THE ARCHITECTURE OF ALVARO SIZA

by
PETER A. TESTA

Bachelor of Architecture
Carleton University
1978

Submitted to the Department of Architecture

in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Master of Science in Architecture Studies

at the
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
September 1984

Peter A. Testa 1984

The author hereby grants to M.I.T. permission to reproduce

and to distibute publicly copies of this thesis document in
whole or in part.

Signature of Author
Department of Architecture
August 10, 1984

Certified by__________
Stanford Anderson
Professor of History and Architecture
Thesis Supeltvisor

Accepted by
N. John Habraken
Chairman
Department Committee on Graduate Students

MASSACHUSE TTS INSTITUTE

OF TECHNOLOGY

OCT 05 1984
LIBRARIES
THE ARCHITECTURE OF ALVARO SIZA

by
Peter A. Testa

Submitted to the De artment of Architecture on August 10,

1984 in partial ful illment of the requirements of the
Degree of Science in Architecture Studies.

ABSTRACT

The work of the Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza (1933)

as it developed during the 1970's is an intriguing and dense
expression of several contemporary concerns. The thesis
focuses on three of Siza's works, the Antonio Carlos Siza
house (1976-78), the projects for Kreuzberg commissioned by
the International Building Exhibition of Berlin (1979), and
the plan for the Malagueira district at Evora (1977-
present). The analysis of these projects and Siza's few
writings and statements is undertaken in an effort to
tentatively articulate the principles which lie behind the
forms of his architecture.
From the analysis of specific works, two themes,
thought to be central to Siza's enterprise, are identified
and applied to a wider range of works. This inquiry does
not provide a comprehensive account of Siza's ongoing
research program. It does suggest a way of approaching the
work, and provides a means of placing Siza's architecture
within the context of Portuguese architectural culture and
the current architectural debate.

Thesis Supervisor: Stanford Anderson

Title: Professor of History and Architecture
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For the inspiration and encouragement offered me during the

course of this study I am most grateful and indebted to:

Professor Stanford Anderson for his constructive criticism

and advice at all stages of this inquiry which finds support
in innumerable ways in his research, writings and person;

Alvaro Siza and his collaborators for the attention extended

to me during my visit to Oporto and Evora and for the
stimulating and informative discussions which ensued;

Professor Kurt Forster while not directly involved in this

work, through discussions on a wide range of issues during
the initial period of this study, certainly exercised an
important influence on my thinking;

Professor David Friedman who provided valuable criticism and

encouragement particularly with respect to the material
presented in the first two chapters;

Sherri Geldersma for sharing with me her first hand

reactions and her editorial skills;

Wolfgang Rudorf my colleague at the Institute who shared

with me his knowledge of Berlin and German architecture
which was most useful at various stages of this study;

Vittorio Gregotti who kindly gave of his time during his

visit to Cambridge and shared his insights into Siza's work.
CONTENTS

Introduction
6

1
Critical Regionalism
and Modernism
10

2
Alvaro Siza's Statements
on Architecture
39

3
Projects for Kreuzberg
49

4
The Malagueira District
at Evora
87

5
Preexistences
136

Conclusions
Alvaro Siza's Impossibilism
179

Bibliography
191
U

1 Alvaro Siza, photos by R. Collova, 1983.

5
INTRODUCTION

Alvaro Siza (1933), professor at the school of

architecture in Oporto and in private practice since 1965,

is the most important Portuguese architect of his

generation. Awarded prizes and commissions in international

competitions in Berlin, Siza is coming to be recognized in

Europe as one of the most significant architects in practice

today. While his work has been regularly published in

French and Italian journals Siza is relatively unknown in

the United States. To our knowledge no extensive analysis

or critical inquiry of his work exists.

This essay does not attempt to examine Siza's entire

oeuvre. My intention is to develop what appears to be most

important to Siza's enterprise and most fruitful to the

general enterprise of architecture. In an effort to move

beyond an analysis based on stylistic criteria, the present

inquiry assumes that Siza's architecture suggests the terms

for its interpretation. Stating that his "architecture does

not have a pre-established language and does not establish a

language",l Siza categorically rejects the notion that his

architecture is governed by a set of pre-establised rules.

The notion that Siza works without rules implies that his

architecture may not be understood by applying pre-

established categories. Siza's statement reinforces the

notion that in architectural criticism we must look

carefully at the work and thought of each architect

individually, in an effort to build knowledge rather than

new categories which might replace those set up by earlier

20th century critics. This study is primarily

concerned with Siza's architecture yet it is also motivated by

an interest in understanding the nature of his contribution

to the discipline of architecture.

While we may not exhaust the meaning of Siza's work,

nor may we reconstruct the mental image of the architect, it

is the intention of this study to tentatively establish the

guiding ideas which lie behind Siza's works and provide them

with a theoretical foundation. Freely borrowing from the

ideas developed by Stanford Anderson in his essay

"Environment as Artifact" 2 of 1971, and other writings, the

present inquiry seeks to establish the basis of Siza's

"architectural research program." While borrowing from the

view put forward by Stanford Anderson, in which

architectural criticism seeks to formulate both a cognitive

and physical model which may be tested against one another

and mutually adjusted, this approach is not literally

applied but simply serves to give direction to the present

inquiry. This study of Siza's work does not in itself

establish a particular methodological program through which

the diversity of Siza's enterprise is filtered.

The analysis of three of Siza's projects and his

writings, in the first chapters, stand on their own as

individual pieces but also serve to establish underlying

themes. These themes are further developed, in chapter

four, in relation to a wider range of Siza's works.

Focusing primarily on his projects, this inquiry does not

place Siza in relation to surrounding discourses yet it does

form the basis from which we might construct Siza's

architectural position. Undoubtably Siza's research must be

placed within Portuguese architectural culture. Such an

analysis is briefly engaged in the concluding section and

begins to cast a different light on the works we will have

considered.
NOTES

1. Alvaro Siza, "Entretien avec Alvaro Siza", Architecture,

Mouvement,Continuite (AMC), No. 44, 1978.

2. Stanford Anderson, "Environment as Artifact:

methodological implications", Cassabella, No. 359-60,
1971.
CRITICAL REGIONALISM
AND
MODERNISM

The primary documents for the analysis of the work of

an atchitect are the buildings, projects, drawings and

models produced. The criticism of other observers may also

provide a key to the understanding of works but all too

often confuses or mystifies rather than illuminates. Of the

limited range of criticism available on the work of Alvaro

Siza, the writing of Kenneth Frampton has the advantage of

attempting to clearly state a position and, as such,

provides a useful sounding board for a discussion of Siza's

work. Frampton has not written extensively on Siza's

architecture, but it is significant that he finds in these

works primary exemplars of what he views as an emergent

architectural position. Frampton's basic premises are found

in his essay of 1983, "Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six

Points for an Architecture of Resistance". 1 While

Frampton's discourse contains many important issues and

ideas, I wish to focus on those aspects that form what I

understand to be the core of his position.

 My thesis is that Frampton's Critical Regionalism, as

currently formulated, contains basic methodological problems

that neutralize it as a critical position and render it

incapable of explicating Siza's architecture. I contend

that Siza is not a regionalist architect. Through an

analysis of his work I intend to outline an alternative

interpretation.

Critical Regionalism is a construction which seeks to

disinguish itself from modern architecture, post-modernism

and a reactionary traditionalism. It is not to be confused

with the regionalist arguments of a revisionist modern

architecture such as Giedion's claim for a "New Regionalism"

in the 5th edition of Space, Time, and Architecture.

Frampton categorically rejects "modern architecture" which

he associates with modernization and the destruction of

rooted culture. While rejecting any claims to a

regionalized International Style, he also seeks to avert the

unilateral rejection of technology and a withdrawal into

provincialism. This position finds support in a process of

mediation implied in the prefix "critical" and expressed in

the following statement:

Critical Regionalism is a dialectical expression.

It self-consciously seeks to deconstruct universal
modernism in terms of values and images which are
locally cultivated while at the same time
adulterating these autochtonous elements with
paradigms drawn from alien sources. 2

The process of admission and exclusion suggested by

Frampton relies on what Alan Colquhoun has rightly noted as

"the myth of a local cultural essence within modern

societies." 3 This operation requires, firstly, that we are

able to differentiate between what is local and what is

universal and, secondly, that we measure the assimilation of

ideas and paradigms against local values. In this way

Frampton demands a set of distinctions which, I believe,

will ultimately lead to the moralism of right and wrong on

which all regionalist doctrines have been based.

The architectural strategies specific to this position

are developed as a means of inscribing architectural forms

into the history and culture of a region. To such

contextual elements as response to climate, topography, and

the use of local materials is added an emphasis on the

experiential qualities of building. As these elements and

formative devices do not imply the rules which govern their

use, in my opinion they do not qualify a work as

"regionalist," and are of limited use to our discussion.

For "Critical Regionalism" to serve as a means of

identifying an architectural position I interpret that it

demands that the relations between architectural forms and

elements be primarily rooted in local traditions, while the

elements which make up the architecture may or may not be

local. In an effort to clarify the correspondence between

Siza's architecture and Frampton's "Critical Regionalism" we

must not ask if he employs local elements or responds to

particular cultural conditions, but rather, how is his

architectural position formulated? Is his architecture

K- -

TrAT
131

1.1 Alvaro Siza, Bank at Oliveira de Azmeis, 1971-74

derived from indigenous sources and ideas? Or conversely,
is it derived from universal sources inflected by local

conditions? I contend that these two directions do not lead

to the same "synthetic contradictions." At this point we

might examine two of Siza's projects in an effort to clarify

the nature of his sources and the way these are transformed

in response to concrete situations.

Pinto e Sotto Maior, Branch Bank (1971-74)

The bank at Oliveira de Azmeis (fig. 1.1), built on the

central square of a small town in northern Portugal, is not

Siza's first building but is representative of his work.

While this construction presents interesting formal

qualities, the point I want to make here is that we cannot

explain this work by reference to any models operating

within either traditional Portuguese architecture or the

particular context. The inspiration and formal models for

this architecture are clearly derived from very specific

modernist sources. While the language employed represents a

total break with the surrounding architecture, Siza here

proposes another way of conceiving a contextual response.

The building responds morphologicaljy to the elements which

make up the square. Rather than formal borrowings of the
existing architectural vocabulary, the volumes and

disposition of elements are initially developed and

controlled by regulating lines generated in reference to

physical elements surrounding the building site. These

references become internalized and begin to refer to each

other. This is a contextualism which makes no distinctions

and does not pass judgement on the surrounding environment.

Siza's work is autonomous yet involved with its surroundings

and expresses a significant discontinuity between past and

present.

Antonio Carlos Siza House (1976-78)

The Antonio Carlos Siza House, commissioned by the

architect's brother, provides-an example in which we might

explore Siza's method in more detail. Given the particular

circumstances of the house commission, it provided the

architect with an opportunity to more fully develop formal

intentions and ideas raised in previous works. While

perhaps not directly related to concurrent social housing

projects, this house is certainly integral to a research

program initiated with Siza's first constructions.

The Antonio Carlos Siza house is built on a small

irregular lot located in a recently developed area of new

houses and apartment blocks at the edge of the town of Santo

Tirso in Northern Portugal. It is a subdivision lacking a

clear urban structure other than the size and shape of the

lot, as the surrounding constructions are highly

individualized. Siza has sought to ground the project in

the subdivision of the land itself -- being the only urban

 I

1.2 Alvaro Siza, Antonio Carlos Siza house, 1976-78,

sketch, section and ground floor plan.
structure present.
The form of this small single-story house (fig. 1.2) is

developed in relation to the geometry of the corner lot as

defined by a perimeter wall. The front and sides of the

house parallel the boundaries of the lot rather than forming

determined angles. The property wall is an element tha-t is

not indigenous to this area but is used throughout Portugal

in both urban and rural areas. Siza employs the wall

repeatedly in his houses of the 1970s as a basic datum or

point of departure, and it serves as the principle means by

which these constructions relate to the city. While the

house does not follow a typological norm or the rules of

urban construction, the wall mediates between this monad and

an absent urban structure. This strategy makes space for

architecture and allows the architect a certain freedom for

the formal organization of the house itself.

In the Antonio Carlos Siza house the property wall

rises along one side to the height of the flat-roofed

building and penetrates through the amorphous body of the

house on a diagonal axis, merging with interior and exterior

walls. The forms of the house also interact with the

bounding surface of the property wall in a conscious

counterplay in which the space between the house and the

wall is part of the architectural space. Here we find a

conventional eleprenL -- the wall -- used in an

unconventional manner.
 - 7

* A~'

* flsTa& ~

Ne e

1.3 Alvaro Siza, Antonio Carlos Siza house, exterior

view and model.
 The form of the Siza house develops in a U-shape around

a small interior patio. The plan is topologically conceived

and controlled by two cross axes formed by the alignment of

the two streets which meet at an acute angle and define the

corner lot. It is difficult to characterize the form as

either additive or subtractive since elements are fused by

interpenetration and deformation. The ordering principles

operating here are numerous and elements are organized by

proximity, interpenetration, succession and division -- it

would appear that only a coordinate system is absent. As is

evident from the model (fig. 1.3), the whole is

volumetrically articulated. There is both a correspondence

and disjunction between the spatial organization of the

house into roughly four areas and its volumetric

development. Articulating these elements, while denying

their autonomy as simple additive volumes, furthers the

sense of overall fusion.

It would appear that neither the organization of the

plan nor the form of the Antonio Carlos Siza house may be

directly related to traditional Portuguese domestic

architecture. In this and his other houses Siza adopts a

configuration with a clear gradation of, spaces, which will

accommodate the demands of a bourgeois family, but these

demands do not in themselves provide the logic for the

architecture. In this respect we may speak of this project

as operating within the ideology of modernism. Siza does

not rely on a fixed type or a finite and stable number of

1.4 Alvaro Siza, Antonio Carlos Siza house,
ground floor plan.
forms a-priori. The stress is on the importance of

relations rather than the forms themselves.

Regionalist claims, while not finding support in the

plan distribution, may be centered on the construction and

form of the house. The use of cellular masonry

construction, while characteristic of traditional Portuguese

architecture, is common throughout Europe and is used here

not simply as a local building system but to serve a

fundamental understanding of the purpose of the house.

Siza's houses are all opened inwards in an effort to secure

physical and psychological privacy. The house is understood

as a closed interior - a characteristic of Western dwellings

since antiquity.
The form of the Siza house, with its emphasis on

distortion, topological ordering, and the relative

correspondence of space forms and mass forms, could be

assumed to be derived from vernacular sources whose additive

constructions result in a fusion of elements and the

formation of positive exterior spaces. However, this is not

a simulation of a process of mutual adjustment over time,

and the formal complexity evident here, while it may

approach the heterogeneity of such forms, is developed

consciously, departing from altogether different sources and

intentions. In the Antonio Carlos Siza house we find a dual

structure based on the combination of topological relations

and the geometrization of axes -- a dual order not found in
 A

1.5 Alvaro Siza,- Alves Costa house, 1964, ground floor plan.

~-4.

1.6 Alvaro Siza, Manuel Magalhaes house, 1967-70, ground floor plan.

1.7 Alvaro Siza, Bires house, 1973-76, ground floor plan.

either vernacular or traditional Portuguese architecture.
The use of dual ordering systems is found in 20th

century architecture, as in the work of Le Corbusier where

the column grid is combined with the free plan, yet the

particular orders developed here are not, to my knowledge,

systematically developed in 20th century production. The

conscious development of a similar ordering system is most

clearly illustrated in the Roman Baroque villas and palaces

which Siza has mentioned as a source for this project. 3

This is not to suggest that this is a Roman Baroque

construction, but rather that the architect Siza found in

the Roman Baroque the combination of two systems which he

had previously developed independently.

