Luís Cristino da Silva was born in Lisbon, the son and grandson of painters: his grandfather was the painter João Cristino da Silva (1820-1877), one of the major names of the Romantic movement in Portugal, and his father was the painter and teacher João Ribeiro Cristino (1858-1948), author of Estética citadina, published between 1911 and 1914 in Dário de notícias.

In 1919, he graduated in architecture from the Lisbon School of Fine Arts. After a short stay in Rome, he settled in Paris in 1920, after being awarded a scholarship to improve himself professionally and artistically at the École des Beaux Arts. He attended the studio of the then renowned architect Victor Laloux, where the architect Miguel Ventura Terra had also trained.

He returned to Portugal at the end of 1924, exhibiting at the Fine Arts Nacional Society, Lisbon, the result of his time in Rome and Paris as a “former Valmôr pensioner abroad”.

The following year he designed the Cineteatro Capitólio building (Lisbon, 1925-1931), a landmark of early Portuguese modernism and the first building to explore the aesthetic potential of concrete.

In 1929, he designed the Diogo de Gouveia National High School (Beja, 1929-1934). In 1930, Cristino da Silva presented a project for the extension of Avenida da Liberdade at the Fine Arts Nacional Society Exhibition of Independents, which he would reformulate successively until 1971.

The 1940s were a very fruitful decade for Cristino da Silva, with his architectural production focused on official buildings, such as the Lisbon Pavilion of Honour at the Portuguese World Exhibition (1940); the Praça do Areeiro complex (1941-1960); the Caixa Geral de Depósitos branches in Guarda, Castelo Branco and Leiria (1938-1943); the layout of Avenida António Augusto de Aguiar (1943). When Cottinelli Telmo died in 1948, Cristino took over the direction of the University of Coimbra’s new constructions (1949-1966).

In addition to the extension of Avenida da Liberdade, his unbuilt projects included the Museum of Contemporary Art (1943) and the Overseas Palace (1951-1960), which were part of his proposal for the urban development of the Belém Marginal Zone (1953-1961).

Alongside his work as an architect, Luís Cristino da Silva taught architecture at the Lisbon School of Fine Arts from 1933 until the end of his career.

He received the Medal of Honour from the Fine Arts National Society (1943), the Valmor Prize and the Municipal Architecture Prize (1944), and the National Art Prize from the National Information Secretariat (1961).

He was honoured with the Military Order of Sant’Iago da Espada (1941), the Order of Public Instruction (1957) and the Order of Infante D. Henrique (1961).