The Leaders
Ines Valdés-Okafor
Architect & Materials Scientist
Lisbon, Portugal
A building should be able to heal a crack the way skin does. We are closer to that than people think.
Ines trained as an architect in Porto and spent six years designing conventional towers before a residency at a materials lab changed the direction of her work. She now runs a twelve-person practice that grows structural panels from fungal networks and agricultural waste.
Her pavilions have been exhibited in Lisbon, Rotterdam and Seoul, and her peer-reviewed work on self-healing lime mortars is used by restoration teams across southern Europe.