His earliest works, such as the Alves Costa house of

1964 (fig. 1.5), were largely based on distortions and

adjacencies inspired by a close study of Aalto's post-war

projects. In a later construction we find Siza employing a

simple orthogonal system as in the Manuel Magalhaes house in

Oporto of 1967-70 (fig. 1.6). It would appear that Siza had

begun to combine these two approaches in the preceding Bires

House of 1973-76 (fig. 1.7) and we might suggest that the

investigation of Roman Baroque projects, and formal devices

developed by architects such as Borromini to overcome the

complex asymmetries of small irregular sites, provided a

valuable source of method. In works such as Borromini's

projects for the Palazzo Carpegna (fig. 1.8) we find the

masterfuil development of a form that combines topological

 Ir

o * 11

.1~ 0 ZV
-ft
a r

* *

---

e - -

L .

1.8 Borromini, one of several projects for the Palazzo Carpegna, 1638-40
relations with the geometrization of axes. While there are
in the Siza house no apparent typological relations with

Roman Baroque palaces, other devices employed here may have

been derived from these experiences. The constrained patio,

which is visually enlarged by perspectival distortion

towards the garden beyond, may draw on such well known

precedents as the Palazzo Spada in Rome. In fact we may

establish multiple relations with Roman Baroque architecture

throughout the house, such as the emphasis on massiveness,

tense proportional relations, spatial succession and cross
views.

These possible precedents do not in themselves form the

basis for the project, as these ordering devices and

elements are stripped of their former associations and are

used here to serve a particular building task and

sensibility. This is perhaps best illustrated by

considering the paired columns in the dining room (fig.

1.9). Unexplainable from only a structural point of view,

they stand between two volumetric zones articulating the

circulation space which surrounds the patio. The simple

square columns are oriented on different axes. The top of

one column is twisted relative to itself, forming a capital.

While we might find precedents in the optical devices of the

Baroque which sought to engage the viewer and suggest

movement, exemplified in the alternating rails at S.

Giovanni in Laterrano attributed to Borromini (fig. 1.10),

25
1.9 Alvaro Siza, Antonio Carlos Siza house, interior views.

1.10 Borromini, rails at S. Giovanni in Laterrano, Rome.

1.11 Picasso, "La Ronde", 1953.

the distortions of the columns here appear not simply to

emphasize movement along the corridor, but both defy the

static nature of architecture and suggest a simultaneity

foreign to the Baroque period and traditional architecture.

By pairing columns in this way from a static viewpoint, we

may simultaneously perceive oblique and frontal views of the

same element. This is a distortion closer to Picasso's

twisted bodies and post-cubist experiments, such as the line

drawing "La Ronde" of 1953 (fig. 1.11) in which the left

dancers are stacked three deep showing front, side, and back

in succession and the right figure incorporates all phases

into one.

This notion of simultaneity is in fact furthered

through the superposition and transparency in the cross-

views which cut transversely through the constructed area.

These cross-views associate rooms not normally seen

together, and allow an observer to see right through several

interior and exterior spaces while maintaining a sense of

 1.12 Alvaro Siza, Antonio Carlos Siza house, ground floor plan.

1.13

13 14 Picasso,
1.14 studies for "L'Aubade", 1942.

28
enclosure. Here the use of regulating lines (fig. 1.12)
serves to define visual axes which distort every object

within their path and construct alignments relating elements

by inflection. In a strategy that both suggests and

subverts dominance, these sight lines depart from or

converge on a single vanishing point fixed on the center of

the dining room window.

When the various alignments evident in the plan are

considered in conjunction with the patio, which also

establishes convergences along a central axis, and the

inflexible trail marked by the diagonal cross wall, we may

begin to establish a network of multiple vanishing points

and spatial directives. This complex construction goes

beyond the perspectival distortions of the Roman Baroque

examples and the circumscribed experiments in simultaneous

vision of Picasso's pre-1940 works. While the means
employed are different, the relational structures developed
in the Siza house would appear to lie closer to Picassos's

later works which, as Leo Steinberg 5 has convincingly

argued, include a systematic exploration of the spatial

environment (fig. 1.13, 1.14). The "contractile, expansive,

collapsible space" 6 of these works is not unlike the spatial

matrix of Siza's construction in which multiple viewpoints

and perspectives are combined with a multiplicity of forms.

In this construction we may also speak of certain

affinities to cubism evident in earlier projects by Siza,

such as the stairway in the Art Gallery in Oporto of 1973

29
 1.15 Alvaro Siza, Art Gallery, Oporto, 1973 (now destroyed),
interior view of stairway and plan of lower level.

30
(fig. 1.15) where the stairway is fractured and the pieces
scattered. In the Siza house we find cubist experiments

suggested on several levels. The architectural elements may

be superficially related to cubist pictures which after

1910-11 were often made up of intersecting straight lines

and arcs and employed geometries as a means of regulating

the composition. More importantly these experiments are

suggested in the fragmentary nature of the form itself and

the erosion and dispersal at the back of the house where the

curved wall ends abruptly; the cross wall disintegrates and

elements merge and intermingle. In the Siza house we find

that while the form as a whole retains its fragmentary

nature, it does not dissolve into random disconnectedness,

revealing instead a fascination with modes of connection

which both separate and unite.

The idea of a "unity of the discontinuous," evident in

the relations among elements in the Siza house, is a

development which Tafuri has convincingly argued as being

inherent to the collage or montage. Tafuri points out in
relation to the fragments inserted into a "Merz" or in an
"a-logical" painting by Malevich that, "the monads compelled

to clash with one another in a collage have in common a

field, a limit, which is the same as that of the canvas or

the sheet of paper." 7 In the Antonio Carlos Siza house we

might suggest that the field is defined by the bounding

surface of the property wall. While Siza suggests an
 1.16 El Lissitzky
"De deux carres", 1920.

1.17 Alvaro Siza

Antonio Carlos Siza house, 1976-78,
ground floor plan
inherent confinement within the perimeter wall, we may also
observe a tendency to extend outwards beyond these limits.

This is evident within the interior spaces of the house, but

also in the relations with the exterior, as in the curved

wall of the bedroom wing that continues tangentially rather

than returning on itself. The cross wall, following the
alignment of one of the streets which define the lot,
manifests this tendency at another level by linking the

house to its surroundings. The diagonality of this wall,

and the rectangular service element 8 that lies along it,

recall Suprematist compositions (fig. 1.16) in which simple

geometric elements are placed on diagonal axes so as to

appear to be moving beyond the limits of the canvas. Here

the service element which penetrates to the outside does

imply movement along an axis but more importantly, the

continuity of the wall serves to bind the two wings of the

house together and to establish contact between the

building, the landscape and the surrounding urban structure.

While perhaps related to Suprematist compositions, the

use of guiding walls to tie elements together, and to the

landscape, is also a device characteristic of Frank Lloyd

Wright's Prairie Houses and Mies Van Der Rohe's early work

such as the Brick Villa of 1923 (fig. 1.18). More

significant architectural sources for this work are

suggested by the whole/part relations and spatial

distortions in which we may find affinities to much of Alvar

Aalto's later works (fig. 1.19) in which the articulation of

1.18 Mies Van Der Rohe,
project for a brick villa, 1923.

-N

1.19 Alvar Aalto

Plan of the architects' studio 1953-56.
the whole into various other wholes allows each area of a
building to be invested with its proper character. 9 The use

of ceilings as a space-forming element is also a device

found in both Siza's house and Aalto's work. We may not

establish a correspondence between the elements employed by

Siza in this house to specific works of Aalto, but we do

find evidence of Siza's close study of Aalto's work and

method. This significant influence and understanding is

evident in Siza's first works as well as in the bank

building discussed at the beginning of this chapter.

Siza's compositional strategy, which seeks to form a

distinction between public and private as two fundamentally

dissimilar spatial and social areas, demonstrates a concern

for urban principles and individual needs but also a

correspondence with the work and writings of Adolf Loos.

Loos' statement, "every wall has two faces, one private, one

public", is here subjected to a radical interpretation that

focuses on the interaction of these two realms as well as

their differentiation. Siza, like Loos, demonstrates an

interest in the difference between inside and outside by

recognizing the social and cultural dimension of the wall.

While employing traditional elements, it is apparent

that this project is largely motivated by modernist

concerns, yet is is not an orthodox modern building. The

rationale for the ordering principles, and the world view

from which they draw is not uncovered by attribution

hunting. It demands a deeper inquiry into Siza's work as a
whole. If Siza's work appears distant from the dogma of
modern architecture, post-modernism, and a reactionary

traditionalism, I would suggest that this is not achieved by

appeals to local cultural values and building traditions.

Siza's architectural position appears to seek an inclusive

method and view which find support in an alternative
interpretation of modernism -- a position and architectural

system in which traditional and modernist categories can

enter into interaction.

By isolating aspects of his work, such as the fact that

the major part of his production is found within a

circumscribed area within one of the most provincial

countries of Europe, or the notion that he seeks to ground

his work in the socio-physical matrix of a place, Frampton

applies a methodology which does not get behind appearances

and received opinions. All architecture must be in some

relation to the pre-existing environment and while Siza
seeks to adopt this condition positively, it is a method

which here serves to set the limits for each project. The
pre-existing situation provides the frame within which a

research program and architectural system, not derived from

the place, may unfold.
This is not to suggest that Siza is unconcerned with

the rich building tradition of his own and other cultures.

Perhaps his view is best expressed in his own words:
 The traditional heritage can be applied to
concrete problems. Whatever is valid, useful,
should be used. It represents information, very
useful knowledge, but nothing more. 10

Frampton is able to consider Siza as a Critical

Regionalist only by using a method which allows him to

classify works by isolating elements. However, by any

definition it is clear that Siza's architectural position is
not based on regional limitations.
NOTES

1. Kenneth Frampton, "Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six

Points for an Architecture of Resistance" in Hal
Foster, The Anti-Aesthetic, Port Tow'send, Washington:
Bay Press, 1983.
2. Kenneth Frampton, "Prospects for a Critical
Regionalism," Perspecta, 20, 1983, p. 149.

3. Alan Colquhoun, "Regionalisms and Technologies",

Cassabella, No. 491, 1983, p. 25.
4. Siza has said of this project: "It has some relations
with Baroque architecture, but this is not important."

5. Leo Steinberg, Other Criteria, "The Algerian Women and

Picasso at Large", New York: Oxford University Press,
1972.

6. Ibid, p. 219.
7. Manfredo Tafuri, "Ceci n'est pas une Ville," Lotus
International, No. 13, December 1976.
8. The regular form of this service element may be
understood as a particular inversion of Le Corbusier's
characteristic separation of utilitarian installations
from habitable spaces by means of a radical formal
distinction. A characteristic observed by Kurt Forster
in his essay "Antiquity and Modernity in the La Roche-
Jeanneret Houses of 1923." -

9. Unlike Aalto's works Siza does not employ poche in plan

or section and does not modify the structure of the
building at will to achieve picturesque compositional
effects. In his effort to integrate space and
structure Siza recalls Khan's famous dictum but also
his architecture.

10. Alvaro Siza, "Entretien avec Alvaro Siza,"

Architecture, Mouvement, Continuite (AMC), No. 44,
1978.
2
ALVARO SIZA'S STATEMENTS
ON ARCHITECTURE

Maintaining a silence that contrasts with the flow of

disembodied thoughts and theoretical machinations of recent

times Alvaro Siza has avoided writing about his work and

about architecture. Siza's few statements are largely

prompted by interviews or are found in the judicious

commentary attending the publication of his work. While

these few written and verbal statements cannot be analyzed

as the substance of a coherent doctrine, we might look to

them for an indication of how Siza defines the focus of his

interests.

With respect to his relative silence Siza stated in

1977 that:

My professional experience is not sufficiently

rich and global to allow me to theorize what I do
... I have the desire and pre-occupation to build.
Writing texts has little relation with my work. 1

Behind such a pragmatic statement may lie a modest

practitioner but also a calculated stance. Siza's lack of

comment is not necessarily a disdain for theory or for

language, and the apparent lack of an explicit belief system
does not mean that Siza works without theory. However, by

denying us a substantial co-eval verbal plane to which his

architecture might be reduced, Siza forces us to refer to

the work itself.

In contradistinction to such contemporary architects as

Aldo Rossi for whom, as Micha Bandini 2 has observed, there

is a necessity of an explicit and authoritative theoretical

framework preceding architecture, Siza's theory is not

explicit. The distinction between these two attitudes has

been simplistically interpreted as providing grounds for

considering Rossi as a "rationalist" and Siza as an

"empiricist" who starts from experience and builds on it

without ever looking back. Rather than think in terms of

such vague pre-established categories we must seek, however

tentatively, to establish through the work itself and those

statements available to us the architect's cognitive models

3
and belief system.

Susan Sontag has observed that: "Silence provides time

for the continuing or exploring of thought ... silence keeps

things 'open'." 4 Whatever the motivations, Siza does not

restrict himself in advance and the result of this relative

silence is that it allows speech to attain its maximum

integrity. This much is evident from Siza's few statements

such as the following piece, his most extensive published

text to date, written in May 1979, as an introduction to a

retrospective exhibition of the architect's work held at

40
Milan in 1979.

Most of my works were never fulfilled. Some of

the things I did were only carried out in part,
others were profoundly changed or destroyed.
That's only to be expected. An architectonic
proposition whose aim is to go deep into the
existing transformation trends, into the clashes
and strains that make up reality; a proposition
that intends to be more than a passive
materialization, refuses to reduce that same
reality, by analysing each of its aspects one by
one, that proposition can't find support in a
fixed image, can't follow a linear evolution.
Nevertheless, that proposition can't be ambiguous,
nor restrain itself to a disciplinary discourse,
however sure it seems to be. Each design must
catch, with the utmost rigour, a precise moment of
flittering image in all its shades. The better
you can recognize that flittering quality of
reality, the clearer your design will be. It is
the more vulnerable as it is true. That may be
the reason why only marginal works (a quiet
dwelling, a holiday-house miles away) have been
kept as they were originally designed. This is
the outcome of participation in a process of
cultural transformation of construction-
destruction. But something remains. Pieces are
kept here and there, inside ourselves, perhaps
gathered by someone, leaving marks on space and
people, melting into a process of total
transformation...5

In this lyrical and paradoxical statement Siza suggests

an essential condition of uncertainty yet he insists on the

necessity of formulating rigorous propositions. Given the

presence of such seemingly incompatible ideas we might infer
that it is the thought process underlying this uncertainty

that forms the principle focus of Siza's work. In this

passage the only thing we find him opposing positively are

universal rules and ideas, yet he does explicitly state a

set of themes. These themes appear to derive from an

understanding of architecture as a transformational process

operating within an evanescent reality.

In order to gain a more accessible account of a

theoretical framework which could inform Siza's practice I

have collected the following series of statements from

published interviews:

Architecture is increasingly a problem of use and

reference to models ... Architects invent nothing.
They work continuously with models which they
transform in response to the problems they
encounter. 6
References are the instruments which an architect
possesses -- they are his patrimony of knowledge,
of information. They are all the experience
possible to know and that one can use. It is not
a critical position -- it is the wisest use
possible in a given context. 7
My architecture does not have a pre-established
language and does not establish a language. It is
a response to a concrete problem, a situation in
transformation to which I participate ... We have
passed the stage in architecture where we thought
that unity in a language resolved everything. A
pre-established language, pure, beautiful, etc.
does not interest me. 8
If from one project to another there is a change
of architecture, it is not due to a change in form
but due to a change in a way of life. 9
All that exists is important and one cannot
exclude anything from this reality ... Each place
is different and complex. That is why I cannot
apply a pre-established language and why for the
moment it is difficult for me to theorize what I
do. 10
By explicitly stating that architects work with pre-

existing models and "invent nothing," we are confronted with

a suggestion of finite invention. This proposition openly

questions modern orthodoxy and the certainty of its myth of

progress. In these passages Siza insists that the selection

42
and transformation of these pre-existing models is governed
by the "situation," characterized as both "a way of life"
and a "place." In his terms the "situation" is in flux and
each place is "different and complex", a condition which

denies the possibility of a closed and unitary language

based on absolute standards and rules.

