Ana Luisa Soares is a Portuguese architect, a studio critic at HEAD – Genève, and the co-founder of FALA Atelier, a Porto-based architecture office that advocates for a resolutely optimistic approach to architecture. FALA Atelier has received recognition through numerous prizes, publications, and exhibitions in Portugal and internationally.
Soares graduated from FAUP in 2014 (Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto) and participated in an exchange program at Tokyo University in 2013. Before establishing her practice, she collaborated with international offices, such as Harry Gugger Studio in Basel and Toyo Ito & Associates in Tokyo.
In 2014, she founded FALA Atelier in Porto with Ahmed Belkhodja and Filipe Magalhães. In 2020, FALA received the Spotlight Award at Rice University in Houston, and Domus magazine ranked FALA among the fifty best architectural firms in the world. FALA’s work has been exhibited in international venues and institutions, including the Portuguese Pavilion of the Venice Biennale, the Chicago Biennale of Architecture, and in a solo exhibition at Casa da Cerca in Lisbon. Recently, the magazines 2G/Walther Koenig and A+U have published extensive monographs on the atelier’s work.
Since 2014, she has been lecturing and teaching around the world, in diverse locations such as London, Paris, Berlin, Milan, Venice, New York, Chicago, and Sydney, among many others. In 2015/2016, she was a guest professor at Bratislava’s Faculty of Architecture, and in 2018, she served as a visiting professor at TU Munich and Munster FA.
