Portuguese architects Victor Palla (1922-2006) and Joaquim Bento d'Almeida (1918-1997) worked together for 25 years - a lifetime collaboration that resulted in a frantic production of more than 700 projects. Their non-committal cultural positioning, the quiet poetical dimension of their work, and the ease of their self-expression through architecture - made evident in the effortlessness of their architectural experimentation - stand as some of the qualities which make them a duo worthy of remark.

This book, the first English publication dedicated to Victor Palla and Bento d'Almeida, proposes to analyse a selection of their projects for housing and office buildings located in the core areas of Lisbon.

Six buildings designed and constructed between 1946 and 1973, the period of their joint office, are illustrated by survey drawings along with current and archival photographs. Pedro Bento d'Almeida's critical reading of these works aims to unveil the implicit design theory and approach to architecture of this duo, disclosing the professional strategies and cultural priorities which guided their production, at the same time articulating a contemporary argument on the appropriation of past architecture.