Mário Martins was born in Lagos, Algarve – Portugal in 1964, and graduated in 1988 from the Architecture Faculty of Lisbon Technical University. He worked for about one year in the architectural practice of Manuel Graça Dias and Egas José Vieira, and occasionally with the architect João Luís Carrilho da Graça. At the end of 1988 he decided to return to Lagos, setting up Oblíqua Arquitectos with the architect Vítor Lourenço, with whom he developed many projects before the partnership ended in 2000.
Since then, through the company Mário Martins Atelier with Maria José Rio (his business partner and wife), he has continued to focus exclusively on architecture, assisted by his enormously dedicated and hard-working team.
With a contemporary style influenced by the place in which he mainly works – Algarve – his projects have undergone a natural process of evolving and maturing.