Jorge Ribeiro Ferreira Chaves was born on 22 February 1920, in
Ponta do Sol, municipal seat of
Ribeira Grande, on the island of
Santo Antão in
Portuguese Cape Verde. He was the son of Portuguese civil engineer and
inventor Raul Pires Ferreira Chaves and Elvira da Conceição Ribeiro Ferreira Chaves. His sister was
Maria Helena da Costa Dias. He was the nephew of
Maria Alexandrina Pires Ferreira Chaves, Olímpio Ferreira Chaves and
João Carlos Pires Ferreira Chaves and cousin of engineer
Maria Amélia Chaves. From 1931 he lived in
Lisbon.
Education He studied
architecture at the
Escola de Belas Artes de Lisboa (), having entered in 1935. In 1941, his degree program was interrupted because of military service during
World War II, has designated as the stage of "resistance" in
Portuguese architecture and
art. From 1944 to 1946, in the final years at university, he collaborated with architect Joaquim Ferreira. During this period, he also collaborated, occasionally, with architects Filipe Nobre de Figueiredo and Alberto Soeiro. In 1946 he set up his first office together with his graduation classmate Luís Coelho Borges. He was a member of
ICAT - Iniciativas Culturais Arte e Técnica () and also of the
Sociedade Nacional de Belas-Artes (). He participated in four sessions of the
EGAP Exposições Gerais de Artes Plásticas () by presenting architectural projects. In 1948, he participated in the
1º Congresso Nacional de Arquitectura (). : One of his "post - 48 Congress" projects was the Laboratorios Cannobio building, designed in 1948 and built in 1949. This was one of the first buildings to emerge in the Centre of
Lisbon displaying an architectural language clearly engaged with the
Modern Movement. : His project for the street corner of Rua Braancamp 7 with Rua Mouzinho da Silveira would also have been so, had it not been rejected for "aesthetic reasons”, by the
conservative Municipality of Lisbon. In parallel with project activity in his own office, he collaborated with the office of architect Miguel
Jacobetty Rosa, between 1948 and 1952, and did an
internship under the direction of architect Hernâni Gandra during 1951. and Sorel buildings, but especially the Hotel Ritz in Lisbon, "a remarkable work, for its aesthetic wisdom and excellence of material execution ". During architect Porfírio Pardal Monteiro illness and after his death in 1957, he ensured the continuity of the project of the hotel, by giving assistance to the construction and by heading the phase of execution in a special office built in the site, until its inauguration in 1959. During the 1960s, he developed a specific trait, recognizable in such works as the “Pastelaria Mexicana” in Lisbon or the “Hotel Garbe” and the “Hotel Baleeira” in the
Algarve and also in
housing in Olivais Sul, Rua da Penha de França and Rua da Ilha do Príncipe : At the end of the 1950s he produced the “remarkable work of
Caixa Geral de Depósitos bank in São Pedro do Sul, clearly influenced by the survey on
vernacular architecture in Portugal () that was carried out in the late 1950s. : "The Pastelaria Mexicana (a Lisbon cafe and snack-bar) is a highly remarkable example that led to the limits, in that period and in Portugal, the
expressionist trends created inside the
Modern Movement since the early 20th century" and that "developed a
phenomenological sense of architectural vision that reached a climax, deemed even exceptional, in the history of architecture in Portugal." : "Broken line profiles and non-straight angles, key elements of an international lineage
organicism rediscovered in the 1960s", are " brilliantly integrated in this perfect example of "total design"." The process of its classification as a
monument of public interest has been ongoing in
IGESPAR since 1996, after an intervention, in that same year, that changed significantly some parts of its architecture. It retains, however, part of the elements that motivated, in 1993, such a proposed classification. Several of his major works, such as the “Pastelaria Mexicana” (cafe), the “Palissi Galvani” shop and the Hotel Florida in Lisbon, the Hotel Garbe, the Hotel da Baleeira and the Hotel Globo in the Algarve or the Chamber of Commerce of Bissau in
Guinea-Bissau include conceptually integrated visual arts interventions, some created by himself. The visual artists Jorge Vieira, José Escada, Martins Correia, Paulo Guilherme d'Eça Leal, Sena da Silva, Hein Semke, Querubim Lapa, Mario Costa, António Alfredo and João Câmara Leme were invited to intervene in his works. In his career, he was accompanied in some of the listed projects, by the associated architects Luís Coelho Borges, Álvaro Valladas Petersen, Anselmo Fernandez Rodriguez, Eduardo Goulard Medeiros, Artur Pires Martins, Cândido Palma de Melo and also by Mario Xavier Antunes, Jorge Herédia, Frederico Sant'Ana and Vítor Sousa Figueiredo, who were internship members of his office and carried on collaborating with him. His work also developed on the wide
urban scale and he had an important role in the development of
industrial design in Portugal. For the equipment of his buildings and
interior designs, Jorge Ferreira Chaves always designed original
furniture or chose mainly Portuguese designed and manufactured fixtures and objects. From 1978 to 1981, he designed interventions in public buildings, as an Architect of the Ministry of Public Works (). He died in
Lisbon on August 22, 1981. == Buildings and projects ==