About us
PROMONTORIO is a full-service design firm founded by Paulo Martins Barata, João Luís Ferreira, Paulo Perloiro, Pedro Appleton and João Perloiro, that began 20 years ago in Lisbon as an experimental studio, and grew into a practice of over sixty architects, urban planners, landscape architects, interior, product and graphic designers.
Our process springs from a dynamic and focused design culture that fosters collaboration above all. This cohesive and interactive structure enables us to deal with large and complex projects both in terms of design and programme. PROMONTORIO has accomplished a wide range of buildings from schools, museums and cultural institutions, to housing, offices, hotels and retail.
We have offices in Lisbon and Madrid and partnerships in Algeria, Angola, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cape Verde, Dubai, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Russia, Switzerland, usa, uk and Vietnam. However, rather than geographically, we are organized in practice teams, ensuring that each project benefits from the retail expertise of our most talented people.
In addition to our international partnerships, we have develop strategic associations with consultants from an array of expertise that includes: Acoustics, Environmental Analysis, Infrastructure & it Systems, Life Support Systems (for live exhibits), Lighting Design, m&e, Multimedia, Quantity Surveying & Cost Management, Structural, Sustainability (for both buildings and infrastructure), Transport and Traffic, all of which come together to provide a solid hands-on experience and offer an integrated perspective.
The firm’s work has been widely published in professional magazines and other such a10, Area, Architectural Review, Architecti, Arqa, Arquitectura Viva, a+t, av, c3, Detail, 2g, Domus, Expresso, Prototypo, Público, ja, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, Lotus, Techniques & Architecture and The Plan. Our work has received numerous international awards and has been presented in conferences and lectures in Austria, Brazil, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Portugal, uk and usa. It was exhibited, among others, in the 9th Venice Architecture Biennial, in La Triennale di Milano, in Arc en Rêve (Bordeaux), in Cornell University (Ithaca), and more recently in Aedes Gallery (Berlin).
Our mission
The mission of PROMONTORIO is determined by a focus on design excellence —principles and values that inspire every project, regardless of scale or size. This explains why no detail is too small and why at different levels, the same amount of care and attention will be granted to a functional layout, a façade composition, a door detail or a piece of furniture. For us, design excellence is not so much regarded as a quality/ cost issue, but as a wise and creative allocation of resources within our clients’ budgets and schedule objectives. To ensure this, the partners, together with the team, are involved in the design and supervision of each project, from the initial stages of planning, through construction and post-construction.
More than just buildings, we have the experience and the know-how to deliver well-designed places beyond the functional needs, developing long-lasting, meaningful relationships that help companies manage their property portfolios. From master planning and architecture, to interior design and branding, our comprehensive approach ensures a stronger, better-coordinated product, offering holistic solutions to each design challenge.
Retail expertise
Working hand-in-hand with international retailers, constantly exploring new trends in shopping and leisure worldwide is a stimulating and challenging experience. In that regard, the track record of PROMONTORIO retail consistently demonstrates the ability to work successfully across borders and cultures, delivering comprehensive services at locations around the world.
Since 1988, we have been designing retail-based projects, involving shopping centres, main street and mixed-use schemes, outlet centres, hypermarkets and superstores, retail parks and leisure destinations, sometimes in stand-alone/ big-box operations, other times in combinations of multi-purpose programmes. We now boast an accomplished portfolio of more than 2,000,000 sq.-m of high-yield retail space, having amassed numerous design awards including icsc, mipim, mapic and Real Estate Oscars, which granted us international recognition as a leading retail design firm. PROMONTORIO retail provides a wide scope of design services, from preliminary site planning and due diligence research, to tenant coordination and construction management.
Strategic designers
Shopping has never been more competitive. New and repositioned centres, as well as resurging main streets, are mounting strong and sometimes lethal challenges to the aging stock of traditional centres. Some older centres are hanging on by following the traditional formulas for success, but they will need new strategies —either co-opting the discount stores to compete on price, or providing heightened shopping experiences to compete on lifestyle. The unfolding of this scenario poses great challenges. The speed of change in this market, involving new approaches to retail space, retail technologies and marketing strategies, requires an increasingly flexible and innovative approach to the design and planning of what we call “the shopping experience”.
PROMONTORIO Retail offers strategies and creates opportunities for the rebirth of the traditional shopping centres and their communities as well as for the implementation of new retail areas, combining worldly experience with knowledge of the latest developments in retail, leisure and entertainment design, creating truly stimulating and rewarding environments.