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Av. Dr. Manuel Pereira Soares 10 4630

Marco de Canaveses Portugal

The Church for Marco of Canaveses, is only a part of a religious complex that foresees an auditorium, the catechesis school and the house for the parish priest. The Santa Maria Church in Marco de Canavezes is part of an overall complex that, together with a planned Parish Center, will form a small urban square.It was the parish priest Father Nuno Higino’s personal decision to call on Siza, and to invest himself fully in this very ambitious project.
The proposed plan by Alvaro Siza, with the church playing a central role, will ensure that the other buildings will be in concordance with the pre-existing scale of the neighbourhood. The façade (17.5 x 17.5 square meter ) is in three sections with two projecting towers. The 10 meter high temporary grey steel doors will eventually be replaced by bronze doors. “The visit to the place already chosen had disturbed myself deeply: it was a very difficult place, with great quota differences, lofty to a highway with a lot of traffic. As if it was not enough, that area was marked by buildings of terrible quality.

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The construction of this parochial center is also the construction of a place, in substitution of a scarp very accentuated. The church pronounces in two levels: a superior, of the assembly, and an inferior, of the mortuary chapel. As they show the access courses to the two quotas, they are decisively two spaces with different characteristics. The mortuary chapel is almost the foundation of the own church: it creates a stable quota, it fastens, so that the church can lean on. Besides, with their granite walls and the monastery, it establishes the distance in relation to the highway. This inhabited platform owed therefore to appear as “built nature.” But it is also very important the placement, in face of the main access, of the parochial center and of the parish priest’s residence. These volumes define a great “U” that opposes to a small “u” formed by the two towers, the one of the steeple and the one of the baptistery. It appears, like this, the necessary space for the great vertical volume of the facade. At the same time, it becomes possible a relationship with the constructions of small climbs that surround this acropolis. Like this, the churchyard is demarcated.

The initial reference was a construction that already existed, a residence for the third age, of a correct and ordinated architecture , located in the superior quota of the scarp and with a very significant extension in relation to the highway. Starting from this new level, everything else went pronouncing, resisting the complexity of the existent constructions and allowing the creation of a churchyard finally, open on the beautiful worth of Marco de Canaveses. Let us hope that new constructions don’t come her to lean on the terrible ones that already exist and stay opened, that is essential.

The great door of the church, with its ten meters of height, should exist in relation to this vast view. The entrance is made, usually, through a glass door, under the right tower, while the big door is only open in special circumstances. After the lateral movement of entrance, the perception of a low and long window, on the right side, that allows the view to the exterior. In that instant, if it doesn’t seat the diffuse light that arrives of the high openings in the wall curves and sloping to the, left: They see each other, still and immediately, it is worth it and the constructions in front. The window contradicts the withdrawal atmosphere that are habituated at a church and for this reason it generated controversy. The same with the placement of the statue of the Virgin, that is almost as high as the followers and is not agrees in pedestal. Though surprisingly, a theologian, very dear in Porto eulogized the respect for the actuais beginnings of the liturgy, that accentuate the function of mediation of the Virgin between God and the men and by consequence among men. Is facto the statue of Our Lady has an intermediate position: put in the extremity of the window and submited to a very intense light, it introduces the space of the altar, that who enters doesn’t notice immediately. Three steps elevate the plan of the celebration, that ended with two doors, for which enters clear light, filtered by a high chimney. This disposition dialogues with the light bath on the curve forms of the lateral limits of the apse and on the space of the church in general.

The natural illumination varies with the time, depending on the position of the sun, and it is going from the projection of the drawing of the ray of light to the silence of the aspersion: a great interval, rigorous and tangible. The assembly of all of the elements is, evidently, coherent. Though this order, characterized by some existent contradictions, it was built in a slow and laborious way. There were not pré-defined ideas, given by priori. What is now readable is the result of the decantation of certain reflections of the space, today so difficult, of the church. This difficulty is because of the a series of important alterations in the liturgy: think of the celebration of the mass, that now finds the priest turned to the assembly. Such a change transforms the carácter of the celebration entirely and it annuls the sense of traditional space organization, in their several forms and in its slow and permanent evolution. At the same time, this new condition doesn’t justify the interpretation of the church as auditorium. Almost all of the recent projects doesn’t deepen this aspect properly. It was indispensable, consequently, a reflection of the conditions, we could say functional, of the space of the church. However the discussions with the theologians put in evidence the contradiction that involves the several interpretations today. And so it is an unstable program, still to be solved. Though it was evident the need to create a projection of the celebrant, a communion with the assembly, without, unavoidably, if it created its own distance of any auditorium. For this reason I proposed, for the apse, curvatures no longer concave but convex. It is also in this case not a pré-conceived idea, immediately derived of the variation of the liturgy: it is an intuition, born of a series of demands, among the ones which the need to conserve the relationship among the objects and the movements that are part of the celebration.

