Buildings that pay
attention to light.
Kestrel is a nine-person architecture and interior studio in Lisbon, designing houses, pavilions and adaptive reuse projects for people who plan to stay a while.
Every commission starts on site, on foot, before a single line is drawn. We work in small teams so the architect you meet in the first conversation is the one who details the stair rail at the end.
- Founded
- 2011
- Completed projects
- 64
- Countries in build
- 3
Selected work
A short list from the last few years — houses, a winery, a public pavilion.
How a project moves through the studio
The sequence rarely changes, even when the brief does. It keeps a three-month cottage and a three-year public building honest to the same standard of attention.
-
01
Site & brief
We walk the site at two different times of day before we ask what you want to build there.
-
02
Concept
One direction, tested in section and model, not a set of options to choose between.
-
03
Documentation
Drawings detailed enough that the builder calls us less, not more, once work starts.
-
04
On site
An architect visits every week construction runs, until the last coat of paint is dry.
A studio kept deliberately small
Kestrel is nine people: five architects, two interior designers, one model-maker and one person who answers the phone before it rings twice. We take on nine to twelve projects a year — enough to stay busy, not enough to stop knowing every client's name.
Founded by Inês Aranha and Tomás Reyes in 2011, the studio still works out of a converted print shop in Lisbon's Marvila district, two rooms and a courtyard we redesigned four times before leaving it alone.
Meet the teamServices
Four ways we're usually brought in.
Residential architecture
New houses and extensions, from first sketch through to the final snag list on site.
Interior design
Joinery, lighting and material selection for spaces we've built and spaces we haven't.
Adaptive reuse
Old mills, warehouses and farm buildings, given a second working life without losing the first.
Master planning
Site strategy and phasing for clients building across several years and several buildings.
Tell us about the site.
Most first conversations are twenty minutes on the phone. Bring a site, a rough budget and a sense of how you want to live in it — we'll bring the questions.