Chevalier Morales

Stephan Chevalier and Sergio Morales founded Chevalier Morales in 2005. The firm strives to create contemporary architecture that is sensible and responsible on many levels. Understanding the intrinsic qualities of materials, shades of lights, shapes and spaces that will affect the users’ experience, they are equally conscious of people’s needs, ideas and comfort as they may become users of Chevalier Morales buildings. Their work is not only environmentally responsible but also towards the community. Today’s environmental problems and challenges like energy waste, pollution, global warming and insufficiency of drinking water are all addressed in Chevalier Morales’ interventions, not only aesthetically or as a trend, but truly as an architect’s fundamental responsibility.

In this information era of abstract speeds, instantaneousness and globalisation, architectural trends are numerous and diversified. Western twentieth century values like multiplicity, exactitude, lightness, speed and precision, reminders for a new millennium1, are part of the Chevalier Morales vision where movement, territory and identity hold an important place. This set of values allows the architect to consider the building as an intervention that exceeds its own limitations and can influence territory, identity and community. Their inspiration stems in a broader reading of context, and therefore results in architecture that is a critical review of its own surroundings.

Generalists in a construction industry where specialization is common, the partners believe that their role as architects is very similar to one of a conductor; coordinating, leading and gathering people together around a common social project while making sure that, in the end, the product will be as rigorous, as coherent and as esthetically pleasing as was envisioned during the first stages of design. Today’s architecture, in current construction industry conditions, requires architects to think globally while always keeping the final product in mind.

1 Italo Calvino, Leçons américaines, 1989