In the space around the altar a series of elements that participate in the ritual exist: the pulpit, the own altar, the tabernacle, the chairs of the celebrants and the cross, the ones which slowly took form and they defined the space later, in the respect for the movements, pré-established, of the mass. Like this the church acquired form as a sculpture in negative, in which it went establishing continuity relationships and tension among several parts. The plan of the course that, in the inferior floor, links the exterior to the mortuary chapel is the result of the study of what happens in these spaces. It was decisive, in the reality, the knowledge of the meaning of the funeral in the area of Minho.

When I visited the wonderful crematory cemetery of the Dutch arquitecto Pieter Oud, I had the possibility to attend a funereal cerimony I verified that the atmosphere and the relationship of the people are decisively different from what happens in Portugal.

Here, during the funeral, the family and the close friends are very close to the deceased, while many other people, like neighbors stayed at a certain distance, naturally with smaller pain and emotion. It became necessary a sequence of spaces with different characteristics.

Also for this reason I thought of a monastery, in which the people would smoke, talk or eventually, why not, talk of businesses: it is a way to react to that certain discomfort at the encounter, so direct, with the problem of death. This reacção to the pain is not, for instance, in the funerals in Holland, during which it dominates the total silence. The monastery is followed by a first gallery, quite wide, marked by the entrance door, the wall curves and goes down by the apse. Few meters ahead it open up, to the left, another gallery that has, in the bottom, a vertical window from where you can see the highway again. I don’t know what is the connection between this window and the horizontal window of the superior level, but I have faith that the vertical position of the one that is in bass, in the embasament is owed in search of the necessary sensation of the weight, of the gravity. The course finishes at the mortuary chapel, that communicates with the first gallery thanks to a horizontal window.

The people that are in the interior have, the perception of the ones that enter or leave, exactamente as it happens in the superior level, it finishes like an opening that allows the view of the monastery. One returns then, once again, to the starting point, with the noise of the water of a source. In the yard is imposed with private relief the presence of a stairway, that leads again to the superior level. In this project, the unit is checked by the courses that finish in the starting point, circularly. The final sensation is really of a closed place, well delimited.

It always impressed me the obsessive invitation to the meditation that we feel in most of the churches. In fact the openings are frequently put to such height to doesn’t allow look at the exterior, at the same time that the use of the stained glass windows eliminates the continuity and the transparency. ON the other hand, I think that the recent modifications in the liturgy contrast with this vision of closed and segregated space. When I began to study the program, I quickly understood the enormous reach of this rupture in the secular continuity of the tradition. Though I think that this aspect doesn’t have any parallel one in the real life of the Church, in the relationship between the church and the society. For this reason, and in spite of the necessary adaptations, I tried to preserve the continuity with the tradition. And so, observing the carácter of this church sincerely, it seems evident that its conception is substantially conservative. This intention emerges with clarity of the drawing of the plant that in fact expresses a rigid axialidade.

Contextualy, the verticality of the interior is very strong. In fact, in spite of the ship being ofasquare section, the articulation certain elements, such as the two openings behind the altar, it gives the sence of elevation. Several discussions would come to reinforce this continuity idea with the canonic espaciality . The theologians’ pieces of advice were constant and decisive. And so for instance, the baptistery, initially put beside the altar, was later deviated close to the entrance, so that announced the presence of the assembly. Besides, once of the procession of the celebrants has to travel the longitudinal axis of the church, it became necessary the presence of a door, in the wall it curves.

