A Capsule as a House

fala is an architecture practice based in Porto, Portugal. Founded in 2013, and led by Filipe Magalhães, Ana Luisa Soares, Ahmed Belkhodja, and Lera Samovich, fala has lectured worldwide at different universities and institutions, including the AA, RIBA, and Barbican in London, the GSAPP in New York, the Graham Foundation in Chicago, Rice University in Houston, the Bozar in Brussels, and Casa dell'Architettura in Rome. Besides its current teaching positions in Paris, Geneva, and Lisbon, fala has taught at the faculties of architecture in Toronto, Milano, Venice, Munich, and London, among others. The atelier’s work has been exhibited at the architecture biennials in Venice and Chicago, the Serralves Foundation and the Pavillon de l’Arsenal in Paris, with single exhibitions in Germany, Italy, France, and Portugal. fala's work has been widely published in digital and printed media, including Domus, L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui, Arquitectura Viva, bauwelt and the Architectural Review, while 2G dedicated to fala its monographic issue #80. Among other honors, fala was selected as one of the 50 most relevant offices in the world by Domus magazine in 2020 and was awarded the spotlight award by Rice University the same year.

Noritaka Minami is a visual artist based in Chicago. Minami uses photography to examine spaces that exist as anachronisms in the landscape and are overlooked for their significances in understanding contemporary society. He received a BA in Art Practice from the University of California, Berkeley and an MFA in Studio Art from the University of California, Irvine. He is a recipient of grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Illinois Arts Council Agency, Santo Foundation, and Center for Cultural Innovation. Minami’s works are held in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, UCLA Architecture and Urban Design, Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, and Center for Photography at Woodstock. In 2015, Kehrer Verlag published his monograph titled 1972 – Nakagin Capsule Tower, which received the 2015 Architectural Book Award from the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt, Germany. In 2022, he was commissioned by the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University to document the architectural works of John Andrews for its forthcoming publication Architect of Uncommon Sense. He is currently an Associate Professor of Fine Arts at Loyola University Chicago. He has also taught photography at Harvard University, Wellesley College, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, UC Berkeley, and UC Irvine.