Álvaro Siza Vieira y su Estilo

Me gustaría empezar mi discusión del arquitecto portugués Álvaro Siza es el trabajo de estudiar algunos textos citados con frecuencia en los debates de sus proyectos: uno por el propio Siza, uno por su mentor Fernando Távora, [...]:

Mi arquitectura no tiene un pre-establecido el idioma ni establece un idioma. Es una respuesta a un problema concreto, una situación en la transformación en el que participo ... En la arquitectura, que ya hemos superado la fase en la que pensamos que la unidad de la lengua que resolver todo. Un pre-establecidas en materia de idiomas, puro, bello, no me interesan.
-Álvaro Siza (1978) [Peter Testa, La arquitectura de Álvaro Siza (Oporto, Portugal: Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto, 1968), p. 39]

Quienes abogan por un retorno a los estilos del pasado o un favor de la arquitectura y el urbanismo modernos de Portugal están en un mal camino ... "estilo" no es de importancia; lo que cuenta es la relación entre el trabajo y la vida, el estilo es tan sólo consecuencia de ello.
-Fernando Távora (1962) [Paulo Varela Gomes, "Quatre Batailles en faveur d'une Portuguaise Arquitectura" Europalia 91: Puntos de Portugal Repere: Arquitectura de Portugal (Bruselas: Fondation pour l'Architecture, 1991), págs. 41-42 [traducción]

[...] Los tres textos revelan las corrientes de pensamiento y sentimiento que son desconfiados de la lengua. [...] Idioma independiente tiene su propia lógica. Nos cuentan historias acerca de nosotros mismos, definir las experiencias, acontecimientos juez, y dar voz a nuestros sentimientos. Sin embargo, lo que nos decimos a nosotros mismos en la siguiente estructura del lenguaje como a nosotros. El dinamismo de líquido turbio de la vida se vierte en el molde listo de la lengua sin convencernos de que algo no se quede en la forma asumida. Los acontecimientos de nuestra vida adoptar la forma de conocer las estructuras narrativas. Nos imaginamos en los eventos de nuestra vida la sombra de un Bildungsroman, un cine como el melodrama o la vida de la publicidad. Listo nombre palabras nuestros sentimientos y el amor, señorita, enojado y crecer-sea cual sea-de acuerdo con la elaboración de las historias relacionadas a las palabras que el nombre de estos sentimientos. El sentido de que, incluso transmitida por un rudimentario de las palabras-está dividida en ciertas formas arbitrarias, como un simple intento de traducción de un idioma a otro demuestra fácilmente. Aunque inevitablemente y sin cesar de caer presa del preformados los patrones de pensamiento, de indicaciones de otra vida brillo de pensamiento al alcance en el horizonte de la conciencia. [...]
Álvaro Siza y Fernando Távora declaraciones sugieren que algo similar se ha producido en la arquitectura. Tavora rechaza lo que él llama "estilo", que en realidad es expresión de que ya no parece adecuada su contenido vinculado a la expresión que parece superfluo sentido, la mera florece. Se favorece en lugar de algo que crecerá de la relación entre "el trabajo y la vida". Siza, un estudiante de Fernando Távora y un amigo de toda la vida, se hace eco del sentimiento de más edad del arquitecto: él rechaza "pre-establecido el idioma" y pretende dar respuesta a una "problema concreto, una situación en la transformación en el que participo". En la arquitectura que sólo tienen el objetivo de que la utopía donde la forma no sería ni arbitraria ni una herencia del sistema de forma arbitraria, sino que crecen directamente de nuestras necesidades, y las necesidades de interacción de con nuestro entorno y, más en general (si también más vaga) de lo que somos.

Sin embargo, ¿qué significa todo eso? Esto me recuerda una análoga ambición que se le asigna a la "pintura de acción de América" de Pollack, Kline, de Kooning, etc, por su defensor y crítico, Harold Rosenberg. Dijo que esta obra "en sus inicios fue un método de creación, no un estilo o buscar imágenes que se esforzó por alcanzar". [Harold Rosenberg, "El concepto de Acción de Pintura," Imágenes y Paquetes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), p. 213]. Las pinturas fueron los registros de los gesto sin mediación de la presión de los traicioneros de pensamiento y de las imágenes preconcebidas. Estas pinturas, al igual que la pista de la izquierda detrás de una patinadora artística, grabado desarrolla la vida misma.
Pero, ¿qué podría decir esto en relación a la arquitectura, un arte que es por su propia definición premeditado? En primer lugar, señalar, a continuación, después de que alguien lo que equivale a las instrucciones que construir. La arquitectura no es ni un proceso espontáneo ni es muy receptivo a las patentes contrivances que tratan de incorporar "automático" a los dibujos construido reino. Para entender cómo estas declaraciones, o ambiciones teóricas, se refieren a la arquitectura, y para comprender lo que finalmente tuvo consecuencias sobre el trabajo de Alvaro Siza, tendremos que traza dos historias paralelas. La primera se refiere a la comprensión desarrollada por la anterior generación de arquitectos portugueses-entre los cuales Tavora desempeñado un papel importante-portugués de la arquitectura vernácula, y del impacto que tuvo en su pensamiento. El otro hilo histórico que debe perseguir se refiere al desarrollo de la paseo arquitectónico: existe la noción de un objeto móvil refleja un cambio de percepción de la materia y su relación con el objeto arquitectónico. De particular importancia será el punto de vista conceptual precedente establecido por cómo estos cambios inscrito en el trabajo de Le Corbusier.

En el Portugal de los años 1940 y 1950, dos acontecimientos prestado a la sensación de profundidad de al menos un grupo de arquitectos que la arquitectura del país fue cayendo en un conjunto de patrones estilísticos vacía. La dictadura fascista del Estado Novo (como el régimen se llamaba) había adoptado una estrecha gama de modelos de referencia a la que fueron capaces de promulgar una manera homogénea estado-monumental, incluso cuando los pequeños; cuasialeatorios de aspecto neoclásico, moderno funcional consideraciones. Después de un patrón familiar fascista, se profiere esta arquitectura como la única y exclusiva representación de un único e históricamente homogénea Portugal. No importaba que esta arquitectura, en representación de una versión del pasado contemporáneo adaptado a las exigencias programáticas y objetivos de la heroica el estado de auto-representación, parecía poco como cualquiera de los tradicionales de la arquitectura portuguesa de la que supuestamente señala a su legitimidad. Así como la representación del Estado en la forma de un padre severo que una nación portugués como si se tratara de una familia ampliada requiere la expresión de las diferencias políticas reales, también lo hizo el mandato de la arquitectura artificial homogeneidad estilística. El estado, en cierto sentido, se celebró el idioma como rehenes, y presta una exagerada urgencia de la sospecha de la traición de la lengua. [El hilo histórico de mi argumento se basa en gran medida a los aquí el artículo de Pablo Varela Gomes, "Quatre Batailles en faveur d'une Portuguaise Arquitectura", págs. 30-62]
El segundo fue el desarrollo del aumento de las privadas y edificios comerciales en el país. Un gran número de ciudadanos que trabajan en el extranjero y de regresar a Portugal para construir casas o empresas-un patrón que persiste hoy en Portugal-ha alentado la construcción de edificios de muchos estilos arquitectónicos importados. Sus raíces totalmente diferentes dentro de las zonas urbanas, climáticas, tecnológicas, materiales, y las circunstancias sociales, y el contraste de la homogeneidad de muchos pueblos y paisajes de Portugal, hecho que estos nuevos edificios parece bastante extraño.

Arquitectos, dirigido inicialmente por Keil Amaral y más tarde incluida Tavora, buscaron en el modelo tradicional de una lengua vernácula de la arquitectura a los que se podría mirar como un recurso. Que finalmente produce una gruesa encuesta denominada Arquitectura popular em Portugal, en el que se documentan, región por región, las variedades de la arquitectura vernácula en Portugal. Lo que buscarse en la lengua vernácula es una forma de construcción sin recurrir a la "moda", o lo que ellos llaman "constantes", por la que podemos comprender las normas formales. A pesar de que el gráfico tipologías dentro del cuerpo del libro, en la introducción que negar la importancia del tipo. Ellos tienen miedo de que los tipos de una "arquitectura portuguesa" podría ser tratado y reificaban en un código, al igual que el estado había hecho con sus modelos. Que huir de la asfixia y las codificaciones que se traicionar idioma. Ellos hacen decir que los edificios reflejan, aunque no en los tipos específicos o elementos arquitectónicos, "algo del carácter de nuestro pueblo" en términos de una tendencia a domesticar a su vez y "humilde" ciertos rasgos del barroco. Exactamente lo que es, que debe ser algunas características formales-la simplificación de contorno, por ejemplo-no dicho es a propósito. En su lugar, señalan la "correlación estricta" en los edificios ", con factores geográficos, así como las condiciones económicas y sociales." Ellos son "simplemente las expresiones directas, sin intrusiones ni preocupaciones con perturbar el estilo claro y directo conciencia de estas relaciones. "[Arquitectura popular em Portugal (Lisboa: Sindicato nascional dos Arquitectos, 1961). Comillas son de la páginas sin numerar de la introducción del libro. Las traducciones son la mía.]

