Alvaro Siza

lvaro Joaquim de Melo Siza Vieira, GOSE, GCIH, is a Portuguese architect, born 25 June 1933 in
Matosinhos a small coastal town by Porto. He is internationally known as lvaro Siza (Portuguese
pronunciation: [avu siz]).

He graduated in architecture in 1955, at the former School of Fine Arts from the University of
Porto, the current FAUP - Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto. He completed
his first built work (four houses in Matosinhos) even before ending his studies in 1954, the same
year that he first opened his private practice in Porto. Siza Vieira taught at the school from 1966
to 1969, returning in 1976. In addition to his teaching there, he has been a visiting professor at
the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University; the University of Pennsylvania; Los Andes
University of Bogota; and the cole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne.[1]
Along with Fernando Tvora, he is one of the references of the Porto School of Architecture
where both were teachers. Both architects worked together between 1955 and 1958. Another
architect he has collaborated with is Eduardo Souto de Moura, e.g. on Portugal's flagship
pavilions at Expo '98 in Lisbon and Expo 2000 in Hannover, as well as on the Serpentine
Pavillon 2005. Siza's work is often described as "poetic modernism";[2] he himself has
contributed to publications on Luis Barragn.
Among Siza's earliest works to gain public attention was a public pool complex he created in the
1960s for Lea da Palmeira, a fishing town and summer resort north of Porto. Completed in
1966, both of the two swimming pools (one for children, the other for adults) as well as the
building with changing rooms and a cafe are set into the natural rock formation on the site with
unobstructed views of the sea.[3] In 1977, following the revolution in Portugal, the city
government of vora commissioned Siza to plan a housing project in the rural outskirts of the
town. It was to be one of several that he would do for SAAL (Servicio de Apoio Ambulatorio
Local), the national housing association, consisting of 1,200 low-cost, housing units, some onestory and some two-story row houses, all with courtyards.[1] He was also a member of the team
which reconstructed Chiado, the historic center of Lisbon destroyed by a fire in 1988.
Most of his best known works are located in his hometown Porto: the Boa Nova Tea House
(1963), the Faculty of Architecture (198793), and the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art
(1997). Since the mid-1970s, Siza has been involved in numerous designs for public housing,
public pools,[4] and universities. Between 1995 and 2009, Siza has been working on an
architecture museum on Hombroich island, completed in collaboration with Rudolf
Finsterwalder.[5] Most recently, he started coordinating the rehabilitation of the monuments and
architectonic heritage of Cidade Velha (Old Village) in Santiago, an island of Cape Verde.
In 2002, Siza was invited to serve as the first Mentor in Visual Arts in the inaugural cycle of the
Rolex Mentor and Protg Arts Initiative, an international philanthropic programme that pairs

masters in their disciplines with emerging talents for a year of one-to-one creative exchange. Out
of a very gifted field of candidates, Siza chose young Jordanian architect Sahel Al-Hiyari as his
protg. Other visual arts mentors for the initiative include David Hockney (2004), John
Baldessari (2006), Rebecca Horn (2008), Anish Kapoor (2010) and William Kentridge (2012).

Recognition
In 1987, the dean of Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Spanish architect Jos Rafael
Moneo, organized the first show of Sizas work in the United States.[6] In 1992, he was awarded
with the renowned Pritzker Prize for the renovation project that he coordinated in the Chiado
area of Lisbon, a historic commercial sector that was all but completely destroyed by fire in
August 1988.[1]
Other prizes include: The Golden Medal of The Superior Council of Arquitecture of the College
of Architects of Madrid in 1988; Mies van der Rohe Award for European Architecture, the
Prince of Wales Prize in Urban Design from Harvard University,[7] and the Alvar Aalto Medal in
1988; Portugal's National Prize of Architecture 1993; the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize by
the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Praemium Imperiale in 1998, the Wolf Prize
in Arts in 2001, the Urbanism Special Grand Prize of France 2005.
Siza's Iber Camargo Foundation in Porto Alegre, his first project built in Brazilian territory, was
honoured by the Venice Architecture Biennale with the Golden Lion award in 2002.[8] In 2007
the Brazilian Government awarded him the Cultural Merit Order Medal. More recently he was
awarded the RIBA's 2009 Royal Gold Medal[9] and the International Union of Architects' 2011
Gold Medal.[10]. Siza was awarded by the Venice Architecture Biennale (13th Edition) with the
Golden Lion for lifetime achievement (2012).
Siza was conferred the title of Honoris Causa Doctor by the following universities: Polytechnic
University of Valencia; cole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne; University of Palermo;
University Menendez Pelayo, in Santander; Universidad Nacional de Ingeniera in Lima, Peru;
University of Coimbra; Lusada University of Porto; Universidade Federal de Paraba; the
Universit degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Pollo delle Scienze e delle Tecnologie, in Naples;
the University of Architecture and Urbanism of Bucharest Ion Mincu, Romania (2005); and
the University of Engineering in Pavia, Italy (2007). He is a member of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences as well as Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, the
American Institute of Architects, the Acadmie d'Architecture de France and the European
Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Selected projects

