Architecture / Prefabrication / Design for Disassembly (DfD)

Samuel Gonçalves — Founder, SUMMARY

At FABER Forum 2025, Samuel Gonçalves presented a compelling vision of how architecture can evolve to meet the challenges of speed, sustainability, and circularity in contemporary cities.

As the founder of SUMMARY, a Portugal-based architecture studio, Gonçalves has built an international reputation for pushing the boundaries of prefabrication, modular construction, and Design for Disassembly (DfD). His work focuses on simplifying and accelerating building processes through industrialised construction methods that rethink how materials, systems, and components come together — and how they can be taken apart, reused, or reimagined.

Drawing on projects ranging from installations at the Venice Architecture Biennale and digital exhibitions to large-scale urban developments, he demonstrated how off-site production can dramatically reduce environmental impact, limit construction waste, and create safer, more efficient working conditions.

Throughout the lecture, Gonçalves emphasised that modularity and standardisation are not restrictions, but powerful design tools. When combined with DfD principles, they enable buildings to become flexible structures — capable of adapting over time, extending their lifecycle, and supporting truly circular construction practices.

His talk offered a pragmatic yet experimental blueprint for how cities can adopt faster, smarter, and more ecological construction models — without sacrificing architectural quality or social responsibility.