Architect: Álvaro Siza
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
Álvaro Siza: Drawn Closer
11 June 2020
Álvaro Siza: Drawn Closer11 June 2020
I began using sketchbooks in 1977, and this is the first of them. I had been asked by the new communist mayor of Évora to plan a very large social housing development – Quinta da Malagueira – as an extension of the medieval city on an abandoned agricultural estate. Until… 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
Empathy
8 May 2018
Empathy8 May 2018
Being that can be understood is language. – Hans-Georg Gadamer One of the items in the Drawing Matter collection is a notebook once owned by Álvaro Siza. In it is this sketch, made of the Royal Academy London, where he was asked to consider making some work for an exhibition.… Read More
Mark Dorrian
19 February 2018
Mark Dorrian19 February 2018
When we talk about the sketchbook what do we mean? Its complexity is reflected in the difficulty we experience – in many examples, at any rate – in straightforwardly attaching a name to it, for there are times it might seem to be equally a notebook, a journal, a diary,… Read More
Álvaro Siza: Sense Making
22 September 2017
Álvaro Siza: Sense Making22 September 2017
Álvaro Siza’s influence begins with the move of the Drawings Collection to Shatwell in 2012. In the same year Stephen Taylor Architects completed the Cowshed and Hugh Strange Architects completed the Archive building. Well known for his seminal Quinta da Malagueira housing estate (1973–1977) in Evora, Portugal, Siza appreciated the scale of… Read More
the Birth of the Column
7 April 2016
the Birth of the Column7 April 2016
You walk along the street with all its traffic and find yourself in front of the big archway. Through it you see the courtyard, which comes as a surprise. The scale is domestic rather than monumental, but the building’s façade – with its portico and columns, which are whiter than… Read More
the Real and Imagined Worlds of Álvaro Siza
26 June 2020
the Real and Imagined Worlds of Álvaro Siza26 June 2020
– Bruno Silvestre
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
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