Armando Ribeiro 

Founder O Apartamento Creative Agency

Armando Ribeiro usually doesn’t get into the office very early but he rises with the sun and starts replying to emails before 8 am. Not only is he a compulsive magazine buyer, but he also loves cinema and photography, meeting new people and sharing experiences and moments. These were each driving forces behind his decision to create the O Apartamento project in 2008. Armando originally studied museology and contemporary art, and he was a buyer for over ten years traveling the world to buy art, design and craft. Armando went on to establish the O Apartamento Creative Agency in 2014, a communications agency dedicated to hospitality, travel, food, wine, art, design, architecture and interior design that focuses heavily on the luxury segment. O Apartamento’s portfolio includes a huge number of unique and standout projects as well as institutional clients. Attributing due value to what is made and created in Portugal has become a growing trend, and inventive initiatives by local entrepreneurs have brought Portuguese products into the limelight.  

@oapartamento.ca

oapartamento.com

Alexandra Cadaval

Cultural Producer

With a degree in Cultural Industries and co-director of the World Sacred Spirit Festival, Alexandra boasts vast international experience in the arts and in artistic production, having worked with traditional and contemporary artist and with disadvantaged populations. Since gaining her degree in Cultural Industries from City, University of London, in 2005, Alexandra has been devoted to music and the arts. Working closely with renowned French artistic director Alain Weber, she has directed and organised music and cultural festivals, including Festival Évora Clássica, Festival Os Orientais, and Festival Évora Africa, all in Portugal; and the Sacred Spirit Festival, in India. Her experience working with cultural heritage alongside Alain Weber has helped her develop skills with a view to creating platforms for rural art forms and nurtured her passion for traditional cultures. Nowadays, having worked extensively in Africa, she has also developed a deep passion for African contemporary art, creating several international exhibitions and collaborating with artists such as Esther Mahlangu, which she will discuss further at the World Hope Forum Portugal.

@alexandracadaval_artprojects

alexandracadaval.com

Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance

Designer

A multidisciplinary French designer, Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance is well known for his sensitive attention to materials and details, as well as for the refinement of his organic forms. From his initial training as a sculptor, he has kept this innate aptitude for dialogue between space and object. The duality between artistic vision and meticulous rigour, nature and the city, functionality and emotion flows seamlessly through his projects, whether in interior architecture (the Sketch in London, the Air France lounges, the chalet La Transhumance, Montblanc) or in the design of furniture or objects (published by Ceccotti, Bernhardt Design, Ligne Roset, La Chance, Hermès, Saint-Louis, Revol, Steinway & Sons), but also tailor-made for private clients or cultural institutions such as the Villa Medici. His work has always flourished in collaboration and dialogue with craftsmen and craftswomen, and this approach takes on even more cultural and emotional depth today. In order to reconnect with nature and weave a sensitive link between man and his environment, he chose to move to Lisbon in 2017. From this immersion was born the Made In Situ project. Through its various chapters and encounters - to date the black ceramics of Tondela Barro Negro, the cork from the Algarve Burnt Cork, the Azulejos of Viuva Lamego, the bronze of Peniche and the beeswax candles of Fatima, Bronze & Beeswax as well as a French opus rooted in the ‘massifdes Maures’ Chêne & Liège. The latest addition is Caretos, the first collection where Made In Situ leaves the artisans express themselves freely by interpreting a stool inspired by the ‘Caretos’ festivities. Made In Situ explores, through the prism of the designer's eyes, a variety of territories, geological, artisanal, economic and cultural. A travel diary that can only be extended, in France or elsewhere. 

@madeinsitu

@noeduchaufourlawrance

Sam Baron

Designer & Consultant

Sam Baron loves to reinterpret traditional methods of construction, raising questions about the utility of today's material productions. He creates products, exhibitions and interior design projects, giving life to cross-over works that mix art and design. Sam is an independent designer and creative consultant for international companies such as Dior Maison, La Redoute, Vista Alegre and the iconic French art de vivre brand Diptyque. For a decade, he consulted as a design director for Fabrica, the international communication research centre based in Italy. In 2009 Baron received the "Grand Prix de la Creation de la Ville de Paris" in the design category, and in 2010, Philippe Starck selected him as one of the ten important designers of the next decade. Sam currently lives and works between France, where he was recently knighted him as a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, and Portugal, where he recently did a residency collaborating with Passa ao Futuro and the craftspeople Nuno Henriques and Sonia Henriques from Toino Abel.

@sam_baron

cargocollective.com/sambaron

Luis De Oliveira

Co-founder of De La Espada

Luis De Oliveira is the co-founder of De La Espada, a leading luxury furniture brand operating for over 30 years, whose solar-powered workshop near Mira, Portugal specialises in exquisite solid wood craft and masterful upholstery. De La Espada offers furniture that combines the expertise of their craftspeople and product engineers with the creative vision of some of the world’s best designers including Luca Nichetto, Neri&Hu, Ilse Crawford and Manuel Aires Mateus among others, as well as their in-house design studio.

us.delaespada.com

@delaespada

Rosa Pomar

Researcher and Artisian Designer

Rosa Pomar is a Portuguese researcher-artisan-designer with a background in medieval history. Raised between Lisbon and the countryside, she has been closely connected with artisans and artists since childhood. For over fifteen years, Rosa has devoted herself to Portuguese wool. Her work in textiles started as a personal calling to research, document and share Portugal’s wool-related heritage (through media such Lã em Tempo Real, her blog, and publications like her book on "Portuguese Knitting”). This evolved into a multifaceted project focused on designing and developing traceable sheep-to-skein yarn and manufactured goods from Portuguese native sheep breeds and bringing awareness to the imminent extinction of many of these unique animals and the cultures (both material and intangible) that depend on their existence. Rosa has made friends among shepherds, spinners, and weavers, learning about wool in context and from those who know it more intimately.

retrosaria.rosapomar.com

@retrosariarosapomar

Valentina Pilia & Emma Pucci

Interior Designers

Flores Design was founded by interior designer Valentina Pilia and architect Emma Pucci. Passionate about traditional crafts, uncommon textiles and the theatricality of a well-designed interior, they launched their studio in Lisbon, aptly located in the famed square Praça das Flores, to create incredibly tasteful textiles and gorgeous furniture pieces that are beautifully crafted by skilled artisans. Inspired by natural materials and their enticing textures, Emma and Valentina create objects and furniture that are raw yet sophisticated, and ultimately, timeless. A short film by Julia Bernard tracks their collaborations with textile artisans and will be screened as part of the World Hope Forum Portugal.

@flores_textilestudio

florestextilestudio.com

Bela Silva

Artist

Bela Silva is an artist who has exhibited extensively and produced numerous works for public and private collection in Europe and the United States. She has collaborated over the years in a variety of projects and partnerships with important international brands such as Hermès, Tiffany & Co, Serax, Viuva Lamego, Bordalo Pinheiro, Vista Alegre and Monoprix. In November 2021 she presented in Paris a hand-painted porcelain collection with the Florentine brand Ginori 1735. Bela’s travels are an inexhaustible source of inspiration that allow her to include local history, culture and nature in her creative approach. The artist values the connection between communities and identities, incorporating traditional elements into her works that she reinterprets in a contemporary way. In 2025, Bela will publish her monograph with Flammarion and have a solo museum exhibition at the Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon around the Sèvres collection of “Service Buffon”, inspired by Buffon’s 18th-century Encyclopaedia of the natural sciences.

@belasilvaartist
@spazionobilegallery
https://www.belasilva.com