ÁLVARO SIZA
“Each design,” says Siza, “is a rigorous attempt to capture a specific moment of a transitory image in all its nuances. The extent to which that transience is captured is reflected in the designs: the more precise, the more vulnerable.”
Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1992, Álvaro Siza, an architect and designer born in Matosinhos (Portugal), retains an appreciation for vernacular traditions. The dominant characteristic of his structures is clarity of form and function, integrating the environment through an approach sensitive to both architectural and contextual traditions.
Among his other achievements are the Royal Gold Medal (2009), UIA Gold Medal (2011), Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement (2012) and Spain’s National Architecture Award (2019).
Among his major contributions, described as “poetic modernism,” are the gravity-defying Leça Swimming Pools (1966), the Boa Nova Tea House (1963), the Portuguese National Pavilion for the 1998 Expo, the Banco Borges & Irmão a Vila do Conde (1986), the Center for Higher Education Studies in Setúbal (1994), the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Porto (1995), and the Aveiro campus library (1994).
ABOUT THE PROJECT
The project is located on the corner of Dr Atl and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. The site is entirely occupied by the ruins of a pre-existing one-story house with a very high roof. Only the exterior walls and some interior brick walls are extant. The building is divided into two parts: an art gallery on the first floor and an apartment on the two upper floors.
The existing courtyard is the entrance for both the gallery and the apartment, through a door on the axis of the street door. This door leads to an atrium, connected to the gallery office, the exhibition rooms and a door that is the entrance to the apartment.
The exterior walls of the existing ruin are preserved, including a garage door converted into a window, which provides a view of the interior exhibits. The windows and iron grilles are also preserved or redone. The height of the first floor rooms is conditioned by the existing building.