While we are not given any clear indication of how the

architect describes or defines the characteristics of the
"situation," there appears to be no illusion as to the

possibility of understanding or mastering the complexity of

the world. This interpretation is supported by the notion
that the architect must seek a comprehensive account of each

situation -- "all that exists is important" -- from which no

view can be omitted. The breaking down of distinctions

implied by this outlook would appear to lie closer to an

understanding of 20th century art than to codified

architectural theory.

Siza appears in his statements to adopt a position that

precludes the certainty of elementary truths which may be

uncovered and found essential and valid in all cases. In
his rejection of a unitary language, a fixed methodology and
no simple rules to follow, Siza would appear to force a
continual reconsideration of architecture. While the
architect Siza may not be looking for a general rule or

engaged in a quest for the truth, it is not clear from his

statements that he subscribes to a fully relativist
position. His insistence on referring to the "situation"
may constitute a general rule that allows for a pluralism of

sources and methodologies yet may narrow the field by

rejecting the opposite approach of starting from pre-

existing models and forms irrespective of the "situation."

Furthermore, while Siza does not specify whether or not the

models he employs are limited to architecture or include

references to nature, painting, language, and the like,

there may exist rules governing the nature of referent

models and the process by which these are transformed.

Siza's few statements presented here are not

comprehensive, yet they do suggest an initial interpretation

of his theoretical position. At the most general level Siza

is particularly insistent on the idea of architecture as a

transformational process. Furthermore, Siza's rejection of

the notion of an architectural language, which necessitates

a coherent theory of architecture, and his insistence on

breaking down distinctions which might sanction specific

hierarchies of interest and meaning all point to an

uncertain reality. Two ideas or themes also recur
throughout Siza's discourse, that his architecture refers to
a socio-physical "situation" and that architecture is
supported by the re-use of "models".

Siza's repeated references to the socio-physical

"situation" in which architecture exists and his apparent
rejection of an architectural language both characterize and

distinguish his statements from surrounding discourses. His

44
insistence on the relation of form and use is in opposition
to dominant ideologies both "modernist" and "post-modernist"

which, in relation to what is preceived as the overburdening

of architecture and the failure. of the utopianism implicit

in the modern movement, refuse to acknowledge the relations

of use in architecture. These architects and theorists, as

a means of neutralizing functionalism, view programmatic

considerations as extrinsic to architecture. From this

perspective we might ask if Siza's apparent rejection of a

unitary language is simply a more expedient means of
achieving the harmonious reconciliation of form and function

proposed by the Modern Movement. Is his emphasis on the

"situation" a removal from uncertainty and the indication of

an underlying functionalist ethic, one which proposes an

organic and mechanistic adaptation to site and program?

Siza, in his statements, does not preclude a sustained and

systematic examination of the inter-relationship between

architecture and society, but it is not clear how this

relation is understood. What is clear is that in his

insistence on the socio-physical context as a basis for

architecture Siza implicity rejects the notion of an

autonomous architecture -- of an architecture which only

refers to it3elf.
An initial interpretation of Siza's theoretical

position suggests the basic idea of a transformational

processs which operates in a pre-existing "situation" and on

45
"models" derived at least in part from the context and from

the history of architecture. However, this understanding is

not in itself sufficient to explicate Siza's position as
these ideas appeal to and are directed by a wider system of

thought or world view. I have suggested that this view may

be generally described as one that recognizes a fundamental

condition of uncertainty which predicates that architecture

cannot be based on a set of immutable rules or a fixed

authoritative framework.
While not following these apparent intentions and
beliefs too closely, the analysis of Siza's architecture may

serve to clarify the nature of his research program and to

tentatively establish relations between his thought and

work. Through an inquiry into Siza's projects and buildings

and the way his architecture changes under varying social

and material conditions, we may begin to establish guiding

ideas and verify whether Siza is simply using an empirical

method or if there is a form of objective guidance operating

across his work as a whole.
NOTES

1. Alvaro Siza, "Entretien avec Alvaro Siza,"

Architecture, Mouvement, Continuite (AMC), No. 44,
1978.

2. Micha Bandini, "Aldo Rossi," AA Files, Vol. 1, No. 1,

Winter 1981-82.

3. This process is suggested and developed by Stanford

Anderson in his essay "Environment as Artifact" of 19
and other writings. Anderson here suggests a process
which seeks to establish the cognitive and physical
models which form what may be considered the basis of
an "architectural research program." In this view,
architectural criticism seeks to formulate both a
cognitive and physical model which may be tested
against one another and mutually adjusted.

4. Susan Sontag, A Susan Sontag Reader: "The Aesthetics of

Silence," New York: Vintage Books, 1983. p. 193.

5. Alvaro Siza, "The Architecture of Alvaro Siza,"

Architecture and Urbanism (A+U), No. 123, December
1980, p. 9.

6. Alvaro Siza, "Interview," Plan Construction (PAN), lle

session, May 1980.

7. Alvaro Siza, "Entretien avec Alvaro Siza," Architecture,

Mouvement,Continuite (AMC), No. 44, 1978.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.
Berlin, Kreuzberg, air view, circa 1920
3
PROJECTS FOR KREUZBERG

Having made an initial interpretation of Siza's

theoretical position, we can now attempt a further reading

of his work. Siza's proposals for the Kreuzberg district of

Berlin, commissioned in 1979 by the International Building

Exhibition of Berlin (IBA) present a praticularly dense and

intriguing set of issues and ideas. The proposals for the

restructuring of three urban blocks provide a physical model

through which we may explore some of the questions and test

many of the assumptions made in preceding sections. While

such an analysis is necessarily limited in scope as we have

only drawings to work from, Siza's drawings are not simply

two-dimensional illustrations but working drawings out of

which we may tentatively construct the architect's

intentions.

Berlin: The City of Many Facets

The IBA, within whose program Siza's projects are'

located, approaches the reconstruction of the city on a

 eo; alR
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dK44 47

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3.1 Kreuzberg, Berlin, apartment building (19th century).

~ ~~ \**)y......'

3.2 Kreuzberg, Berlin

Corner building
Kottbusserstrasse
block by block basis. It is a program whose objectives have
developed in the wake of previous urban renewal efforts

which have met with strong opposition from local residents.

In Kreuzberg the authorities established a program which in

the words of one official sought to: "work with and not
against the urban form," 1 in an effort to demonstrate that
"urban quality is the outcome of an integration with an
existing urban fabric." 2 This is a program which reflects
the contraditions of a system which has removed itself from
the possibility of a global restructuring of the urban
environment, resigning itself to dealing with only sub-

systems and fragments of the city. It is also a program

that is based on a critque of post-war reconstruction
projects and implicitly suggests the renewal of a pre-

existing order in which it places positive value. This

orientation is reflected in the majority of projects

commissioned by the IBA in which we find the replication of

former structures, and in particular the consolidation of

the conventional perimeter block. Siza's proposals have met

with substantial resistance from various sectors. By
rejecting both a sham reconstruction and an autonomous self-
sufficiency, his projects pursue the contradictions present

in the IBA's reconstruction program and the city of Berlin.

As in our analysis we should be somewhat guided by

Siza's intentions, it is useful to consider the few remarks

made by the architect in an effort to qualify his work in

Berlin. Siza's proposals find support in an analysis of the

U-

ilam /

IN

3.eina//rm n -hJr,>:r n floaowrpan

3.3 Berlin apartment house, 1849, ground floor plan.

structure of Kreuzberg, but also develop in response to a
more global understanding of the historically determined

condition of Berlin. Of Berlin Siza has observed that:

Berlin is a limited city. It was destroyed by the
war, as so many other cities, but was not
systematically reconstructed . The separation,
the wall, made an urban reconstruction plan
impossible. It is the non-realization of this
plan that is largely responsible for the
fragmentation (of the city).
In Berlin there was neither systematic destruction
nor systematic reconstruction. The duality old
city/new city does not exist in Berlin. Here we
are obliged to slip our projects between new
fragments and old fragments which never complement
each other, which may never be reduced to a unity,
but which exist as parallel realities. 3
In keeping with these observations Siza summarized the

intentions of his proposals for Kreuzberg in the following

manner:

In Berlin they wanted to recuperate a block of

Kreuzberg to house the inhabitants. It was
necessary to take into account the layout, analyze
the reasons for the fragmentation of this sector.
I sought to assemble these fragments without
hiding their reality, and to bring them closer to
other fragments. It was necessary to use a system
here ... I chose that of the 19th century. 4

The 19th century system to which Siza refers is that

set of conventions that established a common set of

references for the speculative developers who built

Kreuzberg. It is a system by which the large blocks of this

area were subdivided into fairly regular lots on which were

constructed a common residential building type of 5 to 6

stories, forming a continuous built perimeter with

commercial establishments incorporated into the ground floor

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3.4 Alvaro Siza, Kreuzberg, 1979,

projects for two contiguous blocks,
typical floor plans and elevations.
along major thoroughfares (fig. 3.1, 3.2).5 Extensions

often carried out over time, perpendicular to the street,

have formed the typical L-shaped buildings and interior

courtyards of this area (fig. 3.3).

Siza's proposals, as a whole, form a system which is

derived in part from the typological and morphological

characteristics of the 19th century system. In some cases

modifying the existing typology only slightly, Siza's

buildings (fig. 3.4) are all made up of simple volumes, with

street level porticos and in most cases a tripartite

division of the facade. Conventional elements are found in

the use of openings as a primary expressive device, and in

some cases the plan layout, with its U-shaped stairs

acce-ssing two units per floor, closely parallels that of the

buildings of Kreuzberg. Siza also adopts the pattern of

corner buildings which are developed as special urban

events.

Siza adopts many of the 19th century conventions, yet

we may also detect subtle transcriptions and significant

departures. He does not employ a neo-classical

architectural vocabulary and the formative devices and

typological elements found in Kreuzberg are abstacted.
While we find many transformations in the planning of the

buildings; as for example the elimination of the typical

half-story ground floor and half basement which is replaced

by ground-floor porticos, or in the floor plans; which

55
 ~
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Dfl1 0. ooooo0 .0.0 a00.0l

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3.51 .ODAlva0 Siza Dra0el0e blIk aiciw sit pln evao .

combine closed and open room arrangements, the most

significant departure is found on the level of the relation

of the building to the block and the reinterpretation of the

spatial structure of the block itself.

Two Worlds.

In the block of Frankelufer (fig. 3.5) we may identify

the basic elements of Siza's strategy. In this large block
marked by a fairly continuous perimeter, Siza's
interventions involve the addition of new structures and the
partial structuring of public space within the interior of

the block. Grouping together the four buildings proposed

for this block, we find that each structure refers not only

to its particular situation but that a line of reference

exists from one to another -- each one in some way implies

the other. The plan in which the outlines of formedl

structures, the alignments of property lines, walls and

fences are superimposed with existing constructions, forms a

network of references and alignments which suggest

themselves as a referent framework or matrix within which

Siza locates his constructions. From the site plan we may

see how by the arrangement of isolated buildings Siza
discretely introduces a geometrical order which begins to

structure the interior of the block while simultaneously

relating these interior spaces to the street space and the

city. In the block of Frankelufer, as in the three other

 00 000-0000

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3.6 Alvaro Siza,

project for building b, Frankelufer block,
blocks, Siza juxtaposes two conflicting urban orders, that
of the city as a continuous fabric and that of a

heterogenous collection of object buildings.

The large L-shaped building (fig. 3.6) focuses many of

the issues involved in Siza's project for Kreuzberg. We may

read this structure either as a reversal of the typical

Kreuzberg configuration, now facing into the block and set

askew to the street, or as a fragment of a former courtyard

structure. Siza's construction is detached from, yet

congruent with the existing street front building. The
proposed building responds to its double orientation by
providing through access on the street side and a portico

traverses the building in an interplay between front and

back. The rear facade presents another front onto the

interior of the block where the regular facade is excavated

to from a shallow parabolic niche. The classical

hemicyclical niche is employed here to center the new

construction within the heterogenous order of the block's

interior.

In this construction the relation between a public

front and a private back may appear to be negated, yet on

closer examination, it is apparent that the street side

remains the dominant front of this and all of Siza's

proposals. However, the interplay between front and back,
street and block acknowledges the fact that inner block
constructions exist today as fragments cut off from a

continuous system of enclosed courtyards. Within large

 3.7 Alvaro Siza, Frankelufer block, site plan.

00 000000
00 000
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00 00000
~[7,E[], 0WEZE!

3.8 Alvaro Siza, building b, Franikelufer block,

plan of typical floor, street facade and block facade.

60
blocks such as that of Frankelufer this condition demands a

reinterpretation of a once coherent system. In response,

Siza develops this construction in such a way as to open

itself to a dual reading without remaining ambiguous. This

operation may be illustrated by considering the floorplans

(fig. 3.8). The wing perpendicular to the existing street

front building with its rooms facing into the "courtyard,"

corner "Berliner Zimmer" and blind party wall allowing for

later contiguous development, is conventional. The adjacent

wing may however be read both ways. The street side is

dominant in terms of the location of public rooms, yet the

living space may be oriented either towards the street side

or toward the block side. This possibility for

interpretation is most apparent in the end unit where living

and dining spaces run through the building.

In Siza's building for Frankelufur a conventional form

is transformed through a shift in the relations of building

to block -- a shift which consciously detaches this form

from the domain of tradition. In this simple and carefully

calculated mediating gesture, Siza inserts one world into

another, establishing a dialogue which resonates throughout

this work.
The interventions Siza proposed for this block do not

create a new condition but simply interpret a latent

possibility which already existed within the urban structure

of Berlin. The devastation of the war wrenched open the

61
NOW

3.9 Berlin, Kreuzberg, air view, circa 1920.

block structure. The resulting fragmentation has combined
with post-war speculation, changes in the urban economy, and

population structure to transform both the use and the

meaning of the interior spaces of the city. The resulting

quality of transparency is now typical of Berlin streets

where today structures situated within the block have a

changed status and participate in the street life. In these

spaces we find the pre-war (fig. 3.9) use of gardens, out-

buildings, workshops and tenements, combined with a new

tendency to construct within the largest blocks. In
proposing to build residential structures in the block of
Frankelufer, both on the perimeter and within the block,

Siza is not inventing a new pattern of occupation but

consolidating and giving form to a pre-existing order and an

emergent informal one. 7 What is exceptional in Siza's

proposals is the fact that he maintains voids in the

perimeter and appears to raise the everyday life world of

the interior of the block to the status of the city. In so

doing Siza questions our notions of propriety inherited from

the 19th century and the articulations between society and

the space it inhabits. This is not effectuated by imposing

an abstract order on the existing situation but by

acknowledging an objective reality which Siza seeks to adopt

positively. In the block of Frankelufer Siza does not

simply disregard 19th century urban conventions but insists

on the co-presence of another less defined and informal set

of relations. In this process we might suggest that Siza is

 r I; IEIS r r 11n F

3.10 Karl Friedrich Schinkel, bourgeois house type, (1825),

interior perspective, ground floor plan and upper floor plan.
seeking to rebuild the 19th century system of Kreuzberg by
bringing older conventions into alignment with changed

social and material conditions.

The implications of this operation are complex and

highly charged as a social stigma is attached to the

interior of the blocks of Kreuzberg. The street side has

traditionally been assumed as privileged domain while the

back and interior courtyards and spaces were associated with

tenements, servants' quarters, workshops and small

industrial enterprises. The implications of building

residential structures within the blocks of Kreuzberg today

are nuanced and beyond the scope of this discussion, yet we

should not overlook the social and ideological underpinnings

of the 19th century urban structure of this city. The

"Burgerhauser" (bourgeois house type) designed around 1825

by Schinkel (fig. 3.10) provides a simple illustration of

some of the social biases associated with this system.