Paulo Varela Gomes, en su breve pero excelente síntesis de la arquitectura portuguesa, ha llamado el pensamiento se refleja en este libro una "metafísica de la relación entre el trabajo y la vida." [Gomes, "Quatre Batailles en faveur d'une Arquitectura Portuguaise" p. 42] La lengua vernácula es visto como el inmediatas y, digamos, prelinguistic producto de la vida y sus condiciones. Me gustaría traer de nuevo a la mente la idea de Rosenberg "pintura de acción de América", cuyo trabajo no representa el ser del artista tanto como se traza una inmediatas, o registro de la vida del artista en acción. [Ver Rosenberg en el debate de Harold Rosenberg, "La acción de América Pintores" La Tradición de la Nueva (Nueva York: McGraw-Hill, 1965), p. 27] Estos edificios son como herramientas, transparente a su tarea humana. Que lleven la lógica que los llevó a ser la tarea a realizar, la parte que tendrá que agarre ellos, e indirectamente de este aspecto de la sociedad se refleja en la existencia misma de la necesidad de realizar esa tarea a la que la herramienta se dedica . El signo no está todavía dividida en arbitraria la relación entre el significante y el significado.
Sea cual sea el grado de verdad puede haber en el supuesto de que haya una forma más natural de relación con la "vida" en las comunidades rurales y las regiones de estos arquitectos señaló que su ejemplo, el hecho central de la reproducción y unselfconscious gradual modificación de las tradiciones se pierden y de difícil acceso a la propia auto-conciencia que va en busca de ella en la lengua vernácula. Si la lengua vernácula no son más que un modelo de cómo producir en armonía con los edificios contemporáneos una circunstancias, estos arquitectos de trabajo podría haber sido más tradicionales como algunas vertientes de la modernidad. Ellos, como Hannes Meyer, podría haber intentado eliminar la cuestión del lenguaje, centrándose exclusivamente en las técnicas modernas de construcción y las soluciones a los problemas contemporáneos. Pero había algo en el carácter formal de la lengua vernácula que se apela a ellos.

La arquitectura creció en una forma gradual y no, como se señaló, con gran preocupación de los preceptos formales. Edificios cabida a las actuales condiciones de sus sitios. Edificios adjuntos a las paredes dejaron de ser moldeada por las paredes. Tanto las paredes y, en gran medida, los edificios que se les permite en forma de los contornos de la tierra. Gran parte de Portugal es de colinas o montañas, y gran parte de la construcción en las ciudades y el campo muestra la muy irregulares cifras que resultan de este conformidad con el paisaje. Ellos crearon una caña, fragmentada, patrón de mosaico en el campo. Incluso en las grandes ciudades, las calles son rara vez enderezado, ni el geómetra de la marca que se encuentran en las plazas. Estos también siguen teniendo la geometría del terreno original, impulsado por cifras. Hay entonces una ausencia general de una arquitectura de forma geométrica a priori; edificio mantiene la legibilidad de los antecedente mundo en el que está construido, esto es, el móvil de la tierra y su lenta, progresiva y además patrón de crecimiento visible; nuevo edificio no arrasar antiguo edificio. La lengua vernácula tiene un efecto arqueológicos que su propia historia e historia natural se inscriben en su forma. A este respecto, cumple algunos de los objetivos perseguidos por sus investigadores. Cuando Siza en la práctica comienza a finales del decenio de 1950 y principios de 1960, muchas de estas características tendrán un efecto sobre las estrategias que adopta. Cómo su trabajo se aleja de este modelo, sin embargo, reflejan intensamente la lejanía de la unselfconscious prácticas de estas comunidades rurales.

El otro gran capítulo histórico de que los hilos en el trabajo de Siza se refiere a la relación entre el desarrollo de paseo arquitectónico y la noción de un objeto móvil. La evolución histórica del paseo arquitectónico, inicialmente relacionado con la arquitectura del paisaje, postula un sujeto humano que ya no contemplar desde un único punto de vista estático y graspable orden. Se mueven a través de una secuencia de ambientes paisaje pretende estimular constantemente diversos estados de sensaciones. Watelet, haciendo mérito de la primera pintoresco jardín en Francia en los 1770s, el pensamiento (en palabras de Robin Middleton) de que "lo esencial del disfrute de un paisaje surge de la evolución constante de la experiencia disfrutado como un desplazado a través de él." [Robin Middleton De la introducción a Nicolas LeCamus de Mezieres, El genio de la arquitectura o la analogía de que el artículo con nuestras sensaciones (Santa Monica, CA: Getty Center para la Historia del Arte y las Humanidades, 1992), págs. 48-49] El foco de la atención del sujeto en el jardín abandonado de la captura de geometrías ideales, las relaciones formales o de la que parecía más importante en el esquema conceptual de la arquitectura, a centrarse en el continuo cambio de paso de la sensación. Una persona implicada en el reconocimiento de sus propias sensaciones se debe distinguir entre estas sensaciones corporales e íntimo, y la lejanía de un resumen de la arquitectura conceptual autónomo fin-a menos que, por supuesto, que el orden, como el jardín del siglo XVIII los teóricos buscaron para sus jardines , está dedicada a los temas peripatético percepciones.

La transformación en la actitud hacia la relación entre sujeto y objeto anunciado por el paseo marítimo se centre en un sensoriales en lugar de orden conceptual es significativo con respecto a este ensayo inicial de debate de la lengua: si en la jerarquía de las cosas de mayor valor se coloca en un aparentemente directa llamamiento a la sensación, algunas órdenes de cuya presencia se puede pensar sin referencia a la percepción inmediata-ideal esquema geométrico, por ejemplo, o el fugitivo y la persistencia de tipos de intangibles-aparecerá más exóticas, a pesar de que también ellos son detenidos por la mente humana . A pesar de que el medio ambiente orientado a la satisfacción de una sed de "sensación" puede ser tan rigurosa como el más seco orquestada geometría, una aparentemente más natural y espontánea de apelación se hará a un auto al parecer implicados en un más natural y espontánea respuesta. Formas organizadas con una mente a esta sensación de excitación y en relación con nuestra "libre" circulación se parecen más "naturales" y el lenguaje humano, mientras que lo que podríamos llamar conceptual pedidos parecen cada vez más artificiales obdurately extranjero-y "otros" como el manto de la reificaban idiomas que no se ajusten a la singularidad de cada ser humano.

Le Corbusier fue obviamente interesados en esta vagando persona, y el paseo arquitectónico fue un tema central de su trabajo. Dar paseos por un representante de la figura física y por que esta cifra distinta de la idealizada "orden" establecido por la estructura (columnas y losas), fue capaz de construir una metáfora arquitectónica de la disyuntiva entre un orden ideal de la arquitectura y el orden de el peripatético objeto de sensaciones. Así pues, las escaleras y rampas en su arquitectura no sólo facilitar el movimiento real de un individuo a través de sus edificios, pero igual de ergonometric muebles sugiere la ausencia de cuerpo para el que está diseñado, la torsión de la cinta-escalera de la izquierda al entrar en Villa Savoye, o sobre el derecho al entrar en Villa Stein-sugiere que el fantasma de promenading tema. Lo mismo cabe decir de las rampas en Savoye, a los dueños de aserraderos, y al Dr. Currutchet casa. Estos componentes de la circulación seguir la lógica del "libre plan" y son distintos de la estructura de la arquitectura. Por lo tanto, el "plan de libre" no sólo una distinción entre los órdenes de la eterna estructura encarnan contra relleno no estructurales, pero propuso una distinción entre un espacio idealizado y el orden y el aspecto incidental de la aprobación.

Si estamos pensando en el espacio universal de la red de columna o de la resistencia dentro del mismo de un determinado aspecto Palladianas-Abeba el ritmo de Stein estructurales de la red percourse a través de la emblemática casa Stein vaga "libremente" a través del grano. La columna es un espacio moderno depósito para ser habitado o una ruina a través del cual preámbulo. Podemos por lo tanto, ampliar el alcance metafórico que el "plan de libre" permite: Las escaleras y rampas de encarnar nuestros patrones de movimiento contrario. Pero el "plan de libre" también identifica una cantidad enorme de lo que está relacionado con la particularización de espacio, la creación de las jerarquías de la vivienda relacionados con diferentes habitaciones, ventanas, y sus aspectos figurativos con la noción de una especie de permanente mobiliario. Absidal de la pared del comedor Stein es como una pieza de mobiliario, mientras que los libros que son muebles y conceptualmente impermanente se utilizan para articular el espacio de la l'Esprit Nouveau salón. Muebles es lo que aportan a un edificio. No refleja de antemano el orden de la arquitectura, pero el acto más personal de nuestro movimiento y en la vivienda. El "plan de libre" por lo tanto, sugiere que todos los materiales liberados son un tipo de mobiliario dentro de una zona distinta de la principal orden de la arquitectura. Es evidente que una parte muy importante del trabajo de Le Corbusier. Él creó una dialéctica de oposición de una arquitectura idealizada de inscritos por orden indeleble las marcas de un tema que es uno de otros en el medio de la arquitectura que lo alberga.

Siza de los bosquejos de reflejar su propia relación con esa idea. Arquitectónico, urbano y paisajístico ajustes siempre se muestran desde un punto de vista que supone el único momento de la percepción de ver el tema. Los dibujos no se sometan a la "adecuada" fin de la arquitectura, no lo vemos desde el vértice, por ejemplo, de un espacio concebido perspectivally: los dibujos con poca frecuencia intento de construcción de la descripción objetiva de, por ejemplo, un plan. En la colección de dibujos publicados en 1988 como Viajes Bocetos [Alvaro Siza Esquissos de Viagem / Viajes Bocetos (Oporto, Portugal: Documentos de Arquitectura, 1988), serie editada por Eduardo Souto Moura et al], o se recortan las escenas vistas en pares e impares ocasionales ángulos si son clásicos de los edificios, espacios de coordinación con el barroco de principios preferido ininterrumpida axial opiniones, ordinaria o escenas callejeras. De manera similar a la de la cámara de mano y con similar efecto retórico, que representan puntos de vista adoptado, mientras que en una ligera ambles por un camino o se sienta en una sala o café. Como en una vista de costado, las cosas se ven distorsionados, o como la opinión de gotas demasiado baja, el primer plano de la íntima proximidad se yuxtaponen en público a distancia. Aquí se podría pensar en que la comparación hecha por Panofsky entre el "objetivo" a distancia y elaboración de San Jerónimo en su estudio de Antonello da Messina y la intimidad de grabado de Durero de la misma materia, lo que coloca al espectador en la frontera de la habitación, el plano de prisa, con lo que uno siente a punto de cruzar a través del estudio de San Jerónimo a sí mismo. [Erwin Panofsky, Perspectiva forma simbólica (Nueva York: Zona Libros, 1991), traducido por Christopher S. Wood. pp. 174-175]

Siza de bocetos nos hacen pensar en el cambio de opiniones durante un paseo. Cada dibujo está emblemáticamente por parte de una serie de visitas sucesivas, lo que implica el flujo ininterrumpido de nuestra percepción a medida que nos acercamos a través del espacio de la ciudad y del país. Posiblemente por asociación con las técnicas de la fotografía y el cine y su relación con la inmediatez y inmediatas (nonconceptual) de grabación, existe la sensación de un "testigo presencial" de la cuenta de estar allí.

