Rui Aristides is an architect and historian of architecture and spatial planning. Since 2017 he holds a PhD by the University of Coimbra and an advanced studies course by the Departament of Architecture and Centre for Social Studies of the same university. With the title "From the organization of space to the organization of society" the PhD develops a social history of modern Portuguese architecture, elaborating on the key connections between political discourses, government practices and architectural production. This line of research has occupied most of his career as researcher, starting in 2006 with a master thesis on the social role of architecture in a new museum geography in Norway. In 2007 he received a scholarship from the Norwegian Ministry of Culture and published on the topic. He has been expanding this line of research on architecture through informal (independent editorial work) and formal regimes of research. He was an invited researcher at the Colllege of Environmental Design of the University of Berkeley in 2014 and recently (2018) was awarded the Jeffrey Cook Award for best paper from the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments. He has been practising architecture since 2003, working in several offices, as well as developing independent work, particularly connected with NGOs (Alizeta-onlus) and art and design collectives (Til). For the last years, he as been teaching as an invited Assistant Professor at the Department of Architecture of the University of Coimbra, responsible for the courses of Design, Architecture History and Master Seminar. He is currently developing a post-doctoral research at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra, centered on the role of colonial formations in the production of a modern spatial experience in Portugal and Africa.