Schinkel's house type follows a basic pattern common to the

urban houses in wealthier districts which, in contrast to

the Berlin apartment houses, did not provide through access

to the yard or interior of the block. Schinkel's design is

insular and disallows the then prevalent use of the site for

production facilities. In the plan we also find both the

kitchen and servant quarters at the extremity of the

building. Such social distinctions are programmatic in

almost every aspect of the spatial organization, interior

65
 L.

3.11 Alvaro Siza,

project for a residential building on Kottbusserstrasse, 1979,
ground floor plan, street elevation and sketches.

66
layout and vertical distribution in the buildings of the
district. In adopting and transgressing the "19th century

system" Siza is not simply engaging in formal manipulations

but in the structuring and restructuring of social space.

These forms are not adopted without consideration of their

former use and meaning.

Interlocking Conventions.

Where analysis of the block of Frankelufer allows us to

establish the major characteristics of Siza's proposals at

the urban level, the small residential building on

Kottbusserstrasse (fig. 3.11) suggests the manner in which

these intentions are synthesized into an architectural form.

Along the street front of Kottbusserstrasse a highly

irregular void has developed, exposing the backs and sides

of existing buildings to the street. In this case Siza

suggests the continuity of the street wall by inserting a

planar facade more or less in the center of the open lot.

The body of the building, however, develops by interaction
with the adjacent buildings, assuming their alignments.

Siza's building appears to be constructed and deconstructed

through a dialogue which sustains itself on the tension

which exists between the interior and exterior of the block

and between the individual building and the city. In the

proposal for Kottbusserstrasse, as in all of Siza's

interventions in Kreuzberg, complementary and conflicting

6'/
 3.12 Alvaro Siza, project for Kottbusserstrasse, 1979,
situaiton plan, ground floor plan and upper floor plan.

4 /

7'
/

/
/
\ \\

I \\\ 0 /

1~

68
aspects of urban space, building and dwelling are set in

motion. From this perspective, the formal articulation of

each building reflects a search for a figure capable of

holding these conflicting worlds together.

While these opposing readings of the city make up the

space of Kreuzberg today, we might also understand them in

terms of pre-modern and modern categories and conventions of

urban building and architecture. This interpretation is

suggested by the articulation of the building on

Kottbusserstrasse. In this construction, the excavation of

the facade implies the co-presence of front, back, and side,

but may also be understood in terms of frontality associated

with the classical tradition and oblique multifaceted forms,

a formal characteristic of modernity. This cleft which

breaks the regular windows, and the overlapping and extended

cubic volume of the first floor introduces the three-

dimensional nature of modern architecture within the planar

street wall. This interaction is furthered by considering

the opposition between the implied continuity of the street

wall and the volumetric development of the building as a

free-standing object (fig. 3.12). On several levels, Siza

converts supposedly incompatible phenomena into co-

existences in a tense relation which appears to value and

establish differences rather than the fusion of opposites.

Siza's construction appears to merge with its setting

yet proposes that we view these same surroundings in a new

way. The grey, blind, walls of adjoining structures are

veiled and partially exposed - extending our sensibilities
and inducing us to become more acutely aware of our

surroundings. Without any nostalgia for the past this work

points to the aesthetic richness already present in the

environment which here becomes, and to a certain extent

determines, the architectural experience. In this small

example we may begin to understand Siza's projects for

Kreuzberg in terms of modernist and pre-modern conventions

and world views which are critically examined and

interlocked. This interpretation leads us beyond the simple

opposition of two urban realms in which this operation finds

its rationale. It may illuminate both the manner in which

Siza rationalizes formal decisions involved in this work,

and the underlying modernity of his architectural research

program.

In an effort to gauge Siza's departure from both the

19th century architecture of Kreuzberg and an orthodox

modern architecture it is useful to contrast Siza's

proposals for Kreuzberg with Van Doesburg's seminal

statement concerning the formal assertions of the "new

architecture." In 1924, in De Stijl, Van Doesburg wrote:

The new architecture is formless ... it does not

recognize fundamental and unchanging patterns, it
shuns symmetry and the frontal approach developing
its many sided plastic nature in space ... and it
does not distinguish a front from a rear, right or
left, and if possible even up or down. 8

In the building on Kotbusserstrasse as in all his

proposals for Kreuzberg, Siza draws distinctions between

front, back, and side, as well as up and down, yet we find
simultaneously the presence of architecture's "many sided

plastic nature in space." While it is not possible at this

juncture to begin to unravel the meaning Van Doesburg

imputes to the idea that "the new architecture is formless,"

I believe that we may take his other statements at face

value. In his works for Kreuzberg it is not clear that Siza

recognizes what Van Doesburg terms as "fundamental and

unchanging patterns." While it may be argued that Siza

understands the structure of Kreuzberg as a conventional

system rather than as a set of immutable rules, it must also

be recognized that these conventions refer to fundamental

patterns which underlie the city as an urban construct,

forming a set of relations whose formal antecendents reach

back beyond the 19th century, structuring the space of the

city in terms of blocks, streets, and squares. By

reinforcing the block structure where it is weakest,

particularly at the corners, which define urban squares, and

by suggesting a relative continuity of the street wall, Siza

acknowledges this fundamental pattern of city buiding.

However, within Siza's heterodox approach these fundamental

patterns do not appear as fixed and unchanging. The

proposals for Kreuzberg address both the need for historical

continuity and change.

In Siza's hybrid constructions in which we find modern

and pre-modern categories confronting each other, it is not

 9iIi *
I i
I I

- - - -~ 0

photo montage, Allgemeine Verkehrs Bank (project), 1904.

3.13 Adolf Loos,

3.14 Adolf Loos, MichaelerHaus, Vienna, Michaelerplatz, 1909-11.

surprising that we may establish parallels with Loos'
architecture and urban buildings for Vienna. The

correspondence between Siza's proposals for Kreuzberg and

Loos' work, such as the proposal for the Allgemeinen

Verkehrs-Bank of 1904 (fig. 3.13) or the well-known

Michaelerhaus of 1909-11 (fig. 3.14) are not superficial.

Despite the apparently dissonant architectural vocabulary

the Michaelerhaus is grounded in the transformation of known

types and conventions. It is a construction which develops

multiple relations with all the elements in its setting and

which is inflected towards the square on which it is

situated. Both Siza and Loos are concerned with

establishing a relational structure for architecture, and we

may find in Loos a precursor for an operation which seeks to

recover the thread of historical continuity while

acknowledging changing cultural and material conditions.

Both architects are consciously constructing new world views

out of old ones; however, the worlds to which they refer are

different and this difference is found in Siza's approach to

urban space and the forms of his architecture. Loos'

project for the Schwarzwaldschule of 1911-12 (fig. 3.15)

provides a limited but nevertheless revealing comparison.

In contradistinction to Siza's proposal for Kottbusser-

strasse (fig. 3.16), the easily comprehensible form of Loos'

project appears more clearly as a mutation of classicism.

While we find a striking similarity in the elimination of

figurative elements and the combination of rectangular,

 LW U
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3.16

3.15 Adolf Loos, Schwarzwaldschule I (project), 1911-12.

3.16 Alvaro Siza, residential bulding for Kottbusserstrasse (project), 1979.

square, and horizontal openings or in the use of three-
dimensional projections beyond a planar facade, the

incomplete form of Siza's project represents a far more

complex condition. The interplay between a static;

symmetrical and frontal architecture, and a dynamic;

asymmetrical and oblique formal expression, is carried much

further in Siza's project which is not only radically

asymmetrical, but also fragmented. Unlike Loos' project

this construction cannot be understood all at once and it is

not immediately evident how it has been derived. While Siza

does not fully remove a conventional identity from this

form, it suggests an unstable and fluctuating relationship

with its surroundings and tradition that disallows a single

interpretation. Despite striking similarities, Siza is not

indiscriminantly copying Loos but rather responding to a

historical context in Kreuzberg which is not dissimilar from

the constraints which Loos sought to detach himself from.

While it might appear that Siza and Loos are here

mirroring each other in forward and backward projections,

significant differences exist both on the level of their

approach to a pre-existing urban structure and the manner in

which their architecture develops spatially and plastically.

Where the corner building on Frankelufer (fig. 3.17) in its

superposition of cubic forms may appear Loosian, the dynamic

and plastic forms of the corner buildings for Kohlfurter
(fig. 3.17) recall Scharoun and Mendelsohn, and would appear

75
 00000000000W
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3.17 Alvaro Siza, Kreuzberg, projects for corner buildings, 1979.

Frankelufer and Kohlfurter.
the anathema of Loos. The expressive flair of these

constructions and the differentiation of forms throughout

Siza's proposals for Kreuzberg suggest a strategy of

"particularized composition" which is the hallmark of an

Expressionist architecture. It is true that Siza treats

each site differently, but Siza's proposals are not simply a

collection of individual gestures or a strategy of

"particularized composition" in which the unique incident or

unrepeatable site condition is emphasized over any notion of

continuity. In the proposals for Kreuzberg the "incidents"

only acquire meaning within a larger framework to which they

consciously refer. By the adoption of a basic theme found

in the repetition of simple volumes and a limited set of

elements which are inflected in response to their particular

circumstances, Siza's proposals harbour a degree of

rationalization which is antithetical to the subjectivism

and stylistic inventions of an Expressionist architecture.

The expressionist projects of, for example, Haring or

Poelzig lack the dialectical relation with a pre-existing

urban context and the consideration of conventional forms

and relations evident in Siza's work.

While Siza's architecture is not a manifestation of a

subjective expressionism, we may find in the work of

Scharoun a set of experiences which are incorporated in some

measure into the proposals for Kreuzberg. This relation is

not, however, sustained at the urban level. Scharoun's

urban projects, such as Siemmensstadt of 1930, where he was

the only architect to produce three different blocks,
treated in different ways and juxtaposed to produce a

differentiation of spaces, are not analogous to Siza's

multiform responses to Kreuzberg. Scharoun's willful
heterogeneity fails to create a recognizable urban situation
and bears little in common with Siza's urban archeology.

The parallel is found in the ability to form exterior space

through the juxtaposition of forms rather than simply

through the unifying compositions of 19th century urbanism.

Siza's proposals are clearly centered from the outset on an

interaction with a specific socio-physical context but also

on the phenomenological experience of the viewer. This is

an approach which relies on direct observation rather than

only on prescribed conventions. I would suggest that it is

in this emphasis on the perceptual basis of architecture
that the experiences of an architect like Scharoun are most
apparent in Siza's work.

In examining Siza's proposals for Kreuzberg as a whole

it is evident that while on one level they form a logically

consistent system, they are also radically subjective on

another. This is apparent in relatively insignificant

examples where Siza's inflective tactics do not always

appear to find logical support, but also on a more

fundamental level. A contradictory and conflictual

condition emerges from Siza's insistence on accepting both

the 19th century urban system of Kreuzberg and the

disaggregated and heterogeneous order of post-war Berlin as
the basis for his project. By pursuing the contradictions

inherent in this condition Siza introduces a degree of

relativism into the process of urban construction which was

foreign to the 19th century. Within Siza's proposals only

the corner buildings of the perimeter block form an

unchanging pattern. We are not provided with an absolute

measure of the degree and location of openings into the

block nor are we sure where to locate structures and the

configuration they must assume. In contrast to the 19th

century system which ensured a relatively uniform standard

in the public domain of the street and provided rules

requiring only a limited degree of interpretation, Siza only

provides principles and no clear set of rules. Siza's

proposed interventions do develop a clear set of elements

and do find support in the pre-existing and existing spatial

and social configurations, yet these must all be interpreted

by the architect. This process is most evident within the

block where former conventions pertaining to the street

space did not prevail and which presents a heterogeneous

order that varies substantially from block to block. It

would appear that in Siza's terms the emergent nature of

this inner block language does not allow for a simple and

definitive solution. In this way Siza's proposals for

spatial organization remain suggestively schematic and open

to further development.

79
3.18 Rob Krier, Project for the reconstruction of Stuttgart, 1973.

3.19 Alvaro Siza, Project for Kohlfurter block, Kreuzberg, 1979.

 Clearly such a dialectical a'pproach to urban
construction is distant from the unifying and absolutist

order underlying modern urbanism associated with CIAM

theories of the city. Siza's approach also appeals to a

different understanding of architecture and contemporary

urban problems than the so-called "contextual" proposals of

the 1970s as put forward by architects like Rob Krier. We

might contrast this project to Rob Krier's proposals for the

reconstruction of Stuttgart (fig. 3.18) of the early 1970s,

which proposes the image of the integral city accomplished

by piecing together fragments of the city and by

subordinating each element to the overall structure. An

examination of this project and much of the so-called

contextual architecture reveals a striking absence of

contradiction and conflict which characterizes the true

ground condition of any site in the city today. In contrast

to such schemes Siza appears to assume existing forms and

the objective reality of the site as the point of departure

for new proposals (fig. 3.19). In Berlin Siza proposes a

dialectical approach which relies on a creative dialogue

with the context "as found" rather than universal solutions

or subjective inventions.

While rejecting a spurious unity Siza does not appear

simply to acZept the fragmentary state of the city as a

permanent or even desirable condition. In order to qualify
Siza's point of view it is appropriate to reconsider his

statements cited at the outset of this discussion. In

81
remarking that in Berlin: "We are obliged to slip our

projects between new fragments and old fragments which never

complement each other, which may never be reduced to a

unity, but which exist as parallel realities," 8 Siza

acknowledges the contemporaneous and disjunctive nature of

the city of Berlin. Yet he also states that: "I sought to

assemble these fragments without hiding their reality, and

to bring them closer to other fragments." 9 This statement

qualifies the previous one and reflects a basic

contradiction found in the intention of bringing fragments
closer together without denying the separateness which

characterizes their fragmentation. This enigma may be

somewhat clarified by considering yet another statement made

a few years earlier, in 1977, which refers to the same

issue. At that time Siza stated:

It is an essential problem to be capable of tying

together dissimilar things, as the city today is
in reality made up of very diverse fragments. In
a city the problem is to form a whole with ruins,
buildings of different periods, fragments ... The
city is not necessarily continuous, but much more
complex. Searching to make of its pieces a whole
is necessary to develop our methodology ... 10

The tension between the idea of "searching to make of

its pieces a whole" and that the city "may never be reduced
to a unity" condenses Siza's understanding of the city as an

artifact formed by superpositions and transformations

through a conflictual process of construction and

destruction. This understanding underlies the proposals for

Kreuzberg but also provides the artistic impulse found in

82
Siza's work. In this view architecture is about both
differences and continuities which are developed through an

open formal system which is capable of engendering multiple

relations.
Where the material for the architecture Siza proposes

is in part suggested by all that exists and once existed in

Kreuzberg and Berlin, the manipulation of this material is

not wholly conditioned by this situation. In directing his

departure from former conventions and the existing situation

Siza does not appear to appeal to a set of fixed rules or to

a natural order. Siza's departures from the conventions of

the 19th century are not simply whimsical but are directed
by counterposing these conventions to transformed social and
material conditions. In seeking to rationalize the formal
decisions involved in this project Siza establishes a "meta-
game," that develops its own immanent logic, constructed in
response to a philosophy of intervention and derived from a

global analysis of Berlin, as well as the architects' belief

system. While set within this matrix of facts and ideas,

the architectural choices are also directed by a set of

principles and aesthetic norms which are the result of

historical and cultural accumulation and not simply the

inventions of the architect. The "meta-game" Siza develops

mirrors the conflictual and plural aspects of reality but
also allows us to begin to comprehend the nature of the

conventions by which we structure our environment. From

83
this perspective Siza's projects for Kreuzberg represent an

epistemological inquiry which goes beyond the functional and

the aesthetic level reaching underlying themes which not

only inform us about the nature of architecture but of

ourselves.
NOTES

1. Bernard Strecker, Internationale Bauaustellung, Berlin.

2. Ibid.

3. Alvaro Siza, "Un Immeuble d'Angle a Berlin,"

Architecture, Mouvement, Continuite (AMC), No.
1984.

