Architect: Álvaro Siza
Malagueira: Conflict Resolution (1983)
4 January 2021
Malagueira: Conflict Resolution (1983)4 January 2021
From my experience at Évora, I believe that participation – neither mystifying nor mystified – implies numerous and inevitable conflicts, conflicts which come out of the project. The general concept for the Malagueira district, the methods, the project itself, have indeed given rise to contradictory commentaries, even before our intervention:… Read More
Dating Siza: The Malagueira ‘Cupula’
23 July 2020
Dating Siza: The Malagueira ‘Cupula’23 July 2020
The unbuilt half-dome (referred to by the architect as the ‘cupula’) at the Quinta da Malagueira is the subject of a protracted design process that has lasted for over four decades. At the start of 2020, Álvaro Siza sent a drawing of the half-dome to Drawing Matter accompanied by letter… Read More
Siza at sixteen
10 July 2020
Siza at sixteen10 July 2020
– Manuel Montenegro and Álvaro Siza
Pouco a pouco, quase sem dar por isso, o carvão começou a não partir, o papel a não manchar, o miolo de pão a manter a plasticidade, o fôlego a aumentar. E a confiança. Slowly but steadily, unwittingly, the lead began to not break, paper to not stain, the bread… Read More
The Real and Imagined Worlds of Álvaro Siza
26 June 2020
The Real and Imagined Worlds of Álvaro Siza26 June 2020
Inside the cover of Álvaro Siza’s sketchbooks, there is a whole world: the real and the imagined. In his personal registers of the real, Siza accepts the world as it is. He uses drawing in a playful but productive way, learns when he apprehends, absorbs when drawing. This process of… Read More
Álvaro Siza: Drawn Closer
11 June 2020
Álvaro Siza: Drawn Closer11 June 2020
This text was originally published in Architecture through Drawing. Drawn Closer is a year-long collaboration between Domus and Drawing Matter, edited by Sarah Handelman. Each issue of the magazine features one architect discussing a drawing which they recognise as a transformative moment in their work. Domus 2020 is guest-edited by David Chipperfield. I began using… Read More
Houses of Work and Play
30 March 2020
Houses of Work and Play30 March 2020
The Faculty of Architecture at the University of Porto (FAUP), designed by Álvaro Siza, is set on a hillside, close to a road bridge at the mouth of the river Douro. The bridge seems to be part of the extended composition of the campus; the school-city a gateway to the… Read More
Espelho Álvaro
15 January 2020
Espelho Álvaro15 January 2020
This mirror was among the objects, sketches and photographs at his great exhibition at Padiglione di Arte Contemporanea. Siza was in a corner of the hall with some friends. More than a thousand guests from the Milano-bene (well-to-do Milanese) had come for a vernissage with fur coats, television spotlights, beautiful women, men… Read More
The Difficulty of Designing Furniture
7 November 2019
The Difficulty of Designing Furniture7 November 2019
I Architecture: a tree here, a house there, or a temple; on the right a hill, or plain, sea, river; a bridge, regular outline of this street, the irregularity of another; colour, rhythms, climate, this client; yellowing photograph, parchment, power, marginality.Not as a matrix. Provocation, hence vocation to distort, to… Read More
Alternative Histories: NoAarchitecten on Álvaro Siza
30 July 2019
Alternative Histories: NoAarchitecten on Álvaro Siza30 July 2019
When we look at Siza’s drawing we try to forget the project we know. We see the beautiful irregularity of a pencil perimeter, defined by obstacles of all sorts. Within it, the architect added straight lines, an attempt to bring order and create a place to dwell, to find shelter.… Read More
Alternative Histories: Murmuur Architecten on Álvaro Siza
8 July 2019
Alternative Histories: Murmuur Architecten on Álvaro Siza8 July 2019
We appreciate Siza’s gesture to connect the balustrades to a kind of coat rack or washing wire in front of the windows on the first floor. The panache of the pencil stripe on the sketch is brought to life in the fine red line of the balustrade. He strings the… Read More
Notes on Architectural Education and Drawing
3 May 2021
Notes on Architectural Education and Drawing3 May 2021
– Rafael Sousa Santos
The speed of transformation that characterises our contemporality is largely motivated by the development of the newest information technologies. The speed introduced by computation seems to be the promoter of the instability that reaches the conceptions of almost all professional and disciplinary fields since it imposes a pace of change… Read More
education drawing matter writing prize 2020 DMC