Some Kind of Romance, Any Kind of Existence is a bifurcated journey through fifteen years of the architecture practice OODA, designed as a “dream state” inner dialogue between Some Kind of Romance and Any Kind of Existence: mirrored reflections of past and future projects that reflects the practice’s work and exploring path from Porto to the world. Read together, these two parts are less about buildings than about a way of being in the world, offering an open narrative where architecture is presented as if in a chronicle, a journal. In Albania, it traces a transformative engagement with urban regeneration and identity reconstruction in a context of rapid urban change. In Portugal, it explores continuity through both rehabilitation and new construction, treating time, heritage, and landscape as active materials. Together, these two dimensions reveal a practice shaped by persistence and risk, belonging and transformation, grounded in place yet open to reinvention.

At the heart of the book is a novel written four-handed by OODA and the writer Ana Castanho, which moves through the studio's works without really speaking of architecture, leaving it as a backdrop. Around it, in place of critical essays, are gathered letters from nearly thirty authors close to the studio, among them Manuel Aires Mateus, Álvaro Siza, Eduardo Souto de Moura, João Luís Carrilho da Graça, Manuel Aires Mateus, Carme Pigem, Kengo Kuma, Jeanne Gang and Benedetta Tagliabue.

Conversation

Following the presentation there will be a conversation in the same spirit as the texts: free, around the ways of seeing and making architecture. With the participation of João Luís Carrilho da Graça, Nuno Melo Sousa and Eduardo Souto de Moura, all authors of texts in the book, and OODA, Ana Castanho and João Castro.

Publication details

Publisher: OODA

Editorial direction: Diogo Brito

Project coordination: Marina RodriguesTexts: Ana Castanho

Contributions: Manuel Aires Mateus, Sofia Albrigo, Roberto Bannura, Pablo Bofill, Diogo Brito, Pedro Campos Costa, João Luís Carrilho da Graça, Sam Chermayeff, Thomas Coldefy, Julien De Smedt, Vladimir Djurovic, Jaime Font, Mikkel Frost, Jeanne Gang, Anton Garcia-Abril, Manuelle Gautrand, Steven Holl, João Jesus, Kengo Kuma, Flora Lee, Mark Lee, Francisco Lencastre, Nuno Melo Sousa, Chad Oppenheim, Carme Pigem, Julião Pinto Leite, Michel Rojkind, Álvaro Siza, Eduardo Souto de Moura, Benedetta Tagliabue, Amin Taha, Rita Topa, Rodrigo Vilas-Boas

Design: The Royal Studio

Hatje Cantz, June 2026. 476 pages, English edition