The ritual of the celebration demands, evidently, certain options in the treatment of the space and in the organization of the courses. On some of the interior walls tile was used. It was necessary a resistant baseboard, that obviated the problems of the cleaning and of the maintenance. In the first moment I had thought wasn’t the best about a covering in wood. But this choice soon I thought, because it would have annulled the verticality of the wall and overcoat because the reflection of the light would have been inadequate.Then I thought then about the tile that, produced artistically, conserves a surface slightly irregular; that allows peculiar reflexes of light, while the committees, that are left empty, manifest a sensitive presence.

The continuity with tow and the unit of the color is cut for that presence and for those reflexes. In a first phase, the tile flanked the whole church; then, the wall curves to arrive at the soil, the solution the problem of contact with the doors, was its limited use. One of the objectives that one could not abdicate consisted exactly in avoiding that the details were so evident that it competed with the structure of the space. I worked intensely in the relationship, encounter and transition of the materials. The tile has the function of solving the problem of the continuity, lessening the existent ruptures. The way to solve the problem of the continuity. Lessening the existent ruptures. The way which these three materials are linked - wood, tile and tow - is very special, and there are probably things, that I cannot describe, that appeared to me by the experience of the space, during the construction. In the chapel baptismal I have intention of drawing - inside the wall of the access - illustrations with about six meters of height, deformed according to the perspective. These characters, that together represent Christ’s baptismo, they are of a decisive importance, in this space exceptional, high and narrow, and they will be stylized in way the one that don’t result excessive. They will have a very strong presence, in a dark blue or in black, in way they emphasize her/it in the white tile. I already finished the drawings, but I didn’t have courage of giving begin to the accomplishment: I still have need of time.

The elements that should be drawn are still many.

The own cross was only put after the inauguration. In a first phase I had thought about a cross in wood, with a work of the outlines not very well defined and with volumes, that suggested Christ’s illustration. Then the drawing passed by many other phases, much more simplified, to define, finally, in a cross in that, in the encounter between vertical and horizontal, in the form of the vertical and in the vibrations of the wood, it is immediately evident the human presence. Now I want to cover it with a sheet of gold. The cross was put in a position sincerely gaged, close to the altar, and with light. The sheet gold will give, then, a larger dematerialization and, not demanding protagonism, will react imprevisivelmente with the space. Returning to the exterior, it is noticed a solid presence of the granite that, in this area, is one of the most important elements in the landscape, in the Nature and in the construction. In this project, the platform in granite appears as necessary counterpoint to the lightness and a great geometric conciseness of the white volume. In some hours of the day the church almost seems it dematerializes: some times it seems to disappear, other times in other occasions, it almost stands out violently. And so it was necessary a base that arrested it to the soil.

I had already been in Turkey, where I had studied the Pré-Columbus constructions, that evidently left the mark in certain volumes so accentuated.

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Via Panorámica
Porto
Portugal

Alvaro Siza 1995

The buildings of the Porto architecture school are set on a terraced site high above the estuary of the Douro River. This area is bordered on three sides by highway exits and by Campo Alegre street, and on the east by the former estate of Quinta da Povoa - the site of the architecture school before its expansion, which houses an earlier project by Siza - the first-year Carlos Ramos Pavilion.

Adjacent to the rusticated stone wall of the estate, the new faculty buildings stretch out along two vertices of a triangular site, enclosing between them a courtyard and central meeting space.

The main building on the northern side, a continuous volume which provides visual and acoustic protection from the road above, contains departmental offices, lecture halls, an auditorium and a library. Across the courtyard on the southern side are four individual studio towers, which are placed several meters apart to allow views to the river, their different heights and facade configurations conforming to variations in the program. These are connected to the main building by a series of corridors below the plaza.

The volumes of the main building and towers converge westward, where a cafe pavilion and outdoor terrace mark the entrance to the site. At the opposite end, the courtyard leads to an elevated grass platform, which in turn climbs up by a series of ramps and stairs to the former estate and garden, giving access through a narrow gate to the Carlos Ramos Pavilion. Set at the apex of the estate, this simple two-story structure is a succinct summary of the courtyard plan - a U-shaped classroom building with its two wings converging at a sharp angle. While its exterior facades are blind, the large pivoting windows facing the interior courtyard allow complete transparency between the classrooms on either side of the building, and views beyond to the garden and river.

The materials used in the interior of the more recent addition include exotic wood for the floors and wainscots, marble in the foyers and stairs, specially-designed furniture for the classrooms, auditorium and library, and skylights which draw natural light into the main spaces.