4. Ibid.

5. A more detailed description and documentation of the

urban system of Kreuzberg is found in Giest, Das
Berliner Mietshaus.

6. In the Berlin apartment houses the "Berliner Zimmer,"

located in the corner formed by the street front and
rear wings, generally served as a dining-room.

7. Siza was also commissioned to develop proposals for a

smaller and less fragmented block in another part of
Kreuzberg where he proposed the insertion of a primary
school and workshops in the interior of the block. In
this case residential structures were limited to
perimeter sites.

8. Theo Van Doesburg, "De architectur als synthese der

nieuwe beelding," De Stijl, No. 6-7, 1924.

9. Alvaro Siza, "Un Immeuble d'Angle a Berlin,"

Architecture, Mouvement, Continuite (AMC), No.
1984.

10. Ibid.

11. Alvaro Siza, "Entretien avec Alvaro Siza,"

Architecture, Mouvement, Continuits (AMC), No. 44,
1978.

85
 . . .. ............

I>

4.1 Alvaro Siza, Sketches, Malagueira district at Evora.

86
4
THE MALAGUEIRA DISTRICT
AT EVORA

Few places would appear further from the fragmented and

discontinuous condition of Berlin today than the walled town

of Evora in the Portuguese Alentejo, where Alvaro Siza has

been engaged in elaborating and implementing a major urban

expansion plan since 1977. In contrast to the piecemeal

approach adopted by the IBA in Berlin, which represents a

new or renewed contingency in the reuse of existing

environments, the project for the Malagueira district of

Evora lies much closer to the design intentions of modern

town planning and architecture predicated on growth and

expansion. Siza's work at Evora is informed by earlier

social housing projects realized at Caxinas (1970) and the

SAAL projects for Oporto, at Bouga (1973,77) and Sao Victor

(1974-77), yet it may also be reasonably compared to the

pre-war housing projects that launched the Modern Movement

and to post-war reconstruction plans which initiated the

creation of new towns. The program for the new district,

which includes plans for 1200 dwellings to be constructed

 M4;0e AL

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0 0 30 0 '0
00 50 METER 00
1 METER
HOM.ENKURVEN

4.2 Werkbund colony of Neubuhl, ZUrich 1929-1932.

88
outside the boundaries of the existing historic center, is
not dissimilar to that of the German Siedlungen. At Evora

Siza draws on these precedents, but in a process initiated

in his earlier works, he critically reexamines the modernist

housing experiments. Here Siza extends the notion of the

"minimal dwelling" to include a wider range of

considerations by addressing the specific nature of the

site, local cultural and historical conditions, and issues

relative to urban construction and the history of

architecture.

In this effort to situate his work within a wider

cultural, historical, and environmental locus, Siza faces a

set of seemingly intractable problems and contradictions.

The scale of construction at Evora represents a substantial

addition to the existing town and poses a new set of

problems which may not be adequately met by reference to

local precedents. Moreover, the contemporary productive

situation restricts the appropriateness of models derived

from towns built by accretion and a process of

reconstruction over time, or from vernacular sources based

in traditional building practices and life-styles. While

the imperatives operating at Evora would apear to restrict a

direct continuity with traditional practices, we have become

increasingly aware of the fact that the instantaneous

character of new urban districts, has generally resulted in

a lack of urbanity as a communal or historical reality

cannot be manufactured. These are among the contradictions
 Existing: 1Malagueirafarm,2 Proposed: 12 Duct, 13 Square, 14 Commerce,
Malaguerinhafarm,3 S. de Airesfarm, 4 15 Service area, 16 Hotel, 17 Nursery school,
N.S. da Gloriadistrict,5 Santa Maria 18 Centre of the Boa Vontade co-operative,
district, 6 Fontanasdistrict, 7 District 19 S. Sebastiho housing associationcentre,
designedby G.A.T office, 8 F.F.H.district, 20 Services, 21 Cinema.
9 Districtofprefabricatedhouses, 10
Elemantary school, 11 Secondary schooL

4.3 Alvaro Siza, Malagueira district, site plan.

90
which both Siza's project and an analysis of his work at
Evora must address.

Elements of the Plan.

The Malagueira District is the site of a former

agricultural estate, within walking distance form the

historic center. The plan for the district includes 1200

dwellings and a range of public and commercial services.

Bounded by a residential development of single-family

houses, a clandestine settlement of rural migrants, and a

public housing project of seven-story cruxiform blocks, the

new district represents a major addition to, and extension

of, the walled town.

The plan (fig. 4.3) proposed by Siza is developed along

a major east-west axis which serves to structure the new

district and tie it to both the historic center and the

informal settlement along the edge of the site. The

dominant east-west axis continues the main street of the old

town, running from the main square out through the town
walls, and forms the primary commercial street of the new

development. Along this route is to run an elevated duct

carrying water, gas, electrical and telephone lines serving

the new district. The duct at street level forms porticos

and arcades along the major thoroughfares and establishes a

framework to which the various elements of the plan are

related.
 1, L
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House type A

7D

2 T3 rs House type B

4.4 Plans, sections and elevations of house type A with patio to the street
and house type B with patio at the back of the lot.
 The basic unit of the plan is formed by parcels of 8 x

12 meters laid out back to back against a continuous service

wall. A six-meter-wide road runs parallel to this basic

unit forming an orthogonal grid of rectangular blocks.

These blocks are aggregated to form sectors of various

sizes. The grid is not continuous over the whole site but

broken down into a number of pieces creating distinct zones

counterposed to one another. The form and scale of these

sectors depend upon the topography, the archeological

remains found in the site, the intersections of the road

network and the overall size of the operation.

We find a close correspondence between the house type

and the structure of the district. The low-rise housing

consists of a courtyard type in two basic configurations

(fig. 4.4), Type A with a court fronting the street, and

type B with the court to the rear of the lot. Eight

variants of each type are proposed from a single-floor one-

bedroom unit to a two-floor five-bedroom dwelling.

In the northern sector of the site we may identify the

basic elements of the plan and their relations. The contour

map (fig. 4.5) demonstrates the manner in which the grid of

parallel rectangular blocks is laid over the undulating

terrain inflecting the continuous rows of dwellings as they

deform themselves to follow the slope of the land (fig.
4.5). Open to the landscape on the northern edge, the

southern perimeter is bounded by a continuous arcade formed

by the elevated service duct (fig. 4.5). A major commercial

 ~"\ \.

N >

A
/A\ \\

7 \\\~

\ \ ~
\\

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-r'

4.5 Malagueira district, northern sector.

94
 ~ir

4.6 Northern sector commercial street

street cuts through the center of this area following a
curving path along the contours of the site breaking down

the continuity of the grid and forming lots of diverse sizes

and irregular geometries. In the model constructed of this

street we may see how Siza establishes a clear hierarchy

between the dwellings and this two-tiered commercial street

(fig. 4.6).
The plan for the Malagueira district is characterized

by a dual order which is not that of the 19th century city

in which public institutions are subsumed within the order

of the grid of street blocks. In Siza's plan the larger

non-typical public buildings are located outside the

orthagonal system. A hierarchy is established in which

small commercial buildings are located at the ends of the

blocks of dwellings while the larger structures such as

schools and major non-residential buildings are distributed
over the territory and generally set in opposition to the

landscape and orthagonal grid. In Siza's plan an unstable

condition emerges from within the order of the plan itself.

Not only is the grid fragmented, juxtaposed and inflected by

the irregular road network, but the architect introduces a

counterform in a public building type which has no pre-

determined rules governing their location or form.

The spatial matrix formed by the repetitive dwelling

units, the blocks and infrastructural system, ties the

various elements of the plan together into a simple and
4.7 Evora, view of the city, 14th century.

4.8 Evora, plan of the walled town, 1980.

comprehensible design. Yet the interaction of the various
elements of the plan form a dialectic of urban devices which

allow for reciprocal and fluctuating relationships.

Siza has metaphorically described the process at Evora

in the following terms:
The white sheet of continuous, simple, pure fabric
placed on the undulating surface is beginning to
show its hidden accidents. It is filling with
wrinkles. It is agitated. It is broken and
creases emerge. It is again becoming transparent
... 1

Siza seems to suggest that the rational proposal

embodied in the plan obscures by its own purity and self

reference. Yet, that rational proposal can become

transparent and closer to reality as it is invested with

specificity. Siza's statement also appears to imply a

certain autonomy to his initial proposal, allowing the

architect to explore a contemporaneous reality in which all

the experience accumulated in the site and the history of

architecture and of the city is equally present and

available. The process at Evora begins with "the first

glance", 2 yet it is based on the ability to see connections,

similarities, analogies, and conflicts where they are not

immediately evident.

Building beyond the Walls

Seeking to explain Siza's plan in terms of the context

we find, beyond the structural link established by the major
east-west axis of the district, multiple relations between

98
U

gA

porticos on Praca do Geraldo

16th century aquaduct

residential street

4.9 Evora, views of the historic center.

Siza's project and the historic city (fig. 4.7, 4.8). A
correspondence exists between the elements of Siza's plan

and urban/architectural elements in Evora (fig. 4.9)such as

the continuous fabric of dwellings fronting directly onto

narrow streets, whose uniformity is broken by their

conformity to the sloping ground; the fragmentary pattern of

long rectangular blocks, evident in some of the residential

areas of the town; the porticos, that line the main

commercial street and square; or the 16th century aquaduct,

that connects the town to the surrounding landscape. Yet

despite such parallels the plan for the new district
represents a radically different architectural vocabulary
and urban structure.

Evora, an administrative center in an agricultural

region, is a town whose foundation dates from the second

century. Situated at the crossroads of ancient commercial

routes, its form attests to a long and rich cultural history

that includes Roman and Moorish occupations and the presence

of the royal court of the first Portuguese dynasties. In

this town which has remained largely intact within a second

perimeter wall, constructed in the 14th century with stones

of earlier Roman walls, we find an amalgamation of all the
architectural styles of Portugal, inflected by and combined
with a vital local building tradition. Evora represents a
composite and stratified order which can be neither

replicated nor stripped down to reveal an original order.

It is a town that defies extension as a walled town forms a

100
 4.10 Plan of Pompeii, original center and the extra-urban streets.

NORD l

-Ar

; -

/-/

4.11 Plan of Carthage (Davies).

101
self-contained organism and construction beyond the towns'

walls is by definition disjunctive. In an effort to

establish a continuity with the historic center and an

ordering framework for growth, it would appear that Siza has

sought to transcribe conventional elements and relations

rather than attempt to replicate the composite form of the

town. This interpretation is supported by the fact that the

correspondences we might establish between Siza's project

and Evora are found on the level of typological schemes and

not in the replication of a particular architectural

vocabulary or set of forms. An analysis of this set of

correspondences reveals that the elements and relations to

which Siza refers are not indigenous to Evora or the

Alentejo region but are in fact fundamental patterns which

underlie the western city. In the project for the

Malagueira district, conceived as both an addition to and

extension of the existing urban nucleus, we may observe that

Evora serves not so much as a model but as a set of enduring

and transposable relations. In adopting these conventional

patterns Siza's scheme not only refers to Evora and local

building traditions but by extension incorporates a long

history of urban architecture that extends back to the

clasical urban structures of antiquity.

To my knowledge, Siza has not mentioned these

antecedents, yet examining the plan for the Malaqueira

district we find substantial evidence to suggest that it

102
 '4-

/ I

IN,

jrr

ia

4.12 Camp of Marcellus near Numantia (Schulters).

4.13 An area of Pomeii, north of the main forum.

103
demonstrates a structure somewhat analogous to the planned

towns of antiquity. While it is not possible to establish a

direct correspondence with a specific model or town, the

structuring devices, elements, and relations operating in

Siza's scheme exhibit a certain parallelism with those towns

which Castagnoli 3 has termed as of or influenced by the

"Hippodamean Type." This type refers to a plan form

characterized by a rectangular grid and found in cities such

as Agrigento, Solutrin, and Pompeii (fig. 4.10). In these

towns, as in the Roman encampment (fig. 4.12), the blocks
whose long dimension is at right angles to the major roads
are subdivided by secondary streets (per strigas), as in
Siza's plan.

In the porticoes and shops lining the main street of

the Malagueira district we find a transformation of the main

street of Evora, but also the basic pattern of the portico

in front of a row of "tabernae," which according Lo several

writers lay at the origin of the Roman "insulae." In Siza's

planned development of the ends of blocks as varied sites

accommodating higher plastic forms, and the use of porticoes

to protect pedestrians from the intense Alentejo sun, we

find a compelling parallel in Axel Bo'ethius' observation

that:
The rows of tabernae acted as a most outstanding
embellishment of utilitarian houses ... there
occur arcaded or colonnaded porticoes in front of
the rows of tabernae and these porticoes were an
especially important part of the communal comfort
as is testified by many ancient authors. 4

104
 4.14 Alentejo region, Portugal,. street.

4.15 Alvaro Siza, Malagueira district, residential street.

105
 This arrangement, still common throughout the
Mediterranean basin, forms the basic type of insula

architecture. The universal nature of this configuration is

demonstrated by its consistent use throughout the Roman

dominion. While we may establish certain parallels with the

scheme of the Hippodamean plan and the basic sequence of

dwelling, taberna, portico and insula, it may be useful to

consider other elements of Siza's plan in relation to

antique precedents.
The courtyard house type adopted by Siza, while

occasionally found in rural Alentejo towns is not a

prevalent regional building type but is of course found in

many Greco-Roman towns. Unlike Roman examples, Siza's

dwellings do not miniaturize the order of the town, and we

may not establish typological relations with the atrium

house. As Kurt Forster notes, in the Roman attrium house

"the unfolding of the plan recapitulated inside the house

the entire range of public spaces - squares, passages,

colonnades and shut-off habitations - outside it." 5 Siza's

dwellings are of a less compound form, yet they do exhibit a

configuration similar to more modest antique dwellings. A

clear correspondence to regional towns (fig. 4.14), but also
the streets of such towns as Ostia and Pompeii, does exist

in the aggregation of back-to-back houses forming a

continuous street wall (fig. 4.15) punctured by minimal

openings.

106
 I.

/ - - ---

4.16 Alvaro Siza, Malagueira district, sketch

design for the covered square.

107
 In the sketch design for a central market square (fig.
4.16) in the form of a monumental hemicyclical shell,
located at a major intersection along the east-west axis, we

also find refractions of antique precedents. Here the

closed form of the dome is opened in an exchange with the

landscape. The barrel vault which leads from the surrounded

and contained square behind the market, opens out onto an

expanded horizon marked by the dominance of the historic

center, while in reverse the experience is one of closing

and entry. Franceso Venezia 6 has suggested that the

incomplete form of this proposed square recalls the empty

cylindrical drums of abandoned windmills which assume the

high points around the site, but it also draws indirectly

from any number of public urban spaces. The form and
location of Siza's covered square may be related to Roman
constructive forms and such antique precedents as the
market, forum and theatre. Yet these parallels appear
distant as it may also draw on any number of urban public
spaces form squares which open to the landscape and water

courses to Islamic constructions which provide shaded

enclosures. The form of Siza's square, while compounded

from both practical and
In the effort to relate the district to wider
environmental conditions and the conformity of the layout to

the landforms, we find antecendents in local towns and

villages (fig. 4.17) but also in antique towns where the

site often determined the outline. Of the Hellenized Italic

108
 0
Ty- O
Ito
Ij 1) n
i~~I4J
imi0
4J
(b 11. I , I . -
3
4"Ji4
Rii
IA CP-IE1
town, Axel Boethius has written:

The planners of, for example, 4th century

Halicarnassus and Pergamon, accommodated the towns
to what the nature of the place suggested. They
monumentalized the landscape in agreement. with its
natural lines, relief and character. 7
From these experiences Boethius derives the notion of
"construire le paysage" -- a sensibility that also describes
Siza's approach to the Alentejo landscape. There is an
arcadian quality about this scheme that maintains intact the

landscape of rock outcroppings, olive trees, grasslands, and

streams. In Siza's plan where the main streets open out to
the landscape of a former agricultural estate, where the

countryside penetrates deep into the settlement, and where

closed blocks confront a pristine landscape (fig. 4.18), we

are reminded of the fact that Evora is a town in which the

traces of archaic traditions are firmly inscribed into its

vast latifundian zone. Yet substantial diferences exist

between archaic beliefs and Siza's view of man and the

natural world embodied in the plan for this new district.