La arquitectura es el trasfondo de la vida vivida. Como en el ejemplo de Le Corbusier, que conserva las marcas de nuestro uso humano de la misma. Los paisajes, las habitaciones, y las calles están llenas de voluble la actividad humana-la gente promenading, hablar, comprar y vender. Otras escenas de conservar las pistas de alguien de la reciente aprobación: rumpled ropa se sienta en una silla, lavandería queda colgado para secar. Cosas inanimadas conservar su obstinado separación sino que se cruzan y se caracteriza por la actividad humana. Edificios y paisajes de este modo parece lejana y enredados en la maraña resultante.

Estos dibujos crear el peculiar sentido de que nos pase preparado justo antes de la escena. Sugieren la presencia física del voyeur, en el mismo sitio del boceto. En términos literales, en algunos dibujos Siza permite su propio pies y manos-manos capturados en el acto de dibujar el plano que estamos viendo ahora-para entrar en el sorteo del cuadro.

Pensamiento de la arquitectura como consecuencia de la relación entre el trabajo y la vida, y la reconceptualización de la asignatura de acuerdo con las nociones de la sensación y el paseo marítimo, son los dos campos de pensamiento a través de la cual me gustaría examinar algunos de los proyectos de Siza. A pesar de que el grupo elegido de las obras no pueden ejemplificar toda la gama o la complejidad de toda su obra, sí se refieren a temas centrales y persistentes.

Una de las razones por las que la lengua vernácula fue capaz de representar a sus colegas Tavora y su noción de un lenguaje natural tiene que ver con su historicidad. Accretive como un proceso que mantiene la evidencia de las circunstancias históricas de su formación a las condiciones topográficas que respondió, y el acumulado de las aglomeraciones continuamente añadido una arquitectura sin la supresión de las capas anteriores-que representa una arquitectura que revela el proceso de su propia cada vez. Tal vez no tanto demostrar la naturalidad, sea lo que puede significar-de sus formas en relación con la vida misma, sin embargo, sus cualidades arqueológica sugiere el registro histórico de las necesidades de la vida. Estos efectos dependen de la aprobación de la historia real. Pero hay una manera que a través de la arquitectura de Siza produce una analogía, o más correctamente, una representación de este proceso, a pesar de producir un efecto muy diferente de la original. Como una representación, no es la cosa que se hace referencia a más de un cuadro de un paisaje es un paisaje. La propia auto-conciencia de la construcción metafórica de esta historicidad también da lugar a ciertas complicaciones. Existe una persistente auto-conciencia-legibles en la arquitectura-que sugiere que la metáfora arqueológicos también revela la pérdida de la continuidad o natural proceso histórico que pretende representar. El acto está muy alejada de las bases que establecen que en movimiento.

Uno de los primeros proyectos de Siza es la playa del lado de piscinas públicas en Leca da Palmeira (1961-66). Una porción de la misma es una serie de muros de concreto paralelo intermitente y ligeramente inclinado techo losas corriendo en paralelo-algunas con un pequeño ángulo y apoyo en la cara de un malecón de hormigón. [...] Esto está íntimamente arquitectura calibrada para su sitio, las piscinas tienen agua sólo a través de la colaboración de las formaciones rocosas y en los nuevos muros de hormigón. El grupo de paredes paralelas en la parte trasera del sitio son como una extensión de la delaminated malecón, haciéndose eco de su borde en capas en el territorio de la playa. Concretas y se fabrica a partir de arena. Sin embargo, hay algo acerca de esta arquitectura exótica en la playa. El duro filo formas concretas de los aviones-recto, o en un pequeño ejemplo, sin problemas y geométricamente curvas-no entrará en negociaciones interminables con los datos del terreno. Las partes del proyecto que entrará en el territorio o las rocas como detener y comenzar el dictado por formaciones naturales, pero no se distorsiona en un intento de adaptarse a sí mismos. Paredes, las plataformas, y los techos no se funden con el paisaje, sino que forman una especie de tracería interrumpido sobre él, una especie de graffiti elaborado. Y en lugar de un literal de la acumulación histórica de los artefactos depositados en el tiempo, ofrecen algo más parecido a las primeras marcas de un dibujo sobre el territorio. Parecen más bien como los emblemas de dibujo que de la construcción.

Sin embargo, este giro no es asunto sencillo, ya sea: La sintaxis de planos de deslizamiento y espacial porosidad que tiene algo de generalidad espacial original, o placelessness como se le ha llamado, que era una cualidad de la Stijl de vocabulario, sino que se esconde en las características de idioma este proyecto. Al igual que los lienzos de Mondrian cuadrícula o de la casa de ladrillo de Mies, el orden espacial, porque no hay nada finito sobre él, no cierra la figura-sugiere la posibilidad de que el patrón de la extensión: más allá del marco en el caso de Mondrian, o como una latente y oculta el orden en el continuo de espacio con la casa de Mies. Leca en el proyecto, la tendencia a entender la lengua en relación con esta extensión más abstracta hace sentir que el proyecto establece que existe una cierta indiferencia entre la nueva capa y el material existente del sitio. Podríamos imaginar una serie de rastros, los guiones, y se cierne aviones collage proliferan en la moda a lo largo de la playa y más allá. Y aquí radica el quid de una forma de equívocos en el proyecto. La particular disposición de las formas es particular de lugar, sino que alude a un resumieron la indiferencia. La porosa paradigma espacial de la sintaxis permite el sitio para pasar a través de lo visible. Contraste esto con el hecho de afectar a un espacio cerrado intactos figura o tipo completado cuando la naturaleza de su autonomía tendería a cerrar el sitio, haciendo que la interacción y capas menos continua como la cifra declaró su independencia formal. Aquí la sintaxis formal es autónoma en todo el mundo, en todas partes, infiltrados por el sitio.
El constante contacto entre el espacio de la arquitectura y el espacio del sitio natural se une en una forma de capas arqueológicas, al mismo tiempo que la capa de la naturaleza es la intrusión de un extranjero. Es colonizados sin presentar a la reformulación y, por tanto, sugiere una arqueología o la historicidad, donde el pasado-es decir, de las instalaciones existentes o de su representación-sigue siendo ajeno a nosotros. La proposición es de una intimidad que arqueológicos no admitir la naturalidad de una relación con el pasado.
El proyecto propone una arquitectura que, al igual que el graffiti, se señala en el sitio. En este sentido, las capas de la arqueología tienen que ver con el acto de la concepción y el diseño del material a la solución de la actual. Pero, como con Le Corbusier, también nos da muy poca emblemáticos vestigios de nuestra propia peripatético paso a través del sitio. Las rampas y las escaleras son como las establecidas en el fondo de la columna de la cuadrícula espacial idealidad. Cifra similar aquí ahora tienen como fondo un verdadero extranjero sitio. La conceptualidad de la sintaxis de la arquitectura, concebida como íntimamente y ajeno a sitio, se hizo eco el sendero plagado de cifras que ponen a nuestra presencia en medio fantasma de un mundo de rocas que podemos tocar, pero no puede cambiar.

[...] En otros proyectos de este período, los de carácter Stijl de la sintaxis da paso a la vinculación de grupos de cifras incompletas. Este es el caso de las obras como la casa de té de Boa Nova (1958-63), la Costa Alves casa (1964), la casa Alves Santo (1966-69), y la casa de Rocha Riberio (1960-62). En cada uno de estos proyectos, más una cierta "arquitectura" carácter se propone para el proyecto: los proyectos un poco más tradicional de vocabulario, uso de techos de teja de cerámica, y también el concepto más tradicional de las habitaciones y espacios cerrados volumétrica cifras se sugiere. Yet in each case these figures are stated in abbreviated form: they are open “L's” as in Boa Nova, or as in other houses a variety of fragmented “L's,” unequal-legged three-sided rectangles, or other more difficult-to-name fragments, as well as simple straight wall segments, attached to nothing. The open figures nestle within each other and overlap.

In one respect the effect of these broken figures is not all that different from the open matrix of sliding planes. Space—whether conceived of as that universal spatial continuum of modernity, or the actual but open space of a palpable portion of the world (a site)—flows through these fragments. The projects propose a sort of Trojan horse of conventional architecture whose syntax, upon inspection, dissolves into a series of fragments. Space, or site, passes through them just as it does through the walls of the pool project. [...]

As with the pool project for Leca, the syntax of the Costa house is spatially porous. The conceptual transparency to the field of the site, the conceptual presence of that field in the midst of the very figures enclosing the dwelling space of the house, presents to us the house as intervention “layered” into the site, an open sketch on the site—and thus the persistence in these projects of the archeological metaphor.

The figurative expectations that the fragments set up—the expectation of closure that might have been absent in the more apparently modern and de Stijl syntax of the pool—in some respects amplifies the peculiarity of a conceptual intrusion of the site into the house, even in the absence of great rocks.

The percourse into the house adds another peculiarity. With the apparent conventionality of the ceramic tiled roofs and the bounding of figures, the expectation that one might move through the building in a more conventional pattern also grows. Yet instead of, for instance, passage into a bounded room through a cut in the wall—a threshold, that is—at the front and back doors a person would, as the space described above did, move between the fragmentary figures as if they were a landscape of ruins. Here we begin to see a theme that will develop with more didactic clarity in the succeeding projects, but the notion of how the subject is placed in contrast to the weight of latent conventions of architectural figures begins to emerge. The split between how human movement and perception is orchestrated in contrast to certain conventionally apparent orders of the architecture begin to create an architectural corollary to the sketches we have described.

