Rodolfo R. Dias

Rodolfo Reis Dias is a registered architect in his native Portugal and has collaborated with award-winning practices in Lisbon and Madeira and more recently New York City and Los Angeles.

Dias's obsession in architecture is space, void, and mass as he first discovered it in the sculptures of Chillida. In 20 years of professional practice, he never abandoned his initial instinct to claim poetry from space. His contribution was critical in the formative early years of Aires Mateus, where he helped develop the vocabulary the firm still builds on today. The subsequent work on the design of Casa das Mudas for Paulo David allowed him to refine the language of mass and void by taking from the precedents of Madeira's landscape and vernacular structures.

Dias's work in New York City with Steven Holl consciously challenged the purity of his Portuguese architectural canon. The built work from his current collaboration with Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee adapts the themes of materiality and permanence into a more temporal volumetric script, so suitable for Los Angeles.

Classes (Selected)

• ARCH 4605/6605 Special Topics in Construction: The DetailThis course addresses pertinent issues relative to the subject of Construction. The instructor(s) of the course are drawn from the permanent and visiting faculty who may either broadly or narrowly define the course's scope and content. For precise content, please see the Architecture Department webpage.