Designed by the architect José Sommer-Ribeiro, the pavilion was financed by the Fondation Calouste-Gulbenkian. José Henrique de Azeredo-Perdigao, the president of the Fondation Calouste-Gulbenkian, has pledged to finance the construction of a building at the Cité internationale. He wanted to offer Portuguese students and researchers good living conditions and to reinforce the actions taken by the Fondation concerning its scholarship policy.
The house was inaugurated in 1967 under the name Maison des Etudiants Portugais. Since 1974 it has borne the name André de Gouveia, a Portuguese humanist from the 16th century, founder of the College of Arts in Coimbra and chancellor of the Université de Paris in 1533.
In 2013, it became the “Maison du Portugal-André de Gouveia”.
The Maison du Portugal-André de Gouveia is managed by the Fondation nationale Cité internationale universitaire de Paris and Paris and has a board of directors that is chaired by the Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian.
The building is comprised of two sections based on the ground floor and a communal garden. The straight bar-shaped silhouette reflects the functional and minimal aesthetic that dominate the architectural production in the second half of the 20th century. The paving that wraps around the building mimics, in basalt cobblestones, the calçadas motive that characterises the emblematic pavements of Portugal.
In 2003, the architects Vincent Parreira and Antonio Virga were charged with the restoration of the building.
In 2007, the house reopened its doors, offering an increased capacity and comfortable rooms. Since then the house has had 159 rooms.
In 2016, thanks to numerous benefactors, the house could restore its cultural spaces: the Vieira da Silva library (200 m2) and the Fernando Pessoa multipurpose room (220 m2). They were inaugurated in the presence of the Portuguese prime minister, António Costa.
In 2003, the architects Vincent Parreira and Antonio Virga were charged with the restoration of the building: improving comfort, upgrading the equipment, painting the façades grey, expanding the entrance hall thanks to the creation of a large glass roof and perforated aluminium mashrabiya on the lower part. The rooms, fitted with new furniture, were given new sanitary facilities. In the resized communal kitchens, the architects declined the same range of furnishings.
In 2020, the Maison du Portugal-André de Gouveia hosted the Gulbenkian Library, a university research library.
It includes 55,000 documents of various types and media (monographs, periodicals, multimedia documents), the daily press in digital format, a special collection of old books and magazines, and a digital collection of all the events held at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Paris.
It is specialised in human and social sciences on Portuguese-speaking countries (Portugal, Brazil, Portuguese-speaking Africa and the Portuguese-speaking East). This ambitious project aims to support the research, teaching and promotion of the Portuguese language and to contribute to its influence in France. The fund will be aimed primarily at researchers at Master 1 level and above but will also be available to non-resident researchers and students. In addition, the collection will be indexed in the SUDOC and the PORBASE – an online union catalogue of Portuguese libraries, making it possible to search by subject and author.
Jorge Chaminé, an opera baritone and professor of music, is the laureate of numerous awards and international distinctions. In 1993 he received the Unesco Human Rights Award for his work helping abandoned children around the world.