The architects Aires Mateus won the Wienerberger Brick Award 2012, in the category for residential building, for their project Home for the Elderly in Alcácer do Sal, Portugal. The project is based on an attentive reading of the life of a very specific kind of community, a micro-society with its own rules. It is a program, somewhere in between a hotel and a hospital, that seeks to comprehend and reinterpret the combination social and private space, answering to the needs of a social life, and at the same time solitude. 

Independent units aggregate into a unique body, whose design is expressive and clear. Due to the reduced mobility of those who will live in the building, it has been decided  that any displacement should be an emotive and variable experience.