This work has only been possible due to a series of encounters and divergences.

I – The first encounter did and does inspire the whole space-time dimension, from 1996 until sometime in the future. It is where the Programme and the Place come together; the Programme centred on a Public Library and the rehabilitation of a House in a Park in Sintra.

II – This one was and is the encounter between Topography and Landscape; this close relationship has been measured in terms of the just scale between closeness and remoteness.

II – This is the encounter between Fullness and Emptiness, between what exists and what existed, between what is added and what is removed. IV – This fourth encounter is the one between Unity and Fragment, the whole and a part, the idea and the detail. V – From the beginning of any design or work, the inhabiting spirit is in the encounter between the Inside and the Outside, the edge and the frontier, light and shade.

VI – Because Architecture is the art of construction, or "Baukunst", the encounter between the Design and its Tectonics is always a challenging test to the ideas of architects. VII –Being an encounter between the Culture of the North, of forests and Romanticism and the Culture of the Mediterranean, of stone and Classicism, in a contemporary re-reading, this last one fed the others.