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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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.

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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 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.

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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.

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….
Exactly. 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…
Yes. 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?
Yes, it is. 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?
Yes. 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?
Yes. 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.

Casa Vieira de Castro perches halfway up at the southwestern end of a hill that overlooks the town of Vila Nova de Famalicao in Portugal. Previously intended as a sanatorium, the site has since been acquired by a local industrialist, who commissioned architect Alvaro Siza into developing it. The site now consists of a caretaker’s house, a two-storey family house and a swimming pool with a terraced garden. Recalling the traditional quinta, the Casa Vieira de Castro brims full of personal and regional identity, an architectural design that is truly trademark Siza.

Design of a house in northern Portugal makes use of existing groundworks on a site overlooking the local town.

Casa Vieira de Castro, by Alvaro Siza Arquitecto, is at the southwestern end of a terrace built halfway up the precipitous slope of a hill. It overlooks the industrial town of Vila Nova de Famalicao in northern Portugal, which lies about 18km south-west of Braga and has a history of watchmaking. The terrain is rocky and, with a relatively high rainfall in this part of the country, green with pine and oak. From this vantage there are southerly views over an immense landscape; conversely from the valley, the house can be seen from far away, an abstract form etched sharp and white against the forest.

The site, with an old house at the north-eastern end, had been destined for a sanatorium. When acquired by the client, who is a local industrialist, it contained only the foundations and plinth of the unbuilt sanatorium and a wide flight of shallow stone steps.

Development of the site was in three phases. The first task was to restore the old building, and convert it into a caretaker’s house. The second phase provided a two-storey family house for the client, built upon the existing plinth. The third, still to be completed, consists of constructing a swimming pool and creating a terraced garden out of land cleared of forest. Formal entrance to the estate is from the east, where you pass the caretaker’s house before ascending the steps. Service access and garaging is on the west.

In general the Portuguese have a strong sense of their own culture. For Siza the house is a repository of personal and regional identity, and bastion against the forces that try to render the world more uniform and impersonal.(1) Though couched in abstract form, the architecture of this house, like Siza’s other works, acknowledges tradition. The essential dignity of the building, deriving from proportion, composition and massing of its parts, and the way it is visibly set apart on the hillside, with a commanding view of the town, recalls the traditional quinta.

But it is the physical nature of the place with its stupendous prospect that is plainly at the heart of the design. The back of the house gives onto the sheltering belt of trees while the south is faceted and at almost every turn the interior is open to the landscape.

Seen from the west, the sequence of stepped and cut out volumes look to be carved from a single solid. This is partly because of the constant height of the building and uniformly white walls, and partly because the openings are relatively modest - as they are in traditional Portuguese houses. So white planes dominate. Approached from the east, where cut-outs are larger and volumes interleaved, the house has a less solid appearance. Projections and indentations of the plan at upper and lower levels have produced a fragment of a colonnade on the ground floor and first floor terraces like eyries.

Inside the kinetic envelope, the interior is conventionally and very comfortably arranged with the living quarters on the ground floor and four bedrooms above. Each of these has a bathroom and gives onto a terrace. Siza is in the process of designing the furniture throughout the house.

The further you get from the moderating influence of the Atlantic, the more severe the winters, and open fires are traditionally common in the region. On the ground floor, the massive form of a fireplace, handsomely lined with white marble and an architectural element in its own right, creates separation between double-height hall and dining room. and between hall and living room (for otherwise the spaces simply flow into one another).

The living room, which strikes you as a vessel of light, stretches eastwards from the fireplace towards the pool. It is illuminated along its considerable south-facing length by a narrow strip of sliding windows, the south light partly diffused by the colonnade. At the eastern end, big glass panels, set at a slight angle to the pool, allow you to look down the length of the terrace.

Finishes and materials are spartan: white walls hover above gleaming oak floors, with pale Portuguese marble being used for bathroom and kitchen floors and on walls. Internally, doors and window frames, simply designed, are wooden; externally openings are framed in painted metal or wood with door and window cills in marble. But the manner in which light and shadow have been treated as an almost tangible component of the architecture transforms mere austerity, giving edge and surface to form, and imbuing this house with a sense of spiritual enlightenment.

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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