Architects Susana Vázquez Pérez and Ignacio Reigada Cordido found Sinaldaba in A Coruña in August 2010, after completing their training together at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de A Coruña (ETSAC-UDC), where they study architecture, complete a master’s degree and a doctorate, and add work and collaboration with other studios. Reigada also takes part in several editions of the arquia/próxima festival run by the Fundación Arquia with projects such as the renovation of an attic on Calle San Andrés in A Coruña or a student residence and sports centre in Riga: the kind of exercise, between built work and competition entries, that marks the start of a trajectory that soon finds its own form.
That own form is defined by its size. Sinaldaba remains, by choice, a small studio. “We are a small studio, with an almost artisanal way of working,” its founders explain, and it is this scale that allows them to devote to each commission the time and the thoroughness it demands. There is no method that repeats itself from project to project: there is a way of looking, attentive to context, that understands that each place and each client are different and that, therefore, each response must be different too. Hence a contemporary and sustainable architecture, but one loaded with identity, tradition and reflection, that runs through design, urban planning, new construction and, above all, rehabilitation and intervention in heritage.
It is in rehabilitation that the studio finds its truest ground. From small apartments in the historic centre of A Coruña to entire buildings in Vigo, Sinaldaba designs from a respect for what already exists, restoring and recovering rather than replacing, adding new layers that coexist with the old ones like strata of a single work. That same care carries over into the design of hospitality spaces such as the Noa Boutique Hotel, one of the most beautiful hotels in A Coruña, in the Santa Cruz neighbourhood, endowed with great warmth thanks to the exquisite use of wood as its great protagonist.
Recognition has come alongside that body of work: the COAG XX award for interior design and selection in the rehabilitation category, the APROIN 2021 rehabilitation award, finalist in the Xunta de Galicia 2023 rehabilitation awards and the World Luxury Hotel Awards 2022, as well as wins in competitions such as the one for the CIDEA headquarters and, more recently, the rehabilitation of San Andrés 88 for the IGVS. Media from different countries have published their work, and the studio has taken part in various exhibitions.
Their most recent project, Casa Cecebre, sums up the criterion that runs through their entire body of work. Vázquez and Reigada develop the principles of Galician architecture –compactness of volumes, protection against the climate, precise siting, a balanced relationship with the surroundings– without reproducing its traditional forms.