"I was the subprime," states André Albuquerque over dinner in a dimly lit late-night restaurant in Lisbon, Portugal, whose decor is a little too reminiscent of the 1970s. The 33-year-old architect is referring to the economic crisis in neighbouring Spain, and particularly the residential real-estate bubble that saw prices in the country rise 200 per cent from 1996 to 2007. For a good part of the early 2000s, Albuquerque worked in Madrid as part of a large-scale architecture studio, designing condos that would never be inhabited, vast expanses of concrete built upon fertile land in suburbs that would remain empty. By the time the crisis hit in 2008, the architect had become frustrated and disillusioned with the discipline, and was looking for alternatives. In 2012 he returned to Lisbon, his hometown, and co-founded Poligono (Polygon), an architecture firm that operates with a multifaceted, small-scale, self-build, politicised approach.
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