificio Burgués (Santiago, Chile, 2023) offers shelter and privacy while connecting to the city below, integrating weather and light into daily life.

Across more than three decades, Radić has worked in Chile and internationally, completing projects in the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, France, Switzerland, Austria, Albania, and Croatia. His practice spans cultural institutions, civic spaces, commercial buildings, private homes, and installations, with notable works including Chanchera House, Vik Millahue Winery, Prism House, and The Boy Hidden in a Fish.

Radić also founded Fundación de Arquitectura Frágil in Santiago, a platform for public exchange and experimentation, reflecting his commitment to ongoing inquiry and cultural dialogue.

As Alejandro Aravena, Chair of the 2026 Jury, notes, “He is capable of bringing us to the innermost core of the built environment and the human condition.” Radić’s work embodies an architecture that is empathetic and profoundly human—qualities that have earned him the Pritzker Prize.

Smiljan Radić Clarke is the 55th Laureate of the Pritzker Prize. He lives and works in Santiago, Chile, with upcoming projects in Albania, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

Architecture as a leading role in film

Otiima — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Architecture in film does more than provide a visual backdrop. In many cases, the design of spaces, like houses, cities, interiors, and structures, becomes a narrative driver. Spatial decisions reveal character, context, class, social dynamics, and even emotional states. This Oscars season, we highlight six films in which architecture is essential to the storytelling.

1. Sentimental Value | Joachim Trier

In Sentimental Value, a historic family home in Oslo is central to the story of memory, conflict, and legacy. The house itself functions almost like a character, holding the emotional weight of generations and unresolved family tensions. The architecture defines how the characters relate to one another and confront their shared past.

2. The Brutalist | Brady Corbet

The Brutalist centers on an architect’s life: his professional ideals, personal trauma, and reinvention in a new country. The film uses architecture as subject matter and a thematic lens. The design challenges faced by its protagonist reflect broader questions about identity, modernism, survival, and the role of architectural practice in transforming societies.

1. Heydar Aliyev Center – Zaha Hadid

3. Parasite | Bong Joon-Ho

In Parasite, architecture is fundamental to the film’s social critique. The narrative revolves around two contrasting homes: a semi‑basement apartment representing the working-class Kim family and an expansive modernist house for the wealthy Park family. The design of these spaces—their volumes, light access, levels, and circulation—visually communicates inequality and power dynamics. The Park house was specifically designed as a set to embody wealth, openness, and control, while the Kim home feels cramped and exposed.

4. I’m Still Here | Walter Moreira Salles Jr.

I’m Still Here (“Ainda Estou Aqui”), directed by Walter Salles, is a historical drama set in 1970s Rio de Janeiro. The film focuses on family life inside a middle‑class home during Brazil’s military dictatorship. While not a film about architecture per se, the design of everyday domestic spaces—the house, the living areas, and the interaction with the city beyond—reflects stability and normalcy before political upheaval. The house becomes a space where personal and public histories intersect.

5. In the Mood for Love | Wong Kar-Wai

Wong Kar‑wai’s In the Mood for Love uses interior spaces, including narrow hallways, partitioned apartments, patterned staircases, to emphasize emotional restraint and proximity. The repetitive geometric layouts and the tight framing of domestic spaces enhance the sense of longing and unspoken connection between the characters. Though subtle, the architecture structures the film’s emotional rhythm.

6. Dune | Denis Villeneuve

Dune presents architecture on an epic scale. Production designers and director Denis Villeneuve created physical environments and structures that reflect different cultural values and conditions on Arrakis. The built world draws on brutalism, ancient monumental forms, and minimalism, grounding the futuristic universe in a strong architectural identity. The architecture not only defines place but also anchors the narrative in cultural history and survival logic.

Architecture in film is not passive. It forms the story, sets the tone, and communicates important information about characters and their world. By looking closely at spaces, we see how design can become a storyteller.

Minimalist window solutions for cultural buildings

Otiima — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Cultural buildings are spaces designed to preserve, present, and promote collective knowledge and artistic expression. They include museums, art centers, exhibition pavilions, foundations, and institutions dedicated to research and education. They are public environments where architecture supports learning, dialogue, and experience.

Unlike purely commercial or residential projects, cultural typologies operate under strict technical and environmental requirements. They must protect artworks and archives, control natural and artificial light, ensure thermal and acoustic stability, and manage high visitor flows. At the same time, they carry strong symbolic value. Their architecture often represents institutional, national, or civic identity.

3 cultural buildings you must see

L’Institut des Civilisations

Jacques Moussafir Architectes

Located in Paris, L’Institut des Civilisations is a contemporary intervention within a historically sensitive context. The project has a prominent presence in the city, portrayed by its geometric lines and uniform materials.

Cultural institutions require controlled daylight and stable interior conditions. The large glazed areas must deliver high thermal performance and maintain the integrity of the structure.

For this project, OTIIMA developed minimal window solutions that maximize glass surfaces and reduce visible aluminum profiles. The goal was to preserve the architectural concept and ensure compliance with demanding performance standards.

This plan allowed the creation of a façade that supports the building’s identity without visual excess.

Expo Osaka Portugal Pavilion

Kengo Kuma & Associates

Designed for Expo Osaka, the Portugal Pavilion translates national identity into a contemporary architectural language. The concept emphasizes permeability, lightness, and openness to visitors.

World Expo pavilions present unique technical challenges. Tight construction timelines, strict regulations, and high visitor density demand coordination and reliable engineering solutions.

OTIIMA delivered high-performance minimal systems that meet international standards. The large openings are capable of ensuring stability, weather resistance, and durability in a high-traffic environment.

In temporary structures that have a long-term impact, accuracy is essential.

1. Heydar Aliyev Center – Zaha Hadid

Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian (CAM)

Kengo Kuma & Associates + OODA + VDLA

The renovation and expansion of the Gulbenkian Center of Modern Art revise the relationship between the building and its surrounding gardens.

The intervention introduces new connections between interior galleries and exterior landscape areas. This required extensive glazed surfaces capable of delivering thermal comfort, acoustic insulation, and security, which are essential features in museum environments.

The role of technology in cultural buildings

Cultural buildings demand technical solutions that work seamlessly without drawing attention. Every element of the façade and glazed opening must serve multiple purposes: bring in natural light, control temperature and acoustics, and ensure security and durability, without compromising the visitor experience or the architect’s vision.

This is where minimalist systems, like those developed by OTIIMA, make a real difference. Their engineering and aesthetics allow large façades to remain elegant and functional.

Projects such as L’Institut des Civilisations, the Portugal Pavilion at Expo Osaka, and the Gulbenkian Center of Modern Art demonstrate how technology and design can work together to create cultural spaces. These spaces perform technically, express identity, and keep the visitor experience at the center.