Confraria dos Confrades Confabulados

Penacova, PRT, 2025

A ceremonial cabinet of curiosities celebrating Portugal’s gastronomic heritage. Nine chambers each house a sculptural figure — a contemporary interpretation of the Grand Master of a selected Confraria Gastronómica, gathered as if mid-conspiracy.

The wooden reliquary is clad in undulating cork, a soft rolled texture opening an immediate tactile dialogue with object, city, and viewer; within each cubby, the cork shifts in response to the figure it guards. Shrine and stage at once.

Client: Festival de Arquitetura, Design e Artes, Aderiva
Location: Penacova, Portugal
Program: Exhibition installation
Area: 30 SF
Status: Completed, July 2025
Services: Architectural, fabrication, assembly

Assembly Loop Lab (Scott Sorenson and Richard Sarrach), with cork from Amorim

About

SOAP is Sorenson Office and Partners. At its core is a hands-on studio; around it, partners who change with each project: fabricators, artists, engineers, brands, friends, whoever the work needs.

We design spaces and the things that go in them: houses, interiors, shops, restaurants, exhibitions, installations, furniture, objects, and the occasional identity. Often we build them too, in-house or on site. We like odd-shaped problems, budgets that make us inventive, and details that reward a second look.

So far that has taken us to New York, Las Vegas, Melbourne, Seoul, and a small town in Portugal.

The SOAP studio: a long worktable with lamps and samples, shelves of boxed archives and models above

A cellular plywood piece with red curved panels being assembled on the floor

Eureka! under construction: a curved timber frame beside a pale brick wall

Confraria dos Confrades Confabulados

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