1958-1963: Boa Nova restaurant in Matosinhos (Photos)

1958-1965: Quinta de Conceio swimming-pool (Photos)
1962: Miranda Santos House
1964: Beires House ("The Bomb House"), Pvoa de Varzim (Project)
1966: Lea da Palmeira swimming-pool

1981-1985: Avelino Duarte House Ovar

1987-1993: Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto
1988: Rebuilding plans of the Chiado neighbourhood after a fire, Lisbon
1991-2000: Residential buildings ("Siza tower"), Maastricht, Netherlands
1995: Library of the University of Aveiro
1997: Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art (Photos)
1998: Architectural Practice, Porto (Photos)
1998: Pavilion of Portugal in Expo'98, Lisbon
2002: Southern Municipal District Center, Rosario, Argentina (first work by Siza in
South America)
2005: Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2005
2007-2010 Mimesis Museum a Paju Book City, Seul), south corea.
2008: Iber Camargo Foundation, Porto Alegre, Brazil.[11]
2009: New Orleans residential tower, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
2011/2012 "Alvaro Siza. Viagem sem Programa" Art work collection of his sketches and
drawings. Museum Fondazione_Querini_Stampalia Venice, Italy[12] [13]
2012 "Il Giardino delle Vergini" Pavillion Giardini della Biennale, Venice Biennale of
Architecture, Italy.

lvaro Siza is a contemporary Portuguese architect, born 25 June 1933 in

Matosinhos, a small coastal town near Porto, Alvaro Siza went to the Porto School of
Fine Arts and completed his education in Fernando Tavoras architecture practice.
Today, after more than 50 years in the profession, buildings bearing his signature may
be easily recognized all over the world, although Sizas style remains extremely difficult
to describe in words (personal experience of the buildings is the only way to find the
essence of his architecture). Learning to see, not just to look, to see in detail, in depth,
globally, is fundamental for any architect and, indeed, for any person, Siza said in an
older interview. And this is exactly what architecture does: it makes us see and
reveals, often without interpreting, the truth about the place it occupies.

Minimalist, but avoiding abstraction and inspiring serenity and force, elegant
in mathematical way but also sensitive, Sizas buildings (very diverse in size and
function) are always well anchored in the context. The Portuguese architect
confessed how overwhelmed he was by the relation with the site and by the
insertion of the project into reality: by the image of dust and topographers
tripods, by the fall of the cork oaks with open wings, by the emptiness of walls
between rooftops and gardens, by the image of women in black, by the
engineers desks, etc(). All these elements leave their marks on the surface of
simple ideas.

Winner of the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 1992 and of numerous other awards,
Alvaro Siza constantly refused to be drawn into the contemporary architecture
star-system and continued to work on his projects with passion and discretion
and to teach ( an activity he never interrupted). To quote Ana Maria
Zahariades 2005 Laudatio, he premanently builds a quiet revolution.

The Portuguese Pavilion designed for the 1998 World Exhibition in Lisbon
(theme The Oceans, a Heritage for the Future), is a remarkable project that
inescapably arrests the eye. The building, unfurling longitudinally, like a
democratic palace, was built of simple materials: white stone, concrete, wood,
all of them potentiated by the light. The most shocking element is the huge
curved concrete slab hanging over the plaza, like the sail of a ship, supported
on four steel masts. Its a genuine technical feat (56m long, 20 centimeters thin)
that gives the whole project a symbolic, poetic dimension.

The Church in Marco de Canavezes, Portugal. One of Sizas

masterpieces, the church in Marco de Canavezes, is part of a parish center,
including an auditorium, a school and the parish house, that the architect was
called to design. Placed an a difficult site, close to a crowded road, the church
defines its surroundings by its special volume and by the powerful outline.
Structured on two levels, it is accessed though 10 meter high doors that give the
building a strong monumentality without reducing its warmth. Inside, the light
cuts into the structure, models the space and becomes an active element of
the mass. Siza also designed the 400 wooden chairs orderly placed on two rows
to create a corridor to the altar.

Bouca Housing Project, Porto. After the April 25 Revolution of 1974, Siza
started to work for SAAL (Servicio de Apoio Ambulatorio Local) and designed
two housing projects: rowhouses Bouca and Sao Victor in Porto. Talking into
account the railway embankment nearby, Siza designed an exaggerated
double wall at the north edge of the site to protect the apartments from the
sound and also to order the site. The project was not completed at the time
(only two of the four rows of houses were built and none of the community

spaces), but it was resumed in 2004. Two years later, Siza personally inaugurated
the regenerated complex, which was completely rehabilitated: the 56 existing
houses were upgraded and 72 low-buget houses were added, with public areas
and a metro station, in the spirit of a well-thought urban coherence.

The Anyang Pavilion, Korea. In February 2005, Siza was invitated,

together with his collaborator Carlos Castanheira, to design a multifunctional
pavilion in the midle of a natural park in Anyang, a town of 300.000 in South
Korea. In November 2006, the inauguration revealed a mature architectural
space, rooted in tradition without being limited by it, accepting and
overcoming tensions. Today, completed end functional, the pavilion fills and
enhances the landscape, enjoying the generous privilege of light.