Siza adopts every trace of former occupation and every

accident in the terrain in a conscious process of

transformation - intensifying the natural setting and

transforming an open field into a cultural landscape. In
Siza's plan we find both views of nature co-existing - man

as part of nature and man as separate from the natural

world.
We may correlate elements and relations operating in

Siza's plan to the insula, portico, and tabernae, but we may

110
 4.19 Malagueira district, service wall under construciton.

4.20 Alvaro Siza, Malagueira district, sketch of a portion of the district.

lll
also find within the planning process at the Malagueira

district other parallels to both Evora and the planned towns

of antiquity. At the Malagueira district the conditions of

implementation called for a plan to coordinate the

activities of various organizations and builders operating

over time at various scales, from the individual
owner/builder to the scale of several hundred dwellings.
The concern for continuity and regularity within a piecemeal

process, evident in Siza's plan, is very old. As Castagnoli

notes, in considering new urban developments Plato suggested

that "the houses are to be alike and even proposes that all

foundations be laid at the time the city is founded." 8 This

is a consideration which we find evidence of in the regular

layout and repetition of a single building type, but also in

the service walls erected prior to the construction of

dwellings. These walls (fig. 4.19, 4.20) represent a

rational solution to the problem of infrastructure, but also

form the initial act of foundation. Standing in monumental

opposition to the landscape, the walls claim space for
architecture and tie the future dwellings to the underlying

geological strata. We may establish a typological parallel

with the Renaissance aquaduct of Evora, designed by Franciso

de Arruda, which links the town to the surrounding landscape

but also has served as a support for the construction of

dwellings. In Siza's scheme the fundamental purpose of the

aquaduct is maintained and its latent potential is

emphasized as he uses these walls to channel growth and

112
unify the form of the district.

In seeking to relate this new district to what the site

and the city of Evora suggested, Siza has adopted elements

and relations associated with classic urban structures, yet

it is also evident that Siza did not intend to construct a

Roman or Greek town. Just as the form of Evora has not been
transposed outside its walls, the Hellenized Italic town may
not be discovered within the structure of the Malagueira

district. Referring to the enduring and transposable nature

of these classic urban structures, Melvin Charney has noted
that,

From the Roman Insula, to the strip house of

medieval towns, to the tenements of the late 19th
century industrial cities ... this fundamental way
of building sustained an architecture of dwellings
which in turn, structured the streets, the
carrefours, and hence the squares, ordering the
public existence of people. 9
Siza's reuse of older conventions and themes manifest
in the introduction of the basic sequence of the street,

block, square, and quarter, is not a neo-classical

restitution nor is it an appeal to an archetype or origin of

architecture. As Charney suggests, the reference to classic
urban structures is not necessarily to a model but to

fundamental themes underlying the city as an urban construct

-- themes which have been continuously adapted in response

to changing social and material conditions.

This evident parallel demonstrates that it is not

possible to ascribe the form of this new district simply to

113
 t4

44 --

typical residential street

4.21 site plan

patio type dwellings

courtyard house

4.22 Evora, informal settlement adjacent to the Malagueira district.

114
local precedents and Siza's work at Evora is not a form of

localism or regionalism. The evident correspondence between

Siza's project and those elements and relations surveyed in

Evora and surrounding towns with more universal urban

conventions demonstrates what Alan Colquhoun rightly points

out as, "the extent to which all cultures even the most
indigenous have been based on the ideas and principles of
other 'preexistent' cultures."10
While Siza's proposals encompass multiple relations
with the city of Evora and by.extension incorporate a long

history of city building, it is equally apparent that a

dialogue is established between the new district and the

adjacent clandestine but now authorized settlement. This

relation is established through the continuity of scale and

orientation, the north-south axis which links the market

square, and the concentration of services in the southern

half of the site. Within the seemingly disordered layout of

this area (fig. 4.21) a basic pattern emerges that is
derived in part from traditional building types and

settlement patterns. In this recent urbanization we find

two predominant building types (fig. 4.22). The first is
found in the repetition of single houses sharing common
walls and fronting onto narrow streets with small enclosed

yards to the back and the second in a linear form which

develops perpendicularly to the street forming a patio in

which small one-story houses front each other. The scale of
the new development with its 8 x 12 meter lots, and narrow

115
 4.23 Alvaro Siza, Malagueira district, house type A, plan and section.

116
residential streets closely parallels this area. This
modest clandestine settlement presents a physical analogue

but more importantly represents a way of life and the re-

enactment of the form of the town without an institutional

framework.

Beyond morphological similarities we may also establish

a typological relation with a small atypical courtyard house

which takes up a corner lot on the edge of the site (fig.

4.22). Surrounded by a continuous wall, this L-shaped

single-story house is somewhat similar in size and
configuration to the houses Siza proposes. Moreover, the
reversal of the courtyard in type B to the back of the lot

may be related to the dominant house type found in this area

which fronts directly on the street. While we might find in
these simple houses the origins of Siza's project, they are
basic types which are not limited td the Alentejo region.

Siza's development and interpretation of these basic types

also reveals other influences and intentions.

The low-rise configuration and courtyard house type is

a rational response to several factors, ranging from comfort

to the maintenance of the historic town as the most

prominent element in the landscape and symbolic center of a

growing city. This house form also corresponds to Siza's

understanding of the dwelling as a closed interior, and the

articulation of the plans of these small houses to form

positive exterior space, and the placement and dimensioning

117
 Ah. MEhh

J~L I I-

4.24 Alvaro Siza, Malagueira district,

completed dwellings and preliminary sketches

118
of openings to visually enlarge small spaces, recalls other
Siza houses. In these plans (fig. 4.23) Siza explores
various connective possibilities by combining closed rooms

with the open plan. Limited means are employed to form

spaces of varying scales and relations.

As Francesco Veneziall has observed, at Evora the house

form does not appear to have been arrived at simply by

addition to an original nucleus but may be understood as a

subtractive process in which the final form is found in the

smallest house with its projecting stair (fig. 4.24). This
subtractive process is evident in Siza's sketches (fig.
4.24) where we find the building considered as a solid but

also that the whole block appears simultaneously as a

continuous mass and as the addition of singular elements.

The various stages of construction of these dwellings is not

understood as an ad-hoc arrangement. Each stage is
carefully calculated to produce a rich and powerful visual

acoustic to the streets. In these simple forms, as in

earlier works such as the Bires house or the projects for

Kreuzberg, we again discover a pre-occupation with

establishing continuities and discontinuities at various

levels which mutually reinforce each other. The stark
simplicity of walls without cornices, and carefully
proportioned and juxtaposed masses and niche-like openings,

also recall the austere forms of Oud (fig. 4.25) and Loos.
The elemental quality of Siza's forms and the

underlying rationality of the plan of the district

119
 4.25 J.J.P. Oud, Houses on the Strandboulevard, Scheveningen, 1917.

~~.1

4.26 Alvaro Siza, housing at Bou a, Oporto, 1973-77, sketch.

120
demonstrate a strong affinity with the housing schemes which
established modern architecture in the early decades of the

20th century. Siza's interest in the housing experiments of

the 1920's had already been established in his earlier

social housing projects for Oporto at Bouga (1973-77) (fig.

4.26) and S. Victor (1974-77). These pre-war experiences do

not provide Siza with a specific physical model but they do,
as Martin Steinmann notes, contain in their forms "a certain

manner in which to state the problem of housing." 12 Both

the plan for Evora and these earlier experiences originate

in the demands of an economic and productive nexus that

manifests itself in repetiveness, compactness, the use of an

"optimized" dwelling type, and the most economical means of

construction available. At Evora we also find, in the

concern for structuring the environment and providing

housing and services within an egalitarian framework, a

parallel to such earlier examples as the municipality of

Frankfort's ambitious plans to house the working class in

the new Siedlungen. Clearly a parallel set of circumstances

and intentions exist, yet we also find in Siza's work a
careful and systematic restatement of the "problem of

housing."
The project for the Malagueira district is not simply a

reinterpretation of rationalist codes and formulas, yet it

is apparent that the work at Evora finds support in the

experiences of architects such as Oud and Taut who sought to

121
 00

*1L~E
0 o "o

4.27

4.28

demmersteck nach vollendetem uusbeu

4.29

4.27 "Existenzminimum" model plan discussed at C.I.A.M., 1929.

4.28 Alexander Klein, distributive studies, 1928.

4.29 Walter Gropius, Dammerstock district, Kalsruhe, 1928.

122
deal with fundamental problems of lasting significance. The
housing experiments of modern architecture in housing in the

early decades of the 20th century defies unequivocal

categorization and we cannot simply understand these diverse

experiences as a single-minded effort to form what Gropius

termed "a unitary view of the world." Undoubtedly a
deterministic and techno-centric view underlies the efforts
of CIAM to universalize planning, Ernst May's
Existenzminimum model plan (fig. 4.27), Alexander Klein's
ergonomic studies (fig. 4.28), and the housing schemes of
architects like Gropius (fig. 4.29) and Hilbersheimer, yet
such a general characterization tends to overlook the many

efforts undertaken during this period which were often at

odds with one another. Siza's work conditions how we might

understand these earlier experiences and it may be more

useful to assume Siza's intentions and method as a

particular vantage point from which to survey the past.

On the most general level, by positing a process of

accumulation and transformation of previous experiences and

by giving expression in the plan to several dimensions,

including the locale and its traditions, Siza's work breaks

away from CIAM's efforts to tie architecture directly to the

dictates of production. The scheme for Evora is grounded in

typological, morphological and other norms developed out of

a definite socio-cultural use. In seeking to give

architecture a basis in daily life Siza does not incorporate

Le Corbusier's "Esprit Nouveau" and its implication of a

123
search for a new architecture in response to a "new way of
life." At Evora the articulations between the project and

social life are found by referenc.e to concrete phenomena and

conventional structures rather than to abstract concepts of

"form" and "order" or an appeal to a "new man." The project

is not a blue-print for a "new way of life" nor is it a
direct representation of an existing way of life, yet this
new district appears today, as did the German Siedlungen in

the 1920's, to offer an authentic alternative to current

models. The Malagueira district is neither the same density

nor structure as the historic center or local settlements;

it is more integrated and complex than the isolated tower
blocks adjacent to the site, and less privatized and more
structured than the chaotic development of single-family

houses nearby. Moreover, the architectural, technical, and

typological assumptions contained in the plan are capable of

generalization and further development. Siza's project

forms both a specific response to a particular situation and

a suggestive model for peripheral development in Evora.

Siza's concern for relational structures and everyday
requirements as a basis for his proposals is not altogether

foreign to 20th century production. From this perspective

we might consider Oud's effort to combine the open formal
system of De Stijl with "life as it is normally lived,"
Bruno Taut's de-emphasis of technological imperatives in
favor of social demands, or Loos' unrealized housing

124
 Maki.I I

:Awn

EIC-
PJ.

4.30 J.J.P. Oud, Kiefhoek district, 1925.

4.31 Alvar Aalto, Satellite town outside Pavia 1966, site plan.

125
projects for Vienna developed out of detailed consideration

of the life-style and values of future inhabitants.

However, from our vantage point we find in these earlier

efforts a range of unresolved problems and contradictions.

Oud's Kiefhoek district (1925) (fig. 4.30) is by no means

simply a productivist reflex yet it does not form
recognizable public spaces, nor effectively establish

connections to the surrounding urban structure. We might

also consider Alvar Aalto's various efforts to reconcile

industrial prodution with cultural demands. While

successfully relating his housing projects to an

environmental context (fig. 4.31) Aalto was unable to

integrate these same works within a wider historical and

cultural locus. 13 Among these various precedents the

thought and work of Tessenow may provide a useful reference

in the present discussion.
In contrast to the imitative replications of the

Heimatschutz movement, Tessenow's work was not simply based

on received forms and in his architecture we find a parallel

to Siza's concern for maintaining a connection with the past

while remaining open to change. Like Tessenow's works, such

as his well-known terrace houses at Hellerau (fig. 4.32)

Siza's forms (fig. 4.33) are imposing by "virtue of their

very simplicity" and in both cases we find housing directed

towards the elementary forms of an "anonymous architecture"

within a self-conscious process that cannot be reduced to a

spontaneous response to needs. Moreover, Siza's use of old

126
 4.32 Heinrich Tessenow, Terrace houses at Hellerau.

4.33 Alvaro Siza, Malagueira district, elevations of houses.

127
and new technologies and materials parallels Tessenow's
stress on craftsmanship and reliance on tested methods of

building while not rejecting new construction techniques.

Despite what might appear to be a sympathetic correspondence
to Tessenow's work, on closer examination, we find
significant differences which are more revealing than any

possible continuities. Siza's plan appears from our

analysis to draw from classic urban structures, yet in his

architecture we do not find manifest the classicizing

tendency underlying Tessenow's architecture. Siza works

with an open formal stystem altogether foreign to Tessenow.
It is significant that we do not find in the scheme for

Evora the provincialism which led Tessenow to raise the

provincial town to the level of a paradigm, reflected in the

anti-urban bias of his book on the house, Wohnhausbau of

1909.14 In marked contrast, to Tessenow's "Kleinstadt" the

Malagueira district is fundamentally urban in both its

organization and intent. However, Tessenow's rejection of

techno-centric attitudes introduces a theme which we might

expand upon.

A major distinction between Siza's work at Evora and

the housing projects of the Modern Movement is found in his

apparent rejection of technology as a positive value in and

of itself. Siza adopts simple technologies and there is in

his work no effort to employ industrialized materials or

building systems exclusively. At Evora a rationalized

128
industrial process is not proposed, yet we do find a
concerted effort to rationalize the construction process.

Siza's use of artisanal methods of building does not appear

to be an exaltation of agrarian values but rather a rational

response to a productive situation in a relatively

unindustrialized region. 15 Beyond such pragmatic

considerations it is also apparent that the simple building

methods employed also belie an effort to mediate technology.

This attitude is apparent in many of the choices made by the

architect, ranging from the use of a massive masonry system
to an approach to the landscape that rules out the use of

heavy machinery and inflexible construction systems.

Perhaps Siza's attitude is best illustrated in provisions

for the automobile as these decisions are made independently

of the productive situation. The six-meter-wide streets do

not allow for on-street parking which is provided in garages

located in separate structures adjacent to each residential

sector. These garages, to be provided with chimneys,

reinterpret the rural tradition of out buildings used to

keep animals and for cooking. In this small example we find

the most ubiquitous symbol of modern technology and mobility

confronting archaic traditions in an uneasy relationship.

The effort to mediate between the demands of the current

productive situation and the demands of a particular site,
cultural milieu, and traditional urban forms underlies many

of the decisions made at Evora. Here it is not a question

of rejecting advanced means but, following a logic that

129
closely resembles Tessenow's and Loos' convictions, of
carefully weighing new technologies against traditional

alternatives.