From the 1970s Siza's work begins to exhibit more explicit uses of type. In projects for housing we see a pattern of siedlungen-like town houses (the SAAL housing at Bouca, 1973–1977; Sao Victor, 1974–1977, both in Oporto; and housing in Caxinas, 1970–1972). In several other projects we begin to see the repeated use of U-shaped courtyard schemes (the Pavilhao da Faculdade de Arquitectura, 1984, the Carlos Siza house, 1976–1978, and the Escola Superior de Educacao in Setubal, 1986–1992).

Certainly, the concept of type is tricky and has changed over time. But let us say, for instance, that the “U” that appears many times in Siza's work is a configuration of form that wakes in us a chain of associations with other like configurations. It tends to be nameable, because it is that very characteristic—that it belongs to a category—that constitutes the being of types. What I have referred to as syntax in the case of the pool does not constitute a nameable configuration. It is more in the nature of a strategy or pattern of form than a nameable entity as a type must be. Thus although Siza was using such syntactical patterns, he was able to avoid a certain aspect of that initial anxiety about preestablished languages. Flexible spatial patterns appear to be more spontaneous and less burdened by history.

Yet because the type has a certain integrity as a conceptual category, it also implies a kind of closed autonomy; its stable and independent conceptual existence is a form of aloofness. And it is here that it becomes susceptible to both the suspicions voiced by Tavora and Siza as well as Pessoa. It is not “style” but it has something of style's formulaicness. It is not language, but like language it seems public rather than intimate; like words, types seem to exist independent of us. Thus types were held in suspicion by Tavora and his colleagues because they suggested the possibility of a reified formalization of architecture. And even though the vernacular may have been susceptible to a typological survey and analysis, what was held to be appealing in the vernacular were its qualities of flux, its qualities of historicity—its layering of past and present—that seemed a palimpsest of its becoming. We should note that like the language we speak, type's impersonality is susceptible to that endless reformulation that allows all learned languages to acquire clandestine and utterly unique qualities added by each speaker. The resonance of a word is created by the unique world of each mind, and diction and grammar are shifting sands that reflect the biologically infinite permutation of speakers and history. But types also never lose their fundamental correlation to the historical things by which they steal away from the actual and specific into a realm of remote concepts and categories.

Types would seem to work against one complex and essential aspect of Siza's archeological metaphor. The manner of layering so far described has suggested a simultaneous intimacy and estrangement between the layers of new project and site. The transparency and conceptual incompletion of the formal language of the project that allowed the “intrusion” of the site's alienness into its midst is not obviously in the nature of the type. This is so because the type tends to be a closed or at least a finite world, which tends to conceptually close out or reorganize in its own manner what lies outside of it. It may rest archeologically on what precedes it, but it excludes those things through its own internal cohesion.

Siza uses a variety of strategies to “attack” this integrity, enabling him to persist in constructing a relationship between site and intervention (as each project should be called in his work) that binds them without naturalizing their relationship. He also deploys certain strategies that metaphorically present the alienness of the type, as an inherited formal construct, in relation to a subject that cannot see itself reflected in that inherited order of architecture.

The Pavilion for the Faculty of Architecture is a U-shaped building, a species of the three-sided courtyard. It is set at one end of an enclosed garden. [...] Perhaps habitual percourses around the edge of the garden drove the logic of a corner entry, now hidden and far from everything else in the garden. The inherited order of the object is treated with the kind of indifference that we might imagine in reinhabiting a ruin, or building the new city around it, as happens in Rome. New windows and doors are cut into an ancient edifice, new street patterns are laid out with no necessary regard for its original order or hierarchy or organization. It is as if the building were a piece of nature to be colonized. I exaggerate to make my point, because clearly each decision of dimension, shape, and location has been considered. But the cumulative rhetorical effect seems to suggest these purposeful contrasts and superimposed counterorders. The building is in many ways, like the pool at Leca, calibrated to its site, yet that calibration feels more like an exploration of how disparate things may be set together, existing simultaneously yet disturbing one another as little as possible. So here now is the found object of the Pavilion; the grass might as well pass right under it. A promenade wends its way around the garden, momentarily leaving hidden this built visitation to the site, and there, in the intimacy of the garden corner, we enter the building. The entry provokes a local eruption in the fabric of the building and an entirely localized figurative event occurs, as if marking the type with an event of human passage, as the stairs, ramps, or other such materials had occurred against the background of the columnar grid in Villa Stein or Villa Savoye. The type then becomes a kind of ideal background for a human promenade, as occurred in Le Corbusier's work against the background of the space idealized by the columnar order.

In the Carlos Siza house, the effect of this artifice of apparently aleatory relationships between different layers of order is more radically visible. This project too is a pinched U. Its central axis is marked by the living room's protruding bay window. Here too entry is made casually from the corner, although in this case one enters into a sort of ambulatory that enfolds the courtyard of the house. In this house the “indifference” of site is more radical. The house sits on a raised base. At a certain point along one edge of the site, the raised plot's perimeter wall folds sharply back into the house, passing through one leg of the U and conceptually cutting off three of the bedrooms from the rest of the house. [...] Vision is inscribed as another uncoordinated order into the fabric of the building. The indifference of one order's logic to that of another suggests the independence of each. The rhetorically aleatory nature of their relationships suggests the foreignness of one to the other—that is, they constitute an archeology of architecture, represented by typological formations or as in Leca, with syntactical strategies, site, and the order of the subject. Each is intimately bound to the other, yet alien.
It is possible to trace these themes through many projects. In the Escola Superior de Educacao in Setubal, the three-sided courtyard opens to an undulating landscape that rolls into its arms. Distinct from the University of Virginia example that ought to come to mind, the project does not so much classically frame a landscape beyond its orderly tranquility as much as prompt this very landscape to wash right into its midst. [...] The oddity of the paths to the building, traversing along the rolling grassy landscape from one side, or through an apparently casual closed patio placed at an angle to the long leg of the building, make this building seem to lay unexpectedly upon the ground. Paths unrelated to the logic of the building bring us to the “wrong” part of the building to initiate our entry into it. And the internal pattern of circulation carries on to similar effect. We wander the building as vagabonds about the ruins of Rome.

Our trace and mark appear upon the body of Siza's buildings in other ways. Physiognomic figures in facade patterns lend a strangely human aspect of gesture to the body of many of Siza's buildings. In the totemic boxes of the Faculty of Architecture studio buildings (1986–1993), different “characters” are detectable, one with close-set eyes, one glancing west, and one, a Cyclops, looking ahead. The skylights of the eastern-most studio seem like a creature from John Hejduk's architectural bestiary. Yet all these gestures are not so surprising; they, like the optical cut in the Carlos Siza house, inscribe within the body of the architecture the roving subject's perceptual experiences. These windows through which we see represent that act of seeing in a rhetorical gesture. Behind, a ramp rises along the face of the classroom and lecture hall building, and the gliding glance that peers out during the ramp's ascent is cut from the building's face—the slope of the roof suggests the ramp inside but is steeper, making the cut of the ribbon window, which follows the angle of the ramp, more palpable as a gash in the facade—that is, the cut is not “explained” in relation to the building's sloped profile.
It bears noting that the gateway pairing at the west-end entrance to the Faculty's campus is contradicted by the change in section that runs along the axis that they establish. Entrance is made through a flared vestibule stuck into the face of this sectional change, or up a flight of crossing stairs and into the bottom of the ramp's figure. The markings of path about the building and the anthropomorphisms play similar roles, leaving a trail of marks on the building, suggesting an order of movement and perception overlaid onto the more stable order of forms. The project is set on a steeply inclined bank of the Douro River; the split in section is in fact related to a mosaiclike pattern of platforms into which the embankment is cut. Thus its disruptive role is, again, the superposition of the nonconforming patterns of site and architectural configuration.

One project summarizes particularly well the themes I have tried to highlight in Siza's work. The competition entry for the Monument to the Victims of the Gestapo is somewhat anomalous in a body of work that on no other occasion contains an explicit component of the past's classical vocabulary. Here, eccentrically located in the middle of a large round bowl of landscape, stands an inhabitable doric column. Inside, a spiral staircase nearly fills its shaft and runs up to its capital. The site plan shows the column at the intersection of important axes—one running down the center of the street, another running nearly perpendicular to and from the center of an adjacent building's monumental facade (this latter axis is slightly displaced by the corner of an interceding building). Where the two axes cross stands the column. Yet the column's location, in spite of this apparent logic derived from the larger order of the site, and following baroque notions of monumental urban arrangement, still stands strangely within the immediate surroundings of the monument. [...]

The buildings analyzed in plan all belong to one or another of two principal site geometries. However, I imagine that the effect of moving through the building is to distance one from the city through a certain disorientation, and to allow for a passage into the bowl-shaped park in which the column stands—stranded. Here this explicit emblem and trophy of a past architecture stands removed from its own “natural” context—once a component within the syntax and body of a classical building and from its possible normative relationship to the city, established by the classically conceived urban axes, and perceptually undone by the bermed bowl in which it stands isolated—in a garden. Under such conditions it is not unlike those nineteenth-century follies that were merely occasions within the more important order established by the narrative-like sequences of experiences in picturesque garden promenades: in those cases the dominant experience of the folly was not the reconstitution of the historical universe from which the folly came, but a more general and emotive nostalgia for a lost world. Follies, like collections in general, signify not the presence of the collected object so much as the absence of the world from which a relic has been saved. What then is the connection between this project and the purpose to which it is dedicated—a memorial to the victims of the Gestapo? The column appears in the city like some found object of a world lost, its withheld relationship to the larger city only making more poignant the absent world of ordered relationships of which it is an emblem.

