Once in a blue moon, a personality is born who is destined to change the world with his perspective and ideology! This happens and the world witnesses a transformation that is bound to affect generations to follow!
Alvaro Siza is one such architect who came, conquered, and had it all!
Álvaro Siza full name is Alvaro Joaquim de Melo Siza Vieira was born on 25th June 1933 in Portugal. He is a world-renowned architect as well as an architectural educator.
He is more commonly known as Alvaro Siza!
Early Life:
Alvaro Siza was born in the small coastal town of Matosinhos near Porto. He had an interest in architecture from a very young age and was passionate about it and decided to opt for it as a career.
Siza graduated in architecture from the former School of Fine Arts of the University of Porto in 1955.
Career:
The expertise of Siza was not hidden by his teachers and fellow colleagues at his alma mater. Before he could finish his studies he had completed his first independent work in 1954 and opened up his own private practice the same year in Porto.
He also started teaching at Porto School of Architecture and worked with a close friend and teacher Fernando Tavora from 1955 to 1958.
Alvaro Siza’s work is often defined as “poetic modernism”
One of the early works that raised him to another level of fame was a public pool complex that he designed in the 1960s for Leca da Palmeira, a small fishing town in the north of Porto that also serves as a summer resort.
He built swimming pools for both adults and children in 1966 along with a separate building that had to change rooms and café while designed in the natural rock formation to keep the views of the sea unobstructed.
After the revolution of Portugal in 1977, the city government of Evora asked Siza to plan a housing project bringing modernism to the rural outskirts of the city.
He was also a member of the team that reconstructed Chiado. The famous historic center of Lisbon was unfortunately destroyed by a humongous fire in 1988.
Famous work:
Most of Siza’s famous work is located in his hometown Porto.
Some of his renowned pieces of art are:
- Boa Nova tea house
- The Faculty of Architecture
- The Serralves Museum of contemporary art
- Architectural museum in hombroich island
- New Orleans building
- Marco de Canavezes church
- Expo’98 pavilion of Portugal
- Ibere Camargo foundation
Teaching:
Alvaro Siza has been an architectural educator since the very beginning of his life. He started teaching at his alma mater and continued to do so from 1966 to 1969 and later made a comeback in 1976.
Siza also taught at various other international universities and has been an important part of the visiting faculty. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania, the graduate school of design, Harvard University, Los Andes University of Bogota, and the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.
The building of architects:
Probably the most famous and recognized work of Álvaro Siza that drove him to a new height so famous is his building of architects.
A nondescript terraced house that runs along with a concrete wall endorsing a single window and a couple of front doors. The house is lined with a canopy and a window along with embellishment of textured masonry that the city of Porto is famous for.
This is the brief history of the building of architects which was designed by Álvaro siza as his office along with his colleague Fernando Tavora, his brother who was an engineer, and his very favorite student Eduardo Souta de Moura.
Awards and Accolades:
- The Dean of Harvard graduate school of design organized the first-ever show of Siza’s work in the United States of America in 1987
- He was awarded the renowned Pritzker prize
- The Golden Medal of the Superior Council of the Architecture of the College of Architects of Madrid in 1988
- Mies van der rohe award for the European architecture
- The Prince of Wales prize in urban design from Harvard university
- 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
- The Premium Imperiale in 1988
- Wolf Prize in arts in 2001
- Urbanism special grand prize of France 2005
- Golden Lion award in 2002
- Award by Venice architecture biennale
- Cultural merit order medal by the Brazilian government in 2007
- Riba’s 2009 royal gold medal
- International union of architects’ 2011 gold medal
- 13th edition Venice architecture biennale
- Golden lion lifetime achievement in 2012
- National architecture award of Spain in 2019 – he also became the first non-Spanish architect to receive this award in the history of 90 years.
Universities and architecture schools honored him throughout his career. Some of the most recognized ones are:
Polytechnic University of Valencia; École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne; University of Palermo; University Menendez Pelayo, in Santander; Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería in Lima, Peru; University of Coimbra; Lusíada University of Porto; Universidade Federal de Paraíba; the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Polo delle Scienze e delle Tecnologie, in Naples; the University of Architecture and Urbanism of Bucharest “Ion Mincu”, Romania (2005); and the University of Pavia, Italy (2007). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, the American Institute of Architects, the Académie d’Architecture de France, and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Legacy:
Siza announced in July of 2014 that he plans to donate an extremely valuable and large part of his architectural archive to the Canadian center of architecture (CCA) located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. This will make his work and material “accessible alongside the work of modern and contemporary architects”. He also plans to give his specific project archives to the fundacao gulbenkian in Lisbon and fundação de serralves in Porto, Portugal.
Endnote on Alvaro Siza:
Alvaro Siza, the distinctive architect who worked beyond his peripheral expertise and delivered ahead of time. His work is like poetry and that makes him unique and one of a kind.
As Álvaro siza once rightly stated:
“Architects don’t invent anything; they transform reality”
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