We may find support for Siza's approach in a

reevaluation of pre-war experiences which lay outside the

mainstream, but also in post-war developments that represent

a fundamental questioning of the modern project of CIAM,

such as Team Ten's critique of CIAM charters and post-war

urban reconstruction projects. In the writings of Team Ten

members we find enunciated some of the principles associated
with Siza's work at Evora. As Jencks notes,
The history of CIAM to Team Ten from 1953 to 1963
is basically the history of an attempt to
reestablish the basis for urban identity. Team
Ten's call was for a memorable image, which
reverberates with overtones of historical place
without quite admitting them. 16

The revisionism of Van Eyck, Hertzberger and Ungers, as

well as parallel efforts by Italian architects such as

Rogers and Quaroni proposed the reassessment of the

historical city as a basis for new proposals leading to the

development of a methodological and theoretical basis found

in the research of Aldo Rossi and others. However, few

major urban housing projects have been realized along these

lines in the ensuing period.

James Sterling's Southgate housing project for Runcor.n

New Town (fig. 4.34), indirectly influenced by this wider

discourse, may serve as an example of this renewed interest

in history and of some of the contradictions and pitfalls of

130
 t

49 1j7 e

U4

! -- 4

view of constructed dwellings

typical courtyard unit sketch site plan

L8 8

II

if

4.34 James Sterling, Southgate housing, Runcorn

New Town, 1968-7

131
an effort to integrate historical precedent in the
foundation of new settlements. While lacking any apparent
relation with the preexisting nucleus of Halton Village, the
original town of Runcorn, or nearby Liverpool and

Manchester, Sterling accompanied the plans for his Southgate

housing scheme with spatial diagrams of the 18th century

squares of Bath and London. 17 At Runcorn, Sterling's effort

to integrate such historical precedents is contradicted by a

master plan based on the demands of the automobile and a

rigid functional segregation. Sterling's references are

restricted to a narrow range of models which have no

apparent relation to the locale and are contradicted by the

rigid grid pattern and commitment to mass production and

systematized construction. In contrast Siza's scheme for
Evora, realized under albeit different circumstances, is not
a "superifical evocation of past eras" and the

rationalization of the plan and the technologies employed

are not external to but rather coincide with referent mdoels

derived from history as well as the place itself.

We cannot understand Siza's work as a form of

regionalism or localism yet two other readings are suggested

by our analysis of the work at Evora. On one hand we might

consider the project for the Malagueira district as a

transmutation or "modernization" of a classical urban model.

Conversely, we may find at Evora the rational modern project

opened to a wider set of contradictory experiences which

132
impose a rethinking of basic principles. I would like to
argue that Siza's work does not conform to Vasari's

aphorism, "Modernamento Antiquo - Antiquo Modernamento".

Such an interpretation assumes that Siza attributes absolute

value to antique models. In rejecting the "myth of

progress" of the Modern Movement Siza does not replace it

with either "the myth of a local cultural essence", or a

neo-classical belief that the values of architecture are

found in fixed laws exemplified in Greco-Roman models.

Siza's reference to classic urban structures is not to a

model but to a set of enduring and transposable relations
which allow us to recognize the town as an urban construct

and to establish basic principles capable of enduring in the

present. The validity of these precedents is not measured

by their origin but rather their continuing significance in

the present. We might go further to suggest that Siza's

work represents an effort to look beyond tradition and

classicism to the generative forces of architectural and

urban phenomena. In this sense Siza's project defies

reduction to any one of its multiple sources. It is not
simply a product which may be analytically divided into the
parts from which it is assembled. Each of these experiences
informs and directs the other within an unstable compound
that denies final authority to any particular model.

133
NOTES

Chapter 4

1. Alvaro Siza, "L'accumulazione degli indizi,"

Cassabella, No. 498/9, 1984.
2. Ibid.
3. Fernando Castagnoli, Orthogonal Town Planning in
Antiquity, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1971.
4. Axel Boethius, The Golden House of Nero, Ann Arbor,
University of Michiigan Press, 1960, p. 157.
5. Kurt Forster, Antiquity and Modernity in the La Roche -
Jeanneret Houses of 1923, Oppositions, 15/16, 1979.
6. Francesco Venezia, "Built on the Site," Lotus
International, No. 37, 1983.
7. Axel Boethius, The Golden House of Nero, Ann Arbor,
University of Michigan Press, 1960, p. 140.

8. Cited in, Fernando Castagnoli, Orthogonal Town Planning

in Antiquity.

9. Melvin Charney, "Of Temples and Sheds," ARQ, October

1983, p. 15.

10. Alan Colquhoun, "Three Kinds of Historicism,"

Architectural Design, No. 9/10, 1983, p. 90.

11. Francesco Venezia, "Built on the Site", Lotus

International, No. 37, 1983.
12. Martin Steinmann, "Reality as History -- Notes for a
Discussion of Realism in Architecture,,"
13. Demetri Porphyrios, Sources of Modern Eclecticism,
London, Academy Editions, 1982.
14. Jules Posner notes that "Tessenow's 'Kleinstadt' is
neither village nor countryside and his mythical small
house can only be realized in anti-urban conditions,
sited on open land and extended by a garden in an
effort to maintain the variety of the provincial
against the uniformity of the city."
15. Siza notes that in Portugal 90% of construction
enterprises are made up of less than six employees.

134
16. Charles Jencks, Modern Movements in Architecture, New
York, Anchor Books, 1973, p. 302.

17. See Werner Seligman, "Runcorn: Historical Precedent

and the Rational Design Process", Oppositions, No. 7,
1976.

135
5
PREEXISTENCES

In the first chapter, I sought to establish a basic

distinction between an approach to architecture which is
derived from indigenous sources and one which is oriented by

universal sources inflected by local circumstances. I have

argued that Siza's work, while responding to particular
settings is not fully motivated by them. This stance
suggests a dialectical operation underlying the forms of

this architecture and which is sustained in the analysis of

the projects which we have examined: the Bank at Olivera

das Azmies, the Antonio Carlos Siza House, and the proposals

for Kreuzberg and Evora.

An architecture which seeks to establish multiple

relations with its socio-physical and historical context

necessarily involves the reinterpretation of physical models

and conventions. In Siza's work we find that referant

models and experiences are found within specific settings

but are by no means limited to a particular place or time.

The concern for pre-existences has led Siza to consider the

136
history of the site, but also the history of architecture.
Each project not only establishes itself within an objective

reality but also within the discipline of architecture.

Siza, in his statements, emphasizes those aspects of

his research program which develop out of an understanding

of architecture as a transformational process of pre-

existing contexts and models. From the general notion of

pre-existences we may extract two related themes, the first

being the associations and disassociations between Siza's

works and particular settings and the second is found in the

relation between architecture and history. A discusion of

Siza's works in terms of these two themes may not grasp the

essence of his architecture nor fully describe his research

program, yet they do provide a logical starting point and a
way of approaching his work.

5.1 A NON-IMITATIVE CONTEXTUALISM

All of Alvaro Siza's projects are based on a critical

knowledge of their settings and we find in his work a

sustained and systematic effort to link architectural design

to spatial, cultural and historical contexts. The terms
"site," "context," and "situation" are often associated with

his work. Each term implies more than a finite or

quantifiable thing, inferring a set of (potentially

unlimited) circumstances. These terms appear to coincide
with Siza's statements from which we may establish that he

137
views the site as a dynamic reality, existing under the

action of diverse and conflicting forces over time. We

might go further to suggest that for Siza the site is an

artifact which lies beyond design, as a socio-physical and

historical matrix made up of superpositions,

transformations, conflicting demands and interpretations.

This understanding of site was not a primary

consideration in his earliest works and appears to have

evolved, in part, out of his first contact with an urban

project. The commission for a small group of houses at

Caxinas in 1970 represented a new collective dimension in

his work, demanding the development of methodological

principles. At Caxinas we may detect a move away from

considering the site simply in topographic and experiential

terms, towards a more inclusive culturally based

understanding. This increasing scope of concerns is

summarized in Siza's statement of 1977:

In my first works I began by looking at the site,

then making classifications ... today I take
everything into account as what interests me is
reality. 1

Given such statements and the hybridization evident in

Siza's work, we might question how the architect finds sound

reasons for excluding anything from a project. It is

evident from Siza's production that we cannot simply

understand his research program as "realist" or "neo-

realist" for Siza does not aim to eliminate the artifice

from architecture. The conformity to a given context or

138
 >.~ I

%(.
0S( 2

;
C/()

5.1 Alvaro Siza, Belice, Sicily, 1980.

sketches of the earthquake.

139
"life-likeness" are not assumed as values in themselves.
Nor is Siza's architecture simply an assemblage of fragments

derived from the context and history. When Siza claims to

"take everything into account," it does not mean that he

also seeks literally to put everything into a project. His

work necessarily involves a critical-knowledge of the

context or situation in which he is working. Siza's note

that, "the architect is like a detective ... a lover of

puzzles" 2 suggests a search for clues which may reveal the

essential formal structure and an understanding of the

forces active within the setting, as a basis for a

philosophy of intervention.
Tracing the myriad of associations between any Siza

work and its context would be a hopeless task and it is more

useful to try to establish the basic principles which may

govern this process. At the most general level we may think

of the "situation" as providing the material for the

architectural project, but Siza's works also develop their

own formative rules and are inflected through the encounter

with the setting. This is an interactive process which at

times blurs distinctions between inflections and borrowings

but never is it a question of "mere imitation." Siza's
contextualism involves the construction of relational

structures, which include systematic transgressions, and his

works do not simply develop by replication or analogy to the
setting. These works assume a certain formal autonomy

140
involving differentiation and juxtaposition, but lack the
purity and self absorption we have come to expect from

modern architecture. This architecture is both autonomous

and involved with its surroundings.

Siza's emphasis on the context in which architecture

exists is not simply an appeal to tradition, order, or

meaning. In the works we have discussed, both the

reinterpretation and transgressions of formal regulations

present in the setting are related to changing social and

material conditions. We may find various motivations,

precedents, and influences for this approach. Clearly it is
a response to an understanding of architecture as a cultural

activity, a collective support, and as an urban fact, but we

may also relate this focus to an effort to differentiate

forms. In Siza's work we find that the setting provides a

means .of differentiating and particularizing forms within an

approach which seeks to establish a rigorous and non-

superfluous architecture. In this view the differentiation
of forms results from an interaction with the setting rather

than simply through arbitrary or a-priori formal

manipulations. Yet this is not a process by which the

architect develops an autonomous proposition which is

subsequently deformed by all that surrounds it. We must

recognize that there is a dialectical and non-linear process

consciously underlying Siza's work. While acknowledging

that the architect brings to each project a set of

principles and experiences, Siza strives toward a condition

141
 5.2 Alvar Aalto, schematic analysis of the Helsinki skyline
with the Enzo Gutzeit Headquarters on the right.

5.3 Alvaro Siza, Bank at Oliveira de Azmeis, 1971-74.

142
in which his architecture may exist only through the
encounter with a specific situation.

With these observations and assertions in mind we might

return to Siza's work. The Bank at Oliveira de Azmeis of
1971-74 (fig. 5.3) provides a clear example of what we might
understand as a morphological strategy and the manner in
which a form may harmonize with its surroundings yet break
in dissonance. In Siza's bank bulding, briefly discussed in
Chapter One, the architectural language is foreign while the

form develops in response to all that surrounds it. In the

manner of a Rauschenberg print the form simply records all

that is "out there," by breaking down a privileged viewpoint

or hierarchical ordering of experience, yet it is also a

formal assertion. This approach also bears comparison with

Aalto's urban buildings for Helsinki and his ability to
relate disparate buildings. Aalto's Enzo Gutziet
Headquarters of 1959 may serve as an example of his effort

to relate a contemporary architecture with a pre-existing

setting. The intentions behind Aalto's schematic analysis

of the Helsinki skyline (fig. 5.2) in which Classical,
Byzantine and Modern forms are aligned within an elementary
matrix is not altogether dissimilar to the alignments and

multiple regulating lines Siza generates from all the

elements surounding his small bank building. Siza's
approach is perhaps more inclusive and three-dimensional,

yet in making the comparison we should also consider the

143
excavation and fragmentation of the rear of Aalto's building

which may be understood, in some measure, as inflecting

towards the Byzantine cathedral behind it. Despite

apparently similar intentions, Aalto's allusions to the
iconographic vocabulary of the Neoclassical context do no

find a parallel in the abstract formal language of Siza's

Bank. While a comparative discussion of Aalto's and Siza's
respective efforts to establish correspondences with pre-

existing settings would be fruitful, at this point I would

simply suggest that Aalto is unquestionably a precursor for

Siza's contextual architecture.

The morphological strategy observed in the bank has
also been related, in Chapter One, to Siza's residential
projects where the alignments of boundaries and elements in

the setting serve as datums. This strategy is also evident

in all of Siza's other works including the proposal for
Kottbusserstrasse where the form is controlled by the
superposition of the alignments of the street and adjacent

structures. These works also introduce other relational

strategies which are not apparent in the bank from the early

1970s, including typological schemes and conventional

elements derived in part from the setting. However, these

projects do confirm that in Siza's work iconography is not
employed as a privileged means of establishing contextual
relations.

The sketch design for the Cave di Cusa in Sicily,

carried out in 1980, illustrates another dimension of Siza's

144
 - -- - - u

5.4 Alvaro Siza, Cave di Cusa, Sicily, 1980,

site plan, photos and sketch of the Archeological Park.

145
response to the site. In this case Siza's proposals merge
with the place and rely only upon a rearrangement of pre-

existing elements. In these proposals to establish the

means of access to an archeological site, the analysis of

the place becomes in effect the project. In presenting this

proposal Siza notes that,

The Rocche di Cusa are ancient quarries of

calcareous tufa, where materials were extracted
for construction of the town of Selinunte and its
temples. After the conquest of Carthage in 409 BC
the quarries were disused; it is still possible to
see the incisions made in the rock, during
extraction of the stones for the pillars, or a
capital roughly hewn out.
The subject of the project was access to the
quarry area, a sort of 'gateway to the past.' But
at Cusa it is hard to distinguish between past and
present: the situation is so fleeting that work
in the quarries might have been broken off
yesterday and this makes any chronological concern
insignificant.
Everything here remains discrete, humdrum, and the
suspension, the cut in time, has seemingly fixed
certain allusions, almost certain rules for the
place, which ends up perhaps having absolutely
nothing in common with the Greek temples. The
Cave di Cusa are the condensation of
transformation and continuity: the pieces of
semi-finished limestone are parts of a building,
it is true, but also the geography of that
landscape. These pieces of architecture keep
their roots in the ground, they are still rocks. 3
Siza appears to add nothing to the site, preferring to
focus attention on what exists. The project (fig. 5.4)

forms a series of thresholds and the principle architectural

means is found in movement as an organizing principle. The
architect establishes a path into a contemporaneous reality,

structuring movement to, through and from existing elements

146
 TIIn
7-

-1-

5.5 Alvaro Siza, housing at Sao Victor, Oporto, 1974-77.

147
in a cultural landscape which is left untouched. This
proposal reflects a particular sensibility but may also

serve to underline the idea that Siza's transformations of

existing settings are oriented by a reading of the tension

between existing conditions and the demands placed on the

environment. At Cusa there is no apparent conflict, there

are no needs, the site simply exists.

The various attitudes and approaches to the context

found in Siza's works are synthesized in the proposals for

Kreuzberg, Evora and Oporto. The earliest integration of
these attitudes may be found in the social housing project
for S. Victor in Oporto of 1977. At S. Victor (fig. 5.5) a
multiform strategy is developed which includes the
construction of new housing, infill and recuperation. In
the proposal for new housing the rational and repetitive

order of low-cost housing is superimposed on the traces of

former occupation inscribed in the site. Siza's new

construction is laid into its site, resting on the platforms

of former constructions and mediated by their ruined walls.