The following is possible: The column can be viewed as a relic of a classical past—possibly of that classical humanist past whose vision assumed an organic continuity between man and the world, where man remained linked to the world around him by virtue of the analogy he saw between himself and the forms of the world. His own subjectivity was not rootless among the world's autonomous objects and events, but shared in their order and could thus reform it. He imagined that the image he held of his own developing rationality could infuse the world, and if this rationality produced a humane order, then the world would be humane. Humanism could tame the obdurate alienness of the world by seeing “the human subject… incorporated into the dance of forms filled by the world” and should not be betrayed by this world. The human disaster perpetrated by the Third Reich, driven by an image of history that negated the importance of the individual subject, divides us from such classical humanist hope. The column, once homologous to man and a great emblem of the humanist reciprocity between world and subject, is now only a nostalgic artifact to be collected but incapable of integration within the city that survived the disaster.
It is also possible that the column is full of more frightening associations derived from its historical association with power, and more particularly with the neoclassical affectations of the Third Reich. In this case, we would stumble upon this symbolic structure collected from the wreckage, defanged in its museological park. Both readings (if not many more) are possible, even in one person. As they oscillate, what remains constant is the remoteness of history, its irrecoverability. When the past is conceived of, it is called history, and at that moment under the glass jar of a name it is as remote as is the world from which the items in a collection have been drawn.

The column is a ruin collected from a lost epoch. The pieces of architecture by which we are brought to it, guided in their layout by the geometry of the surrounding urban site, still gather as if merely part of a series of abutted fragments. By passing through them, we happen upon this lone column. The column, sited by an elaboration of the existing site's order, remains unjoined and alien in the city's midst. Such might be a parable of the memory of those victims within present-day Berlin.

Siza's architecture emerged from an epoch that sought to recover from the betrayals of language and the misuse of history. The sense of language's remoteness, the uncertainty of our own relationship to inherited forms and even to the historical soil on which we build, is codified in an architecture that joins subject, land, and language, without suggesting that there is anything natural about such a grouping.

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The Portuguese National Pavilion is a prestigious landmark building designed by Alvaro Siza to host Expo 98 - the world's largest trade fair. Siza's shell-like design also served to introduce the 'ocean & world heritage' theme of the event and to represent the culture of the host country.

Appointed for the concept and scheme design, Arup provided: structural, mechanical, electrical, and geotechnical engineering; fire safety and lighting design; and specialist acoustic advice.

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The pavilion consists of two exhibition areas, one housing main exhibitions, the second providing a large outdoor space for national displays. The most iconic feature of the pavilion however, is a thin, curved concrete sail which creates a canopy over the ceremonial plaza.

Cables supporting the canopy require enormous tension, provided by a series of 14m high fin-like walls which form porticos on either side of the plaza.

As Lisbon is an area of high sismic activity, the canopy and the building are completely separate, each with its own structural support system.

At the time of construction, the National Pavilion was Lisbon's largest urban regeneration project since rebuilding the city in the aftermath of an earthquake and tidal wave which ravaged the city in 1775.

Alvaro Siza Vieira Awards, Prizes and Recognitions.

A Pavilion in Korea

February 2005: the invitation, sudden and urgent. A small city of 300,000 inhabitants had launched a project for a cultural complex right in front of a natural park, wedged in amongst beautiful mountains. A multifunctional pavilion was needed as a complementary, but central element. Álvaro Siza's name was mentioned and the invitation was answered, in person, in Porto.

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March 2005: This was an urgent matter and I immediately went to the site, to look around, take note, and bring back the necessary bases for an architect's work, as the theme was sober: a multifunctional space, a small, possibly multifunctional office, perhaps for the police, and toilets for those who walk the park's paths as well as for those who remain around the square or go to the local restaurants. Jun, a Korean architect who studied abroad, interned in Porto, and who is now based in Seoul has been a friend of mine for 20 years, and was waiting for me upon arrival. Our friendship and profession would establish the necessary connection. Arriving at the site, the urgency is present, the urgency of the urgency is present, because that is the way the country is, like its people and lifestyle. There is time to decide, but after decision comes the urgency. There is great euphoria at APAP 2005 – Anyang Public Art Project 2005. Many artists and a few architects have already confirmed it. There is some concern. Can so many guests of so many nationalities comprehend the urgency? Calmly, we gather elements, take photographs, solicit detailed plans, search for documentation, search for architectural precedents, most of it destroyed in the wars, for current architecture of merit….our friends help and point things out.

The site is an open space, shorn from the mountain, a square to be created. There are already compromises, perhaps they can be coordinated, even eliminated, we shall see. Back in Porto and the West. I try to transmit the experience, way of life, flavours and foundations of the work. Siza receives, perceives, questions and interprets like no other. From the first work session, a few timid, interpretive blueprints are made. The second session, supported by a model of the site, is more approximate, form becomes form, content in search of a programme. Other sessions follow, primarily on Saturdays and Sundays. The atmosphere is excellent. Models are built, scale is increased, the blueprints require alterations of the plans, models and 3Ds. It is necessary to return to Korea and present the project to the client.

July 2005: upon arrival, we are informed that the presentation is at 4:00pm. At four o'clock the meeting begins: the mayor, necessary council members, directors and as well as technicians, local architects and guests. Brief presentation of Álvaro Siza's work, presentation of the proposal, some translation, intelligent questions, necessity of increasing the number of toilets, nothing that prevents the formal approval of the proposal, carrying out the necessary, requested alterations. Expression of thanks for the quality of the work, but also the urgent press for time. It is time to start construction, it's urgent, and the snow…Seven o'clock, confirmation dinner to express satisfaction with the project, its acceptance and official approval. Back home, the process, though identical, is another, as we have proceeded to the execution phase. Adaptations to small alterations in the project, to the forms, and the form to the project. The designs acquire scale, rigour, but always follow the blueprint and the blueprint follows the rigour of execution. Construction starts and the designs continue. The Net permits the exchange of information, but also allows you to see the work progress despite the distance. Despite the urgency, the pleasure at seeing the work advance forward, unrestrained by bureaucracy, provides pleasure, because ours is a different reality.

November 2005: back again for the opening of the park and to visit the construction site. An entire, rough volume of grey almost white concrete intuits the light. An exquisite execution born of urgency. The site was made for the volume and the volume rises from the site. Of the remainder of the square, little could be saved, we are left with our half. The Parque , fair of the vanities, is pleasing…; displeasing, the capacity of implementation amazes me. Very little is ok, much is of a temporary nature, even disposable. What is good will remain, time will not be merciful. Infrastructures, M & E services, finishings, materials, preparations for the next phase are discussed. In Porto, the final design is being followed up with our support almost in real time.

July 2006: back again, a great surprise, despite the exchange of photos. Entering the finished space is sublime, as is the light. Not at all static, when we move, the space sings, as Siza would say. It is introverted when required, extroverted in its perspectives, in its passages, in the volumetry of the form and materials. The client and the city respectfully ask and the pavilion takes the name of Anyang – Álvaro Siza Hall. Already in use, the inauguration is just around the corner.

Carlos Castanheira, architect.

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In comparison, the replacement for the MVRDV pavilion is simplicity itself.

A cafe by day and a venue for talks and events at night, it is little more than a grid made from short planks of timber, folded down at the edges to form the walls. Panes of polycarbonate fill in the squares of the grid until it meets the ground on extended “legs”. Anyone with a basic knowledge of woodwork will be able to see immediately how it's been put together: with mortise and tenon joints. A bolt secures each joint and there's your pavilion. So while MVRDV set themselves a mountain to climb, this looks like it could have been assembled from a flat-pack - given a thousand years' worth of Sunday afternoons.

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“A pavilion is usually an isolated building, but with this site we felt we should maintain a relationship with the gallery and the trees, and these things were the start of the idea,” explains Siza. “In front of the house there are two hedges forming half an ellipse. That gave us the suggestion to make a curved surface to complete the ellipse. And as the trees outside were in a position that avoided making a rectangle, we decided to make the four faces curved. The curves are not symmetrical because of the position of these trees, so they adapted to these accidents. Also the roof began suffering accidents. It's like a vault but it comes down approaching the gallery, like a compliment. Architecture is often developed through such accidents and difficulties. In the end that gives character to the buildings.”

A quick poll of passers-by on the exterior of the pavilion before it had opened produced mixed reactions: many likened it to a dinosaur or an armadillo; some couldn't wait to get inside; others found it hostile, unremarkable, or even ugly. A group of workmen nearby said they preferred it before they put the polycarbonate panels on it, others that it would look better with plants growing over it.

After more than 50 years in the business, Siza is no stranger to such reactions. Although he is revered by fellow professionals, and won the prestigious Pritzker prize in 1992, he has never been a high-stakes architectural superstar like Norman Foster or Frank Gehry. Rather than turning out flamboyant structures, his buildings can look unremarkable at first glance. But Siza's mastery lies in subtler qualities such as context, spatial relationships and use of light. He's generally a less-is-more modernist who favours clean, straight lines, whitewashed walls and almost-blank geometric volumes, but his buildings are usually too sensitive to their users and their surroundings to veer into uptight minimalism.

One of his most celebrated works, for example, is a public swimming pool built in the late 1960s at Leça da Palmeira. It consists of little more than concrete planes and platforms defining a group of tidal pools, but with minimal intervention they create a space that relates to both the natural rock formations and the concrete seawalls of the decidedly un-picturesque Altantic coastline.

From a similar school of thought, the younger Eduardo Souto de Moura worked in Siza's office during the 1970s before branching off on his own. At least one of his projects is arguably more famous in Britain than any of Siza's: the Braga Stadium, which hosted football matches during Euro 2004 - it was the one with a sheer granite rock face at one end of the pitch. The two architects have collaborated before, on Portugal's flagship pavilion at Expo 98 in Lisbon, but that was formal and monumental, in marked contrast to the casual, playful building at the Serpentine.

