João Prates Ruivo is an architect and researcher, currently focused on the environmental transformations of Alentejo, Portugal.
João Prates Ruivo is an architect whose research focuses on the technical transformations of soils after the Second World War, specifically the relation between colonisation and irrigation. His PhD research project 'Soil Politics', at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, investigates the role of scientific soil surveys in the anti-colonial struggles in Angola and Guinea-Bissau, and the relation between counterinsurgency tactics and present-day environmental disputes in Alentejo, in the South of Portugal.
João studied architecture in Lisbon at Instituto Superior Técnico, where he was a student of Professor Manuel Vicente, and worked in Rotterdam with Theo Deutinger and at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (O.M.A.), from where he left to Athens to fund his own practice. In the UK, João has taught at the School of Architecture University of Liverpool, Syracuse University London, and at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths.