Elisabete Saldanha

es1arq / Founder

Elisabete Saldanha was born in 1977 in Clermont Ferrand, France. In 1982 she returned to Portugal to her home town of Guimarães, where she lived and studied until the age of eighteen.

A graduate of Architecture from the University Lusíada, she started her professional career in 2001. Later, she increased her knowledge and perception of the business side of the industry, participating in a one year General Management Program at a Catholic University in Lisbon. In 2003 she created her own project, es1arq, where she since has developed architectural projects of various typologies, nationally as well as internationally.

Of these, the rehabilitation work of Guimarães House stands out, awarded by Archdaily as the best building of the year in the rehabilitation category in 2016.

In parallel to this activity, for more than a decade, Elisabete Saldanha has been integrating the architectural projects and technical support teams of one of the largest global companies in the construction sector, exposing her to cultures and markets like South America and Africa, specially in Angola, where she lived for over a year.

From 2005 to the present, collaborating pro-bono with the Portuguese branch of the Humanitarian Association Habitat for Humanity,  she has taken an executive role in the Building Committee and developed projects for execution.