“We worked at the same table, sometimes both writing in different corners of the same piece of paper,” says Siza. “It's a work of friendship and amusement. It's like a holiday, because one of the attractions of this work is that there is no bureaucracy, no need to know about regulations. It was very free.”

The influence of Arup's Cecil Balmond is there to see in the broken up geometry of the structure, and the fact that the whole thing stands up. On closer inspection, the timber grid appears to be warped out of shape and the lines of the timber elements are staggered zig-zags, as if it the building had been shaken by an earthquake. Despite the basic construction methods, the pavilion is the result of serious computing power and precision engineering. Every piece of wood and every pane of polycarbonate is different.

Had they been allowed inside the pavilion, the sceptics of Kensington Gardens might have been won over by Siza and Souto de Moura's artistry. In contrast to the exterior, the space inside is unexpectedly grand and yet almost ecclesiastically tranquil. The semi-opaque panels give the ceiling a luminous glow, and the leaves of the surrounding trees are silhouetted on the walls. A solar-powered light in the centre of each roof panel turns on automatically at dusk, but because each panel is differently orientated, the lights come on one by one. And as with Siza's other works, the pavilion is acutely sensitive to its surroundings. The walls appear to bow outwards in deference to the surrounding trees, and openings at the corners neatly frame young trees and views across the park. The decision to leave the bottom metre or so of the structure open means that visitors sitting at the cafe tables (designed by Siza, of course) will be able to see out across the park.

Siza has yet to visit the site, though. Souto de Moura came and took notes and photos from which they worked out the design. But Siza is not offended that people have likened his structure a giant armadillo. “Actually, I think it is my fault,” he says. “In the beginning when describing it, I said it was like an animal with its feet in the ground. It wasn't in our minds to make it look like an animal, but in the end we are always confronted with nature and with natural forms. Forms are not only defined by complex mathematics and proportions, we can look around and we have trees and dogs and people. It's like an alphabet of proportions and relations that we use. I think that's one of the tasks of the architect: to make things look simple and natural which in fact are complex.”

By Fernando Guerra

Designed in Portugal, engineered in England, fabricated in Germany using innovative Finnish technology, built, with lashings of Anglo-Saxon enterprise, in London and all done in six months without a penny of subsidy: if Tony Blair wants a symbol of the New Europe to mark his presidency of the European Union, he had better claim this year's Serpentine Pavilion in Kensington Gardens as his own.

If all had gone well, this year would have seen the Serpentine Gallery swallowed up by the radical Dutch practice MVRDV's mountain. But that proved one leap too far. Cost and, one suspects, such practical issues as fire escapes, intervened, so although technically still a work “in progress”, it was shelved.

Instead, Julia Peyton-Jones, the Serpentine's director, turned last December to the magisterial 72-year-old Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza and his long-term collaborator Eduardo Souto de Moura to come up with this year's pavilion.

Siza is one of the grand old men of European architecture, best known for crisp white buildings such as the Museu Serralves in Porto, the church of Sta Maria at Marco de Canavezes, and the wonderful Portuguese Pavilion at the Lisbon Expo of 1998, with its hanging concrete “veil”.

Souto de Moura, who is 53, worked for Siza for five years before setting up on his own, but they still share the same building and occasionally collaborate on projects such as the Lisbon Pavilion.

And there is a third figure to throw into the mix - the engineer Cecil Balmond, deputy chairman of Arup, who worked with Siza and Souto de Moura on the Portuguese Pavilion and has been the éminence grise behind all the Serpentine Pavilions, making sure that these small but complex buildings can actually stand up.

The brief is simple: a pavilion that can be used by the cramped Serpentine Gallery as a café for the summer by day and a place for parties and events by night. But the aim is much more ambitious: to create an instant architectural exhibition as substantial and satisfying as any show within the Serpentine. Architecture is notoriously difficult to turn into an exhibition, so why not call in architects who have never built in London to design a temporary building instead?

The last pavilion, the ageing Niemeyer's small but monumental structure, was a built retrospective, a summation of key ideas from a career that has lasted more than 70 years. Those expecting something similar from Siza are in for a surprise.

Instead of a highly sophisticated exploration of the ideals of classic white modernism like the Museu Serralves, this year's pavilion is unprecedented in his work, a billowing lattice-like timber structure, filled in with polycarbonate panels, that resembles nothing so much as a “tortoise”, the instant defence that Roman legionaries created by locking their shields together.

When I met Siza and Souto de Moura at the pavilion, fresh from the airport, it became clear that what had driven the design was the site, particularly the two handsome oak trees that sail over the pavilion, which Siza described as like a sculpture, and which form an anchor for the building.

The parameters were simple: the two trees, the bulk of the Serpentine Gallery and the lawn in-between, which is embraced by curving paths. From this came the idea of a rectangular structure pushed out of shape by the trees - the timber supports almost seem to shy away from the branches - with the wall towards the Serpentine Gallery curving to respect the shape of the lawn.

The first discussion with Cecil Balmond brought up the question of whether the structure should have a refined, almost “high-tech” feel (like all the preceding pavilions) or be something more vernacular. Despite their long-term interest in clean white lines, both Siza and Souto de Moura have always had a fascination with local materials such as timber, masonry and ceramic tiles, so they chose to take the vernacular route. (Siza explained that the result was partly inspired by English half-timbered structures, but with a strongly Japanese touch.)

The structure is entirely constructed out of an innovative, strong laminated timber, Laminated Veneer Lumber, made by Finnforest in Finland, cut from great sheets into small planks outside Munich, stained to match the oak trees and bring out the grain and put together like a giant flatpack in London.

Choosing the cladding was the other key decision. Should this be fabric or a fixed cladding? Siza wanted it to be light but solid, so he chose translucent polycarbonate panels, carefully arranged so that when you stand up your eye is caught by the structure, but when you sit down you can look through the open trellis to the park.

Each of the panels in the roof is penetrated by a ventilation cowl holding a battery-operated, solar-powered light, which illuminates the interior by night and gives it an ethereal glow from outside - all with the added benefit that there is no need for any cabling to spoil the lines.

The result is a chunky, engaging building that is definitely more challenging than any of the other pavilions so far. Instead of the spatial pyrotechnics of Hadid and Libeskind, the thrilling geometry of Ito or the satisfying inevitability of Niemeyer, Siza and Souto de Moura's pavilion takes time to reveal its qualities. But sit under the restless grid, at chairs and tables designed by Siza, watching the life of the park go by and the subtleties of the building slowly reveal themselves.

Architecture, particularly temporary architecture, should not necessarily be an instant wow. Sometimes it should require us to delve deeper, to think a little harder, and that is what Siza and Souto de Moura make us do.

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Rua D.João de Castro 210
Porto
Portugal

Alvaro Siza 1997

The new Museum of Contemporary Art is in the Quinta de Serralves, a property comprising a large house surrounded by gardens, woods and meadows, commissioned in the 1930s to serve as a private residence and later used as an exhibition space. The museum develops a new nucleus on the grounds of an existing orchard and vegetable garden, which have now been transplanted to another area of the property, and absorbs most of the functions previously performed by the main house. The site at the edge of the garden and near an existing boundary wall was chosen due to the proximity of the main avenue, ensuring easy public access, and the absence of large trees, which otherwise would have had to be destroyed.

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A roughly north-south longitudinal axis serves as the framework for the project. Two asymmetrical wings branch off to the south from the main body of the museum, creating a courtyard between them, while another courtyard is formed at the northern end between the L-shaped volume of the auditorium and the public entrance atrium.

The volume of the main building is divided between exhibition spaces, offices and storage, an art library and a restaurant with adjoining terrace. The auditorium and bookstore have independent entrances and may be used when the museum itself is closed. The exhibition area is composed of several rooms, connected by a large U-shaped gallery - it occupies most of the entrance level, extending to the lower floor in one of the wings. The large doors that separate the different exhibition spaces and partition walls can be used to create different routes or organize separate exhibitions simultaneously. These spaces are ventilated through horizontal openings in the false walls, while natural light is brought in through a series of skylights above suspended ceilings.

As in most of Siza's buildings, the furniture and fittings were also designed by the architect, including lighting fixtures, handrails, doorknobs, and signage. Materials include hardwood floors and painted walls in gesso with marble skirting in the exhibition halls, and marble floors in the foyers and wet spaces. Exterior walls are covered with stone or stucco. These abstract and mute white walls with occasional openings, which frame unexpected views of the garden, create a minimal intrusion into the landscape, while the granite-clad base follows the variations of the ground along a slope descending by several meters from north to south.

A landscaping project is currently being completed which creates a variety of new gardens in the immediate vicinity of the museum that blend into the existing park zone and help to graft the new construction to its natural surroundings.

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Rua Boa Nova - Matosinhos
4450-705 MATOSINHOS
Leça da Palmeira
Portugal

Alvaro Siza 1963

The Boa Nova Tea House was designed following a competition held in 1956 by the city council and won by Portuguese architect Fernando Tavora. After choosing a site on the cliffs of the Matosinhos seashore, Tavora turned the project over to his collaborator, Alvaro Siza. One of Siza's first built projects, it is significant that the restaurant is not far from the town of Matosinhos where the architect grew up, and set in a landscape that he was intimately familiar with. It was still possible in Portugal of the 1960s to make architecture by working in close contact with the site, and this work, much like the Leça Swimming Pools of 1966, is about 'building the landscape' of this marginal zone on the Atlantic - through a careful analysis of the weather and tides, existing plant life and rock formations, and the relationship to the avenue and city behind.

Removed from the main road by some 300 meters, the building is accessed from a nearby parking lot through a system of platforms and stairs, eventually leading to an entry sheltered by a very low roof and massive boulders characteristic to the site. This architectural promenade, a sinuous path clad in white stone and lined by painted concrete walls, presents several dramatic perspectives of the landscape as it alternatively hides and reveals the sea and the horizon line.

