Miguel (Jos?) Nogueira
( fl 1913-91). Portuguese architect. He studied architecture under Jos? Lu?s Monteiro at the Escola de Belas Artes, Lisbon, and then, in common with many other Portuguese artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, he went on a state scholarship to Paris, where he studied in the ateliers of Jean-Louis Pascal and the Chifflot brothers. On his return to Lisbon he almost immediately won the Valm?r Prize (1913), an award usually given to eclectic architecture in the Portuguese capital. Nogueira's prize-winning building occupies a large site at 23 Avenida da Rep?blica, Lisbon, then a new and wealthy area of the city, and is characterized by the treatment of its mass, which is moulded in an organic form clearly deriving from Art Nouveau. Although Art Nouveau motifs had already been used decoratively, this was the first fully structural example of the style in Lisbon. It reflected the architect's interest in developments in Belgium and Germany that were less committed to the ornamental aesthetic of Art Nouveau than French buildings, which were copied almost to the exclusion of others by most Portuguese architects and designers. Nogueira then built some family houses and small residential blocks in the Avenidas Novas area of the capital, for example 2-6 Avenida Luis Bivar (1914), which followed the more orthodox style of Lisbon's architecture but with innovative decoration. He also designed the imposing headquarters of the Banco de Fomento Nacional (1919), Rua de Concei?ao, on an old site in the Pombaline area of the city, whose fa?ades incorporate highly decorative patterns derived from French work. His last known work in Lisbon, again an inventive plan on a difficult site in the Lapa district, is the Edificio da Casa dos A?ores (1921), 21 Rua dos Navegantes, the only example in the city of the innovative trends associated with Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Nothing is known of Nogueira's career thereafter, but his recognized achievements merit him a significant place in the history of Lisbon's early 20th-century architecture.
See the Abbreviations for further details.
