Maria Tavares (1970) is an Architect (1994) and an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Arts of the Lusíada University North. She is also a researcher at Atlas da Casa (housing architectural design and forms of dwelling) of the Center for studies in Architecture and Urbanism (CEAU, FAUP) and of the Center for Research in Territory, Architecture an Design (CITAD, UL). She completed a Mater's Degree in Housing Architecture from the Faculty of Architecture of the Technical University of Lisbon (FA-UTL, 2003) with the thesis "Federação de Caixas de Previdência - Habitações Económicas - A course in the history of housing architecture in Portugal". She completed a PhD in Architecture from the Faculty of Architecture of the Oporto University (FAUP, 2016) with the thesis "Habitações Económicas - Federação de Caixas de Previdência - Architecture and modes of action in the project exercise", under the supervision of Domingos Campelo Tavares and António Baptista Coelho. The research focuses on the study of subsidized residential architecture im Portugal, mainly in the second half of the twentieth century, and on the impact that is has had on the transformation of the national panorama. The research also includes understanding the architecture produced by and for the "Habitações Económicas - Federação de Caixas de Previdência" (HE) during its 26 years of activity as a federation of housing promotion, as well as the modes of action of its main actors in a poor country. Current research interests: architecture of housing; affordable housing; multifamily housing both in urban and rural context; public housing policies.