The restaurant's west-facing dining room and tea room are set just above the rocks, and joined by a double-height atrium and stair, with the entrance being on a higher level. The kitchen, storage and employee areas are half-sunken in the back of the building, marked only by a narrow window and a mast-like chimney clad in colored tiles. Forming a butterfly in plan, the two primary spaces open gently around the sea cove, their exterior walls following the natural topography of the site. The tea room has large windows above an exposed concrete base, while the dining room is fully glassed, leading to an outdoor plateau. In both rooms, the window frames can slide down beneath the floor, leaving the long projecting roof eaves in continuum with the ceiling. This creates an amazing effect in the summer, when it is possible to walk out from the dining room directly to the sea, as the building seems to disappear.

As in other early works of the architect, a diversity of materials come into play: white-plastered masonry walls, exposed concrete pillars on the west-facing facade, and an abundant use of the red African 'Afizelia' wood in the cladding of the walls, ceilings, frames and furniture. On the outside the facing of the projecting eaves is made with long wood boards trimmed with copper flashing. The roof is a concrete slab covered by Roman red terracotta tiles and by a wood suspended ceiling.

Legend has it that a few years ago, during a heavy storm, the sea came crashing through both rooms of the tea house, taking with it furniture and destroying most of the interior. The Boa Nova was fully restored in 1991, with all of its original characteristics being preserved.

The Armanda Passos House
Álvaro Siza

The Interiorized House

Amidst horizontal and vertical planes conditioned by the contours of the terrain, memories of Zen gardens and fire signs, the Armanda Passos house has gently risen – the most recent project by Álvaro Siza in Porto.

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Designed to be lived in at all hours of the day, when light seeks out shade, and shade opens itself to the light, the house-atelier, commissioned by painter Armanda Passos from the most international name in Portuguese architecture, allows the complicity naturally created by the architect with his work to transpire at each step. This is the second dwelling designed by Siza in Porto. The first was built in the 1960's on the Avenida dos Combatentes. Between project and construction, via the city council approval process, three years passed (2002-2005). The project included the demolition of the existing house and the construction of three volumes, interlinked and joined in a way that defines two patio-gardens, interspersed by existing trees. There is even a wide garden between the border wall of the avenue's pavement and the front of the building. Additional trees were planted. It is claimed that they establish a bridge between East and West. In an interview with Arquitectura & Construção, Álvaro Siza discusses the completed project:

The Armanda Passos house was built for a friend…
Now she is, at the time we did not have such a close friendship. Afterwards we did, because the building of a home is a great story.

How did you face the challenge?
She is sensitive person with a great attachment to the house and I created, in a special way, not only comfort but also the whole aspect of association with the garden, intimacy, quality of light, etc. It is very pleasing for an architect to have a client that has these requirements in terms of quality.

What about the project?
The project assigned to me includes a residential part with a multifunctional living room that can be projected/extended from a stage that can be raised to varying elevations. The residence and the multifunctional living room are interconnected by a transitional space: an atrium. After that there is an atelier with Northern exposure.

The roof of the atelier has two gradients like in old factories and warehouses, which give it a special light….
Exactamente. The so-called shade? It has a high, northern light.

In the interior, you experimented a lot with different volumes…
The ground area is small and I wanted to take as much advantage of the garden as possible in order to avoid creating an isolated mass. As there were three functionally well-defined parts to the project, two of which were connected and one which could function independently, I used this to organise the patios. There is a patio between the multifunctional living room and the residence to the west; there is another next to the driveway; and there is a space in front of the multifunctional living room, between it and a transitional wall that stands between the street and the front of the house. So there are three quite differentiated spaces.

The house is slightly lower than its neighbours. Was this intentional?
All of the neighbouring houses have two floors. In this one, the part most visible from the street is only one storey, though it is taller than average. It is intentional because it was possible to connect the three volumes and thus create patios on all three sides. The two-storey volume and the taller volume, because of the shades, are in the back. The fact that there is an open space in front and on the two sides allowed for the planting of trees and the creation of a certain intimacy in the exterior areas of the lot. As the neighbouring houses are two-storey, if this one were as well, it would feel narrow. In this way, a sensation of generous, roomy interior space is possible.

At the same time, the house contains elements characteristic of the 1950's –such as the brises-soleil- as well as presenting an eastern spirit. There's an understanding here between East and West…
There is no doubt that in traditional Japanese architecture –as beautiful as it is- there is this concern. An articulation exists that organizes well-defined exterior spaces –the patios- and allows for quite significant communication that at the same time is intimate with the interior. The famous Zen gardens of Osaka are articulate constructions that connect and depart from the geometric spaces where they create marvellous garden compositions. In this case, the way in which the garden is laid out is not related to the Zen gardens, but a feeling of intimacy exists. As the house does not contain too much glass, it benefits from the communication between the interior and exterior in the large windows that frame these exterior spaces.

The brises-soleil repel the light and cast a shadow on the ground like an architectural memory. The gutters also mark the limits of the brises-soleil on the ground.
The brises-soleil are there to provide protection from the sun and the heat and also create a transition between the interior and exterior.

At a certain point, the volumes almost touch at certain angles…
Sí. The bodies of the atelier together with the veranda and the residence's brise-soleil almost touch. They are three well-defined structures, but are intended to form a whole. Hence the proximity of elements of one structure with another to establish transitional spaces and unify the ensemble.

There are details that are almost indicative of elements. One recalls an outline of the veranda that functions like an arrow pointing out a tree or a detail of the wall. Thus, the architecture itself follows a path…
It follows the treatment of the garden. The areas where the trees and bushes are planted are based on providing solar protection. For example, the west-facing multifunctional living room window has a brise-soleil. First of all, because the brise-soleil protects the window from the south when the sun is high in the sky. When the sun is low, it doesn't help so much. Other systems have to be used, like the brise-soleil. When the sun sets, even the neighbouring house provides significant protection. Where the sun could enter diagonally and create discomfort during the summer, an evergreen tree was planted. Next to the window sash of the large window on the western side of the multifunctional living room, there is a deciduous tree because in the winter the house is more comfortable with direct sunlight. During the warm season the house is shaded.

Is it a four-season home?
Sí, lo es. These are elementary things that both spontaneous and erudite architecture have always used in the mutual relationship between nature and man-made construction.

At the top of the stairs, the light that enters through the skylight signals the steps as if showing the way. It is a repeating gesture…
I don't really like violent light and curtains are necessary, but I also like it when a house can stand completely open, when there are transparencies. Controlling light is not only done through curtains, but also through brises-soleil which break the intensity of the light and the location and orientation of the windows themselves, the end goal being thermal comfort. Metering light intensity was something that old houses did, particularly those in the south, of Arab tradition. Patios with very intense light, porticos that create a transition to the interior, then more broken light and even shady areas –they are necessary for comfort.

Your houses have this tradition…
I don't recall having designed an entirely glass house. Not only because of comfort and to not have to resort to mechanical means, but because I think a house needs to contain different environments. Some are more relaxing and serene, others are more extroverted. A house is made up of these variations. It is apparently simple because many things take place inside a home.

In the interior of the atelier, the light from the shades almost give one a sense of looking through the windows of a cathedral with a rising light….
The intention was not to create a religious environment, but, as the house belongs to a painter, special care is needed with the light in order to create good conditions for painting as well as maintenance. Not too long ago, Armanda Passos contacted me, because, although the shades face north, in the summer there is an hour when the sun enters. Not only can it be bothersome, it can damage the paintings, and therefore we are going to install outdoor blinds so that during these few days, the rays are blocked.

The atelier's windows give the illusion that they can be pulled down. Almost opening the entire sky…
That doesn't happen in this case. The windows run all the way to the floor, but they have panes that open. The larger parts are sliding doors and in certain cases move as one piece. There is no crossbar. It is an entire piece of glass that runs inside the wall.

In general, the window and door planes are well defined. Some open broadly, others narrowly. As if you were playing with the volumes in a harmonic game…
It's a game that requires great effort [laughs], but there is a dimension of pleasure in this effort because the possibility of working for someone who asks for and demands quality is not frequent –whether it is a public or private work.

Everything has been geared toward the client…
Yes, she was extremely demanding with regards to the quality of the construction –which is very good. It's not enough for the architect to demand quality in construction. The person paying for the building who demands quality has a different impact. Often, who's paying is not so interested in quality. This demand for quality is considered to be the whim of an annoying architect.

Do the lateral walls that separate the house from its neighbours have different heights for security?
Sí. The walls were utilised. On one of the sides the wall was raised and the neighbours did not raise any problems. The other side was not even touched.

What materials were used for the house?
It's traditional from a materials point of view. The walls and outer shell are reinforced concrete. In my experience, it is very difficult to mix materials. Any minor error during installation can lead to the appearance of cracks. All of the houses I've done in reinforced concrete are in excellent shape. Even the one I did in the 1960's is concrete and it has never had any problems with cracks, moisture, etc. The supporting wall is in reinforced concrete that is duplicated outside with a wall in stuccoed brick. Between the two is a ventilation space containing thermal isolation material. This means the wall is 45cm thick, including inner and outer stucco. The advantages are the isolation. On the exterior, besides the stucco, there is a granite groove to guard against ground moisture. Most of the periphery contains a coarse gravel band with a drain underneath, precisely so moisture does not affect the stucco.

And with regard to the wood used?
All the wood is painted, the interior and exterior frames, except for the flooring, which is of restored old Scots pine, and the stairs. In areas with water, marble was installed. The kitchen was especially designed for the house, although today it is in production at the factory that built it. Countertops are in marble. The rest is lacquered wood.

Are the window frames made of wood?
Sí. The outer part has an aluminium panel that holds the glass in place and also protects the paint. It's Iroko wood, treated so that it can handle the paint.

What are the roofing materials?
Earth and vegetation. It is a flat roof in waterproofed concrete and immediately on top is a 40cm layer of soil for the grass.

And the roof of the atelier?
It's covered with zinc.

