Manuel Graça Dias was born in Lisbon in 1953. He started his career as an architect in Macau, working with Manuel Vicente from 1978 to 1981. Throughout his career, he served as an assistant at the Faculty of Architecture of the Technical University of Lisbon (1985-1996), an associate professor at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto (since 1997), and a visiting professor at the Department of Architecture of the Autonomous University of Lisbon (since 1998), where he also served as its director from 2000 to 2004.
In Lisbon, the city where he lived and worked, he founded the CONTEMPORÂNEA studio in 1990, together with Egas José Vieira. The house he restored in 1979 in Graça, Lisbon, in collaboration with António Marques Miguel, received the Valmôr Honorable Mention (1983). He also won first place in the competition for the construction of the new headquarters of A.A.P./Banhos de S. Paulo (currently, the Order of Architects) in Lisbon (1991), in collaboration with Egas José Vieira.
Graça Dias has authored numerous articles on architecture criticism and dissemination in specialized newspapers and magazines since 1978. He has also been invited to speak at a wide range of conferences, both in Portugal and abroad.
He is credited with authoring several books on architecture criticism and dissemination, including “30 exemplos/arquitectura portuguesa no virar do século XX” (2004), “Arte, arquitectura e Cidade: A propósito de ‘Lisboa Monumental’ de Fialho de Almeida” (2011), and “10×10 Pizza a pezzi/15×15 Incubadora de empresas” (with Egas José Vieira, 2011).
Manuel Graça Dias has completed projects in Almada, Braga, Chaves, Guimarães, Lisbon, Porto, Vila Real, Macau, Madrid, Seville, and Frankfurt, which have been featured in specialized press publications and exhibited in collective or solo exhibitions.
As a co-author of the controversial Urban Reconversion Study of the Lisnave Shipyard in Almada, he has worked in recent years with Egas José Vieira on projects such as the Museum of Aljube, Resistência
