Eduardo Benamor Duarte
Eduardo Benamor Duarte (b. 1975) is a member of OA Portuguese Architects Association / Ordem dos Arquitectos. In 2009 he founded his studio, Benamor Duarte Architecture, focused on design of objects and spatial environments at large. Recent architecture, design and installation commissions include group exhibitions at the Cite de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, Institut Francais d’Architecture in Paris, Salone Satellite - Milan Furniture Fair, Temporary Museum for New Design, and Made Expo in Milan; Wanted Design NY and Soho Digital Art Gallery in NY; Bienniale Design in Saint Etienne and Experimenta Design in Lisbon.
Over the years Duarte’s work has been published in a number of international magazines, books and newspapers such as Abitare, AD France, Domus Magazine, Elle Décor, Interni, Ecologik, Frame, La Repubblica, Expresso, Vogue Italia, and the publishing houses Gestalten and Links Books. His work has won awards from several institutions in Portugal and the US, including the Ministério da Cultura - Direcção Geral das Artes, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and RISD.
Academic areas of interest
Duarte’s research is deeply characterized by a longstanding obsession with the duality between abstraction and preexistence as a form of cultural inquiry. His current research and practice identify reflexive systems that foster the transformation of our living environments based on the adaptation of a geometrical abstract apparatus in dialogue with a preexisting material condition or a pre-figuration of a thought as a spatial typology. Recent projects engage form in programs that range from installations for public spaces to ceramic building blocks to home furniture and landscapes determined by infrastructural systems for renewable energies. His work explores form in many versions and always in its most abstract content, from generating a new environment to repeating a limited number of abstract procedures in a systematic mode to testing the capacity of a flexible configuration to be adaptable in any location and modeling the material behavior of a spatial component driven by user interaction.
Courses
Fall 2024 Courses
INTAR 2374-01
HUMAN FACTORS
SECTION DESCRIPTION
The psychology of the client/user influences the design of the environment and the practice of interior architecture. This course will explore issues of anthropometrics (the study of the characteristics of the human body), ergonomics (the application of anthropometric data to design), and proxemics (the study of the effect of cultural/psychological factors on design). During the semester the student will gather facts about the interaction of the environment and a user's culture, gender, stage of life cycle, and physical characteristics. These ideas will be implemented in the design and construction of an object.
Major Requirement | BFA Interior Studies
Spring 2025 Courses
INTAR 2383-01
FINAL STUDIO PROJECT SEMINAR
SECTION DESCRIPTION
Building on the final advanced studio in the undergraduate program, the seminar engages the graduating senior with research and design studies that expand the focus of the final studio. This will involve reading, group discussions, topical studies, concept development and the crafting of an artist's statement - all in service of understanding the design intervention and its relationship to the context of its host structure. The course will culminate in a group project: the design and installation of the Senior Show as a demonstration of a design intervention within an existing structure.
Major Requirement | BFA Interior Studies