Frederico Zanelato (Ribeirão Preto, 1972) came to architecture by way of craft. As a child he learned drawing, painting and sculpture at the Casa da Cultura Cândido Portinari in his home town, and as a teenager he added theatre and advertising and architectural drawing at the Bauhaus school. That early training, closer to the workshop than to the classroom, helps explain a body of work that thinks through material and the hand before it thinks through the image.
He graduated in Architecture and Urbanism from the Universidade Braz Cubas in 1999, the same year he founded his studio, Frederico Zanelato Arquitetos, based in Mogi das Cruzes, in the state of São Paulo. He went on to complete the professional master’s programme at the Instituto de Pesquisas Tecnológicas do Estado de São Paulo (IPT), where he opened a line of research spanning sustainability, economics and contemporary design that continues to guide his practice. Between 2000 and 2005 he taught Architectural Design and Drawing at Braz Cubas, and he keeps his ties to the university through lectures and workshops at architecture schools across Brazil. Since 2014 he has also worked alongside Ar:Co Arquitetura Cooperativa.
The studio works across every scale of architecture and urbanism, guided by bioclimatic architecture as method, local materials as argument and natural ventilation as a way of engaging with the climate. This way of working has given rise to projects as different as the restoration of the historic Casarão do Chá in Mogi das Cruzes, Casa ER in southern Bahia, clad in a façade of handmade ceramics, and Casa MS in the São Paulo countryside. Nearly forty collaborators have been part of the team over more than twenty-five years.
From the outset, his career has run alongside the circuit of Brazilian awards and biennials. He was selected in several editions of the Prêmio Jovens Arquitetos, with an exhibition at the Museu da Casa Brasileira, took part in five editions of the São Paulo International Architecture Biennial and received a mention at the 6th Ibero-American Biennial (2007). In recent years he has been awarded third prize at the 5th Prêmio Saint-Gobain de Arquitetura Habitat Sustentável (2018), distinctions from AsBEA and first prize at the Premiação IAB 2021, the centenary edition of the Institute of Architects of Brazil in Bahia. That same year, the Korean Institute of Architects included his work in the Hidden Architects exhibition in Seoul. His relationship with competitions runs just as deep: from the Barcelona calls for housing in the historic centre (1995) and for the headquarters of the Fundació Mies van der Rohe (1998) to a school for Guinea-Bissau (2010) and the Campus Cabral in Curitiba (2012).
A career that began among pencils and clay in Ribeirão Preto and that still measures each project by its capacity to belong to its place.