Tania Urvois

B. 1974, Madrid, Espanha.

Tania Urvois (B. 1974, Madrid, Spain), architect (MArch US 2002, DPLG FR 2007) lives and works in the greater Lisbon area since 2019. During her architectural studies, her practice included painting, drawing, sculptures and installations. After pursuing an architectural career in the US, Spain and France since 1993, she turned to rehabilitating old buildings in the greater Lisbon area in 2018 and resumed art practice in 2019 by joining the Mart academy’s painting and drawing course in Lisbon, taught by Paulo Brighenti and André Almeida.

From 2004 to 2019, the Studio Urvois in France worked from interior to urban scales in a variety of uses in rehabilitation and new build architecture. Tania Urvois favors cross-disciplinary partnerships striving for environmental performance (PASSIV HAUS …) with a variety of construction types, preferably bio-sourced and re-used ( wood framing, CLT, cellulose, hemp and lime insulation, recycled wood materials …) She is interested in traditional methods of construction such as rammed earth, adobe, taipa and has a fascination for ruins …

Tania Urvois taught in the design department of EENSAB art school in Brest, France (2010-2015) where she oriented her approach to interdisciplinary open-sourced collaborations between artists, designers and engineers with environmental and social sustainability goals in mind, actively participating in the development of the local Fab-Lab community.

Topics of interest are ecological cycles and networks, notions of succession, symbiosis, entropy, plant intelligence and their applications in bio-mimicry, urban ecology, permaculture, edible gardens, rewilding, fungal and plant based land-remediation; interdisciplinary practices such as technological-transfers and Fab-Lab collaborations; first-culture mythologies and cosmologies such as the Australian Aborigine Dream time; the workings of our inner lives: the subconscious, emotions, memories, sensations and their evolution along with our mental constructs and those eureka! moments of insight.
At Rama, I propose to investigate the latter topic through painting and other media.