The entrepreneur who grew up in the world and democratizes architecture in Portugal
It was a step of courage that Mariana Morgado Pedroso did not have the path of a concept that does not – nor has a unique architecture – parallel in these parts: a kind of project by catalog, in which customers, individuals or companies, can choose step by step, detail a detail, as they intend to change and the financial extent that they can change, singular the cost and time of each process. But more than the courage that led to a professional who has already passed through the offices of an architecture that dares from this guarantee of stability and uses his experience to create something bold, what will most influence Mariana to embark on this adventure will probably find life in everything different of the majority.
Still, she passed through several countries in Europe – “my mother is a free spirit and I grew up in many places, I went through many schools and I was always an interested student with very good results”, she tells me, easily explaining the child that the intention to speak Italian, in college days and when there is a time of fashion, fruit of the English modality and more accessible to print, to be well understood. From his father, he says he inherited a taste for knowledge, but certainly his artistic streak comes from his mother, from his grandmother, who he remembers always seeing him making sculptures, from his mother, who still weaves macramés. The open mind to the world has been developed since those times of firming, in several opportunities from its roots, experiencing experiences and cultures, absorbing what I was seeing and finding. But his adventurous spirit shaped him differently from his parents – true children of the 70s -, preferring to settle here and build a life with his own dose of originality, but with his feet on the edge of the Portuguese sea that allows him the irreplaceable breakouts on the waves of the line.
In the new one in Paço d’Arcos, with a view of the ocean that brings the depth of the office of the look, he tells me how he had the courage to forge his own path from the decision to change the security of a proven home – So I was in Frederico Valsassina’s studio – for the future that I could shape in his own image. It was the job transition that gave me the impetus to do something I had seen in London and whose concept I found incredible. and with these 40 thousand euros (and then partner Alexandra Moura) I got to work.”
Getting to work means that Mariana took her will and power of sweat, to London and convinced the creators of Architect Your Home (AYH) to hand her the key to the project for implementation in the Iberian Peninsula. The year was 2012 and the creators of the concept didn’t even want to hear much about the presentation she will prepare: they recognized each other in the claw and “connected, connected naturally”, points she says.
The arts and waves in management
In that vote of confidence he received, his personality weighed heavily, acquired from life experience, the trip on a trip with his parents, but also after they settled a lot in the Algarve and Mariana had taken the leap to Lisbon, where she came to live with his parents his uncles – Saldanha Sanches and Maria José Morgado, from whom he keeps the affection and support received at every moment. As well as the added value of the degree she chose but to take at Técnico for being “innovative and tailored to someone who had a certain execution, which always, through the arts as well as through Mathematics”.
The wisdom he drinks in the sea also circumvents: he got used to reading it, to see from the beach if the waves are ready to be surfed, to identify the best one to catch without losing the notion of risks and opportunities. The sea, where Mariana bodyboards daily – in fact, “the whole family does something, from my mother to my daughters, including my husband; we have all kinds of boards at home”, she laughs -, is the best parallel it finds for business, for entrepreneurship. “A good manager is a good surfer.”
All in all, yesterday, everyday and tomorrow, can help to shed some light on Mariana’s “chance” being normally one step ahead of what is about to happen. Not only in the vision of bringing a revolutionary architectural concept to Portugal, but also in his early interest in rehabilitation.
Ever since she remembers being a people, Mariana remembers her passion for the arts, Mariana recognizes that perhaps she would have opted for one linked to management, because this ability to root, today, in all aspects of a project, to make choices and to refine the path the paths is something that enchants her – and this is also explained by that little vein of numbers. “Running a company is a challenge to love, to make it happen – at some point, to feel that either you will gain leadership skills or you would end up leaving”, she admits, simplifying the decision to leave the big studios. She had already been through two: in addition to Valsassina, o Risco, by Manuel Salgado, with reference to who started and says he has learned only one brutally, a reference to who in architecture and a person is extraordinarily suitable; It is enough to see that when she went to the Lisbon Chamber she removed the risk of any possibility of contracting with an autarchy, so there was no possibility of mixing waters “.
