IMPORTANT INFO ABOUT meet-up address of this tour : Meet-up entrance of Campus
Brutalism Undercover – the Campus da Penha Walking Tour (1.5 hours) with with phd Francesca Vita and Special guest architect Pedro Calado.
Step into the world of Portuguese brutalism with a guided tour of Campus da Penha, one of Faro’s most unknonw architectural project. Designed in the 1970s as a new university hub, the campus showcases the bold lines and monumental presence of late modernist architecture, with raw concrete forms, dramatic perspectives, and open spaces created for collective life.
Led by a passionate guide, this 1.5-hour walk will reveal:
the story behind the campus and its architects,
the meaning and function of its brutalist structures,
how students and locals have inhabited and transformed these spaces over the decades.
Far from being austere, the brutalist language of Campus da Penha tells a story of ambition, community, and identity—an essential chapter in Faro’s modern architectural heritage.
Meet your guides:
Francesca Vita :
Francesca Vita is an interior designer and researcher. She graduated in Interior Design at the Politecnico di Milano (2010) and completed a PhD cum laude at the University of Porto (2023). Since 2016 she has taught Interior Design, first at ESAD in Matosinhos and currently at the University of Algarve. She also conducts research at the University Institute of Lisbon on colonial and post-colonial architecture, focusing on domestic space. Since 2023, she has collaborated with The Modernist, leading tours of Faro’s modernist architecture.
Pedro Calado
Pedro is an architect by education and associate professor at the School of Education of the University of Algarve (ESEC/UAlg), where he has been teaching since 1995 in the areas of Communication Design and Multimedia. He also lectured at the Master's Degree in Communication Design at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Lisbon (FAUL) and at the Bachelor's Degrees in Architecture and Design at ISMAT - Instituto Superior Manuel Teixeira Gomes. He graduated in Architecture from the Faculty of Architecture of the Technical University of Lisbon in 1987 and continued to practise professionally in this field until 2019. Specialist in the field of Audiovisuals and Media Production (2019). He has been director of ESEC since January 2025, having directed the Bachelor's Degree in Communication Design and the CTeSP in Multimedia Design and Technologies and Interior Design.
