Born in Miranda do Douro, he grew up between the river, rurality and the big summer holidays in Spain with his parents. At the age of 15 he knew he wanted to follow architecture, moved to Porto to study the trade and it was during the academic career that he met Alberto Neves. “He was my construction teacher and the same generation as Siza Vieira. I remember that I cared a lot about the details of window frames and carpentry, I completely became this obsession with details”, he says. An obsession that years later led to the unlikely universe of candy. Not without changing his life several times.
Paulo Horta worked with his tutor for four years and later went through other renowned architectural offices of the city until 1993 when he opened his own studio, at a time when his minutia was already in sight. “Everything had to be right, from the tap to the tile,” he says. Organized and highly perfectionist he began to suffer from this method of work and gradually ceased to take pleasure in doing architecture.
The intention was to devote himself to design and interior styling, but life changed his turns and he eventually enrolled in a cooking course at the School of Hospitality and Tourism of Porto. “One day when cutting vegetables for a soup I realized that it relaxed me and made me abstract from my day to day. It gave me a click and I thought it would be interesting to study gastronomy.”