In her professional path, before joining AYH, Mariana still accumulated as classes she taught at Técnico, Architecture for future engineers, and the specialization in Rehabilitation, Restoration and Recovery of Architectural Heritage, in which she became interested when Portugal, in the aftermath Expo 98 is still not the same as the noblest possibility for its cities. With this added value, she would leave her name on projects such as the National Palace of Queluz and the Portuguese School of Equestrian Art, Picadeiro Henrique Calado.
But the len with which everything will be revealed in this len profession, with the will to go faster and faster. “The desire to do something began to grow, but I knew at school, no one would teach us to make proposals, to manage, to present plans for my financial side – and that I would need this thing in my side.” Objective practice, with no time to waste, it didn’t take long – once the connection to the studio was broken and AYH was on its way to materializing – to identify the path that best suits you. With a simplicity and objectivity that weave her character and the transparent smile that reveals her soul, she joined Sotheby’s to learn very well. that when she left to embrace her project at Sotheby’s she wanted to be her partner.
à la carte architecture
Between this and other important support – such as the Ordem dos Arquitetos or the Luso-British Chamber of Commerce -, the innovative concept of Architect Your Home was launched in Portugal, solidifying and growing sustainably until counting, nowadays, with a network of a dozen offices that contributes to an offer as diverse as it is rich. “What is absolutely different is that we are not a signature office with a fee proposal but an office with a menu of services and a network of architects and decorated to whom recurring clients, whether to change a room in the house. who can use what it is, how much design time, how much design time can use your choice e. , as things are normally all very complex and you don’t know very well where the costs are. Here it’s all very simple and transparent . It’s all very democratic”, sums up the architect.
A project can also be useful for a client’s entire body of knowledge as small as the number of jobs but available, to help only in the creative example. And with a collaborative spirit with the client that is not very common among architects. “When we are working on the spaces where people will live, we have to be open to what they want and need, what they value – and each time the experience is different; for example, there are those who choose to have the toilet separate from the rest of the house. of experience, this is normal in certain cultures”, simplifies Mariana. And then he adds: “There is nothing that decoration is a poor father of architecture. Making a decoration project for someone is winning a friend for life!”
But there is also space at AYH for corporate clients, construction companies, larger projects. B2b entered the firm’s universe only four years ago, but gained the backing – in addition to the growing weight of the rehabilitation area, what Mariana calls a “work of art” -, which led the company to create Invest, a kind of very special alloy to deliver large projects, clean construction and process optimization that deliver giants to Teixeira Duarte, with two projects already underway.
The path of the stones of an entrepreneur
“The walls of a country like ours, very masculine and still closed, it is difficult to build a woman (in construction, especially, like ours, difficult to build) – which is not the natural. and enterprising is a path of stones” , recognizes Mariana, explaining that the great power of the female gender lies more in the subtlety of influence. And vinca: “We don’t have to be the same, men and women are different, they have different characteristics and ways of being and working, they have career times. give women time to make their professional path and the person too”, says who flags for promoting leadership and entrepreneurship among women.
At 41 years old, with two daughters, Maria and Matilde, aged 7 and 12, Mariana Morgado Pedroso knows what she’s talking about. “There are times in my life, in my journey, when I don’t even remember how I did it, what I did, it’s a total blackout, such was the fatigue.” Those times when she was building the new company, she was a second-time mother—”I often took my daughter babies to meetings because she had to breastfeed,” she recalls. Not that she didn’t have support – her husband, also an artist but in photography, Ricardo Bravo (one of the most famous to record wave sports), “has always been amazing”, the family seen as “a work for two”, the tasks parts. But there are things where a mother is not replaceable. And if men and women are to be recognized and valued for the opportunity they are put on the table, yes, they have to be similar.
Today, with over 550 projects in hand and AYH’s turnover reaching 6 million euros, things are starting to get “easy” – even with bodyboarding, running, the gym and family in between. And Mariana Morgado Pedroso is not one to lean on what happened. Which explains that she has projects well for the coming times. “We’ve already consolidated the company here. It’s time to activate the license we have for the Spanish market. It’s time to expand”, he tells me, confessing his desire to lead the whole process of internationalization of the parent company. “I already do agriculture in several regions of the world, but I would like to take AYH much further. It’s an amazing trip!”