The shades provide a very large movement to the entire roof…
Yes, they increase slightly from front to back so that it gently conforms with the street. The house almost goes unnoticed. The recessed part contains two floors. The atelier has higher ceilings because Armanda builds large canvases and really needs the space and breathing room. All of this takes place in the back, cut off by the trees. So, it's not an exhibitionistic house. It's more interiorized.

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New Iberê Camargo Foundation headquarters open its doors

The new building of the Iberê Camargo Foundation is sited in a narrow plot, nearby the Guaíba River. The museum is mainly defined by its vertical volume where the exhibition rooms are located, from which are raised suspended, undulating arms in white concrete – somewhat resonant of the iconic concrete reveries of Lina Bo Bardi. This is the first project by Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza built in Brazilian territory and was honoured by the Venice Architecture Biennale with the Golden Lion award in 2002.

A large exhibit of work by the painter Iberê Camargo, displayed in the building's nine art galleries, marks Porto Alegre's inauguration of the first project by Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza in Brazil

The Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza returned to Porto Alegre on the beginning of this year for one of his final visits to his first building designed in Brazil, which will house more than half a century's output of paintings, drawings, gouaches and prints by Iberê Camargo, who is considered to be one of Brazil's most important artists of the 20th century.

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The architect was in the state capital to concern himself in the final details of the project, such as the development and production of the building's furnishings, which he has also designed. The Portuguese architect is meticulous about every detail of the building, believing that harmony is fundamental in a work. “Although each detail is important, the governing feature is the totality. Equilibrium is the underlying quality for architecture,” he says.

The new Iberê Camargo Foundation headquarters opens in the end of may and is intended to preserve the collection of more than four thousand works by the master of Brazilian expressionism and to be a major center for discussion, research and exhibition of modern and contemporary art, placing Porto Alegre and Brazil on the route of the world's major centers of culture.

In 2002, The project won the biggest international architecture prize – The Golden Lion Award – at the 2003 Venice Architecture Biennial. The maquette toured to the main state capitals in Brazil, together with a touring exhibition of Iberê's work in 2003 -2004. It has also been to the Milan Triennale at the Museum of Fine Art in Bordeaux, and is included in a touring exhibition of Álvaro Siza's work which is traveling the world.

Construction budget of the new headquarters for the Iberê Camargo Foundation, whose president is Jorge Gerdau Johannpeter, is 30 million reais. Building started in July 2003 on a 8,250-m2 site facing the Guaíba (Av. Padre Cacique 2,000 donated by the city council and sponsored by Grupo Gerdau, Petrobras, RGE, Vonpar, Itaú, De Lage Landen and Instituto Camargo Correa. RGE, Grupo Gerdau, Petrobras, Camargo Correa, De Lage Landen and Vonpar. Building is following a precise schedule, which concludes with the opening of the headquarters, forecast for November 2007, and a major exhibition of the painter, who is recognized as one of the major Brazilian artists of the 20th century.

The building will put Porto Alegre on the map of important centers of modern and contemporary art in the country. It has nine exhibition rooms, spread across the three upper floors. The main access level will house the reception, café, cloakrooms, cultural shop and a massive atrium which will provide views of the upper floors and will also be used for exhibitions.

The basement area contains all the building infrastructure, including parking for 100 vehicles, a 125-seater auditorium with cinema facilities, Iberê's print studio and rooms for courses and workshops. It will also contain a reference, research and information center for the huge collection of 4,000 of the artist's works, with a specialized library, database, video library and reading room, intended for national and international researchers and publishing work.

The basement also contains the utilities area and the technical reserve, used for housing the air-conditioning system and the sewer treatment network. Access to the car park is through an underpass beneath Avenida Padre Cacique, connecting both sides of the road to facilitate visitor entry and exit. All the entrances to the new Iberê Camargo Foundation headquarters also meet the requirements of people with special needs. Ramps and elevators have been designed to offer ease of access from garage level upwards.

Innovative technology and ecological trails

The building for the new Iberê Camargo Foundation headquarters is an international landmark in architecture and engineering solutions. One of the design's innovative features is its reinforced-concrete construction throughout, without the use of bricks or sealing elements, forming curved outlines like a great sculpture to feature the form and movement of the ramps built on all floors. It is the only building in the country to be built entirely from white concrete, which dispenses with painting and finishing and also brings it a feeling of lightness. All the power and service ducts are inside the walls, insulated with fiberglass, allowing the installation of permanent or temporary dimmable sockets and lighting anywhere in the rooms.

Indoor temperature and humidity are managed by an intelligent monitoring control to ensure protection of the collection. The air-conditioning system will produce ice at night, when electricity costs are lower, for cooling the space during the day, reducing operational costs.

The design devotes special attention to the environment. A sewage treatment station will treat all the solid and liquid waste on site. The treated water from this process will be used for irrigating the surrounding green space. In partnership with the Gaia Foundation, special care is being given to the 16,000-m2 native forest behind the building. A 200-meter path has been defined in the forest to allow visitors to link art with nature.

Álvaro Siza, an international reference

Álvaro Siza is one of the most important contemporary architects in the world, with work in several different countries. His designs include the Museu Serralves in Oporto, and the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, in Santiago de Compostela. The new Iberê Camargo Foundation Headquarters will be his first project in Brazil. Siza was chosen after consultation which considered the innovative nature of the architectural plan and the international standing of its architect.

The architect is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science and Honorary Fellow of Royal Institute of British Architects, the Academie d´Architecture de France and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. He won the Pritzker Award, from the Hyatt Foundation in Chicago, considered the Nobel of the arts, in 1992, for his oeuvre. Siza has played an active role in the most important architectural works in the world, including the Barcelona Olympiad and Expo 98 in Lisbon. He was part of the team that restored the Chiado, the old part of Lisbon attacked by fire.

More about the project

The project won the biggest international architecture prize – The Golden Lion Award – at the 2003 Venice Architecture Biennial. The maquette toured to the main state capitals in Brazil, together with a touring exhibition of Iberê's work in 2003 -2004. It has also been to the Milan Triennale at the Museum of Fine Art in Bordeaux, and is included in a touring exhibition of Álvaro Siza's work which is traveling the world.

30,000 cubic meters of earth were excavated and donated to the Municipal Highway Works Department (SMOV) to be used for paving the city's poorer settlements.

Excavation was carried out without using explosives. In partnership with the a Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), a splitting plan was found in which the rocks were broken down, allowing them to be removed with pneumatic equipment. This enabled the builder, Camargo Corrêa to complete the predicted 12-month process of earth removal four months early.

There has been considerable concern with the surroundings since the start, and the Iberê Camargo Foundation has therefore proposed to correct the distorted bend in the Avenida Padre Cacique to increase road safety near the site.

Construction is generating 100 direct and 200 indirect jobs.

The project has been visited by more than 3000 architecture and engineering students from the whole country.

The building saves 30% to 40% more energy than conventional buildings.

Chronology:

1995 – Creation of the Iberê Camargo Foundation

1996 – SIte for building the new Foundation headquarters donated by the Rio Grande do Sul government

1998/June – Selection of the architect

2000/May – First site visit by the architect, Álvaro Siza

2001/November – Approval of viability study by Porto Alegre City Council

2002/June – Laying the Foundation Stone

2002/September – Design wins the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Architecture Biennial

2003/July- Building commences

- Sponsorship signed with Camargo Corrêa

2003/December – Sponsorship signed with Petrobras

2004/February – Sponsorship signed with Vonpar

2004/March – Sponsorship signed with RGE

2004/December – Conclusion of Phase 1 – Underground Area

2005/Outubro – Conclusion of Phase 2 – Concrete Structure

2 half of 2007 – Conclusion of Phase 3  and inauguration - Finishing, thermal insulation, electrical, plumbing and complementary installations, decoration and furnishing

1 half of 2008 – Finishing and furnishing

Construction phases:

Phase 1 (basement): Infrastructure: car park, auditorium, print studio, rooms for courses and workshops, documentation and research center, utilities area and technical reserve.

Phase 2: nine exhibition rooms, atrium, reception, café, cloakroom, cultural shop

Phase 3 (final): Finishing, thermal insulation electrical, plumbing and complementary installations, decoration and furnishing

Inauguration:  End of may 2008

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Architectural Office
Rua do Aleixo 53, 2º
Porto
Portugal

Alvaro Siza Vieira 1998

The office of Alvaro Siza is located in a five-story building overlooking the Douro River in Porto, between the historical center and the Atlantic ocean. In the 19th century this was a small fishing village on the outskirts of the city, and in many ways the place still retains its character, with boats moored in the harbor, fish being sold on the streets, and a ferry crossing the river every few minutes to the neighboring village of Afurada.

In plan, the building is a U-shape, opening to the south. It occupies the center of the lot and maintains the setbacks required by local building codes. The first floor, which was initially intended for commercial purposes, is partially underground and covers almost the entire site. It receives light and ventilation from Rua do Aleixo and via two patios which are at the same level as the interior spaces. The service facilities and the stairs, which provide access to all levels and a roof terrace, are located on the northern side of the building.

Siza shares the Aleixo office building with several other architects, who also contributed to its design. The basement floor has been partially given over to the archive, while the terrace was intended to house a cafe. Each floor, with space for 25 or 30 people, is occupied by either one or two offices, and apparently the somewhat random configuration of window openings is a result of each of the architect's needs. The1.30 x 1.80m pivoting windows, sheltered on the eastern facade by horizontal concrete awnings, provide carefully framed views of the surrounding landscape - the steep hillside to the east, the river Douro and the old city center beyond. The soft light produced in the interior, the constant presence of water, and the building's dominant position in the neighborhood, which helps to cut out the noise of people and traffic below, create a peaceful working atmosphere in the office.

The building structure is in reinforced concrete, its outer walls covered with polystyrene foam insulation and treated with an application of ash-colored stucco. The materials in the interior include white stucco, wood furniture and window frames, linoleum flooring, and marble floors and tile in the wet areas and stairwell.