The spatial organization responds to the morphological

structure of the area while introducing a continuous

building type, drawn from the housing experiments of the

German Siedlungen, which associates with the piecemeal row

housing of the district. In this operation and the

reconstruction of a group of abandoned and partially ruined

houses we may find a clear example of the multiple

148
 /

1 --

5.6 Alvaro Siza, Sao Victor, Oporto 1974-77,

project for the recuperation of existing housing.

149
perspectives involved in Siza's approach to pre-existing
situations. The small houses (fig. 5.6) are completed in a

disjunctive yet sympathetic manner, leaving fragments of the

stone base and architraves "as found". The architect

reappropriates these structures for a new use while

preserving the traces which testify to their former lives.

Inside, the minimal spaces of these shedsare reorganized to
provide improved use of space and to meet new standards and

expectations. At S. Victor we find a strong pragmatism in

the reuse of all that exists but also evidence of an

attitude which holds respect for the existing situation as

an inalienable social product.

Siza's more recent works, including the projects for

Kreuzberg and Evora, are evidence of a sophisticated inquiry

into the potential associations and disassociations between

the architectural object and its setting. These projects

deal with both the immediate context and the more general

context of the city through transformations of types but

also by means of complex spatial and inflectional

strategies. In these composite yet elemental constructions

the space-time-body experience of earlier works is extended

to include mental and cultural constructs. -At Evora,

Berlin, Salemi, or Oporto, Siza increasingly addresses the

temporal as well as the physical and cultural context of his

works. In each case we find that every intervention exists

physically within a pre-determined context that is different

in formal terms but also has its own dimension in time.

150
While acknowledging differences, Siza is not satisfied
simply to place separate bodies side by side. His works are
not self-contained autonomous objects which seek to close

out time and human experience. Siza stresses the

disjunctive and discontinuous nature of time while

simultaneously establishing a web of filiations that fuse

old and new into a new non-unitary whole. Through the

interaction of his architecture with the city and the

environment, Siza's works question the conception of

buildings as finite and complete objects. This architecture
does not conform to the organic model of growth with its

assumptions of harmony, unity, and closure. In all of these

constructions, from the Antonio Carlos Siza house to the
urban plan for Evora, we detect an unsuppressed dichotomy

between the urban response and the objective quality of

building.

Works such as Siza's proposals for Kreuzberg are among

the few cases in architectural production in which the term

"context" or "contextualism" may be correctly applied. 4 The
city built by construction and destruction over time denies
the sense of closure and completion implied by this literary

term, yet it introduces the concept of time and the question

of meaning. As Ellen Frank observes, "The building of

connection is also the building of meaning." 5 Siza's works

gain their meaning not solely by reference to architecture
or to themselves but in a specific place and time.

151
 Ickensteinstrasse

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5.7 Alvaro Siza, Kreuzberg, Berlin, 1980, corner building.

152
Moreover, Siza's effort to uncover and support the traces
time and memory leave on objects and places introduces an

existential and metaphysical dimension to this architecture.

Like the simple sheds at S. Victor, Siza's works are layered

in composition and do not ignore the accumulated meaning and

knowledge which grows over time within a culture. In these

works 'cultural memory" is not supported solely by
iconographic borrowings but rather through a concern for the

relation between architecture and social life.

Siza's "contextualism" is not only understood in terms

of that which precedes the architect's intervention as he is

also "sensitive to the moment that follows." 6 For Siza the

site is not a tabula rasa; even the vacant lot or open

landscape is perceived as being already full of traces,

memory, possibilities, and constraints. The site may not be

indiscriminately modified but it is also not enshrined in a
finite situation free from decay and decomposition. Siza
works the site by adding another layer to what already

exists in an operation in which "the new results from the

old but the old also changes in the light of the new."

Obeying the laws of conservation of energy Siza works toward

change without loss. This attitude is reflected in all the

architect's work from the Quinta da Conceicao (1958-65)
where an existing irrigation tank is reappropriated for a

public swimming pool to Berlin (1980) where Siza proposes to

build a corner building over a row of existing shops (fig.

5.7).

153
 It is apparent from an analysis of Siza's works that

this process of accommodating current demands with tradition

and within existing settings is not achieved without

conflict. In all these projects Siza pursues an inquiry
into an objective reality. He proceeds by collecting and
reproducing the contradictions present in the setting

without a single or logical resolution. In Oporto, Berlin,

and Evora, Siza is not attempting to normalize urban

districts and it would appear that his attitude lies close

to Wittgenstein's conviction that "what is ragged must

remain ragged" -- architecture alone may not transform

social relations or overcome contradictions which lie on

another level. While denying a masking operation or a

logical resolution to the dilemma posed by the

contradictions of modern society, Siza maintains a

commitment to cultural and formal innovation. Hisurban

architecture describes a position that lies outside the

coordinates of either the timeless permanence of formalism

or the utopianism of the Modern Movement. This experimental

attitude, which is not separated from the demands of use and

custom, is categorically different from the willful formal,

technical, and social experiementalism of the Modern
Movement or the absolute resignation of "late" and "post"

modernists. Siza's works are not so much aimed at

transforming society as an effort to reorganize

sensibilities, and to construct culture, through a

154
willingness to confront what exists and to identify with its
history. His operations on the material of the site serve
as a means of discovering qualities which are already there

and form suggestions for viewing the entire context in a new

way. Through this process of discovery Siza's works attain

a suggestive depth that at times verges on provocation. In
response to the controversy surrounding his proposals for
Kreuzberg, which were interpreted by the authorities and

some sectors of the population as an assault on established

norms and values, Siza remarked that,

It is not my intention to provoke ... I seek to
include from the first sketches the invisible
threads of all the problems and all the conflicts
that I discover. The more I try to provide a
complete response to these problems the more
provocative the project becomes. Perhaps this is
because the majority of habitual responses are
removed from reality or because the effort to
uncover relations between things is not always
carried out. 8

While rejecting a spurious unity or the illusion of "an

imaginary resolution of real contradictions," the architect

seeks to make places for human beings to dwell within an

increasingly fragmented and chaotic world.

From this limited analysis we find that Siza's

attention to pre-existences has attained an almost

archeological dimension in which the site is understood as a

contemporaneous reality. His work is not simply an

operation of laying bare these stratifications or of

collaging remnants together, but of acknowledging them and,

with their support, building up new associations and

155
relations. Siza's attention to the site goes beyond general
notions of morphology and typology to reach a tactile

understanding of those things which make up a particular

place.

5.2 HISTORICITY AND INVENTION

Alvaro Siza has remarked that, "Architects invent

nothing. They work continuously with models which they
transform in response to the problems they encounter." 8

This observation suggests the understanding of his work as

the modification and rearrangement of existing material

rather than the invention of forms. However, Siza's

statement must be qualified as it remains open to a wide
range of divergent interpretations. His work reveals a
process of reappropriation of architecture and its history,

yet Siza is not sanctioning the imitation of dead styles or

casual borrowings of historical forms and schemes.

In the most general terms we may establish that Siza's

architectural sources are not limited to erudite exemplars

but also include "simple" architecture and buildings. Nor

are these sources limited to a particular period as we may

find both modern and antique precedents for a single work or

element. Moreover, Siza's references are not limited to

architecture, for we may establish in any number of his

works relations to compositional devices in painting and
other art forms. In fact the only apparent limitation to

156
what Siza might incorporate into a work may be found in the
absence of literary analogies or in the use of language and

technology as metaphors for architecture.

Siza notes that in his work: "There exist relations

(with other works) which are not formal but rather between

modes of thought." 9 This notion finds support in an

analysis of his architecture in which we may establish that

it is not the reappropriation of forms which is important

but rather the generating ideas which lie behind the forms,

which if valid to the task, provide support for new

proposals. For example, we find that in the social housing

projects in Oporto, Siza re-examines the work of Oud and

Taut; in the transformed 19th century context of Berlin,

Siza considers the work of the Berlin architects and Loos;

when confronted with the project for an office building on

an open site, he finds support in the works of Wright.

These modernist sources are combined with other sources of

diverse origin as in Evora which may be understood in

relation to the historic center and local building

traditions but also both the planned towns of antiquity and

the rationalist Siedlungen. In each case we find that by

returning to the impulse which generated these forms in the
first place, Siza mounts a process in which each particular
manifestation either implies or informs the other.

In discussing Siza's "contextualism" we noted that he

establishes multiple relations between the project and a

specific context, but we also found that this relational

157
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158
structure is extended to link his work to a wider locus
found in history and the construction of cultural structures

in general. In this process the forms and conventions

uncovered in the locale or derived from local building

traditions are deconstructed and related to a wider set of

generalizable and transposable experiences. Parallel to

this "typological" strategy we also find the superposition

of references and the incorporation of elements and formal

devices derived from historical examples and the architect's

experience. While developed out of an understanding of the
enduring and transposable nature of typological schemes,

Siza's works are not "types" abstracted from a particular

context, but actual buildings.

Siza is not concerned with representing only the

consistency and logic of a chosen formal organization yet he

also seeks to avoid the purely subjective or individualistic

gesture. He does not apply typological schemes

mechanistically. The works we have discussed generally

appear to avoid the formalism of many recent urban proposals

that are uninflected by their particular situation and which

tend to reduce complex human purposes to a common

denominator found in the "type". Yet we find in his work

such as the proposals for Kreuzberg (fir. 5.8) or Evora an

effort to overcome the subjectivism exemplified by works

such as BBPR's Torre Velasca of 1957. In Rogers' building,
images from the urban setting and the past are integrated

159
into a form that is incapable of further development or
generalization that could transform the urban context in

which it stands.

Siza's heterodox approach is eclectic in that he

borrows from various sources and formal systems for a work.

However, in Siza's architecture we do not find a

metalinguistic operation or the co-existence of "styles"

characteristic of 19th and 20th century eclecticism. These

works do not involve the illusionistic use of historically

determined schemes. The reuse of forms invokes neither an

authoritaive paradigm nor an emblem of a specific set of

ideas. It would appear that the diversity of Siza's sources

is more important than their specific identity, for he is
not concerned with commenting on the sources or codes

themselves which he does not read in isolation as stylistic

fragments, signs or analogies. It is not important that the

form of Siza's proposed square at Evora may have been

informed by antique precedents or that the Antonio Carlos

Siza house may draw on Roman Baroque architecture. It may

be of some interest to know this, but these works do not

gain their significance primarily by reference to other

works -- they are not images of something else.

Siza may not be primarily interested in the "symbolic

dimension" 1 0 or associationalism, yet he is clearly not

engaged in an effort to reduce architecture to pure form.

In these works we find both a reduction of referential

content and a condensation of multiple sources and

160
U,

* -. ,~ -~

5.9 Diogo de Torralva, Porta de Moura fountain at Evora (1556).

5.10 Alvaro Siza, Malagueira district, sketch design for a fountain.

161
influences. These are not void forms and while generally

devoid of conventional motifs they are resonant with their

context, use, and history. In the reuse of older forms Siza

challenges functionalist postulates, yet he does not appear

to re-use forms and devices regardless of their original

purpose and role as mediators between man and his world.

This does not imply a binding condition or an effort to

reconstruct meanings but rather that in their reuse they

must be re-won through a process which recognizes their

fundamental purpose and location within cultural systems.

The nature of this correspondence takes on various forms

depending on the context of the work, the building task, and

the set of referent models.

A simple example of the transformational process

underlying Siza's works is found in the fountain proposed

for the Malagueira district at Evora. Siza's project openly
reinterprets the 16th century fountain, designed by the
Portuguese architect Diogo de Torralva, that sits in the
main square of the old city of Evora and originally served
as the 'foro citadano." The 16th century fountain (fig.

5.10) follows an established scheme in which, as Jean Paul

Rayonll notes, the marble sphere represents the world which

dispenses its wealth of water over an ordered domain; in the

form of a square stone basin, and subsequently over

everything, represented by the rectangular basin in which it

sits. In Siza's fountain (fig. 5.10) the allegory is

162
transformed as the water arrives from the landscape by means
of an open channel, crosses a rectangular basin, descends

into a stepped square container with an open side where the

water is collected in a negative hemisphere excavated from a

solid block of stone. Finally the water is contained in a

larger square basin. Siza's "poetic reinvention" (Vico)

draws not only from Torralva's example but also from the
traditional irrigation systems of stone channels and

irrigation tanks found in agriculural estates, such as the

Quinta da Malagueira which is the site of the new
residential district. Siza combines these two traditions,
the agricultural and man's effort to symbolize his world in

objects, to form an amalgam that is both sensual and

cerebral. Clearly this transformation is also an invention

and Siza is not concerned solely with the formal or

functional potential of an autonomous object. Siza's

careful measurements of Torralva's fountain include its

figurative dimensions which serve to gauge his departure

from tradition. The 16th century fountain of Evora appears

to provide the impetus for the elaboration of a form adapted
to a new context.
We noted at the outset of this discussion that Siza's

references are not limited to a particular period and we may

find in his unpremiated entry to the DOM competition (1980)

a project which clearly incorporates both modern and antique

precedents. This project (fig. 5.11, 5.12) in its apparent

transposition of Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum

163
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5. 11 Alvaro Siza , DOM headquarters (project) , 1980,

sketch and massing model

164
would appear to represent a departure from the other works
we have discussed and for this reason it may be useful to

examine briefly. Siza's project for a new administrative

and symbolic center to a German lock manufacturer's

industrial complex is clearly related to the work of Frank

Lloyd Wright. Approximately the same size and form as the
main body of the Guggenheim museum (fig. 5.13) it depends on
a more complex spatial organization that includes 5,000

square meters of office space. While the arrangement of

elements is altered, the basic scheme of Wright's building
is present in the cylindrical form and ramped circulation

around a central light well.

The correspondence with Wright's building suggests

itself yet we must also recognize the rationale behind the

use of this particular form in this case. Confronted with

an undifferentiated site in an area whose building

traditions do not include precedents for private commercial

buidings of this scale, Siza chooses not to refer to an

imaginary industrial vernacular or to technological

metaphors of the production process. Siza, working from

both the particular situation and the problem of the modern

office building, here turns to the tradition of architecture

itself.

The program, addressing an open suburban site adjacent

to a sprawli'ng complex of industrial buildings, called for

the development of a physical and operational center.

165
 5.12 Alvaro Siza, DOM headquarters (project), 1980,
sketch of interior, plan and section

5.13 F.L. Wright, Guggenheim Museum, 1943-59,

plan and section.

166
 Siza's response of a centralized closed form, which is
also a tower, accomplishes these demands directly, without

subterfuge. The siting of the building back from the main

road with a small entry pavilion joined by a single row of

trees and an open space, which slopes upwards toward the 30-

meter-high tower, establishes a locus for the new

construction. The centralized form and enclosed space forms

a definite and characteristic place within this complex.

The spatial organization of Siza's project provides an

innovative response to the demands of the modern office. By

employing a vertical form, the typical horizontal expanse of

the undifferentiated "office landscape" is subverted while

the use of the Guggenheim's basic scheme, in which the

visitor is exposed to a continuous open space, achieves the

relatedness of the open plan. Stepped platforms, which may

be subdivided by the insertion of glazed partitions, provide

for the subdivision of space in correspondence with the

spatial and structural articulation of the building. The

circulation system with ramps on both the interior and

exterior boundaries of the office spaces, combined with an

elevator and stair, provide alternate routes through the

building and articulate a complex "promenade

architecturale." This circulation system and the

distribution of daylight throughout the building tends to

break down the implicit hierarchy of the office block by

providing alternate routes and a relatively equal spatial

quality to all areas of the building. Moreover, the

167
 -- 7LL
5.14 F.L. Wright, Larkin Building, 1904,
plan and interior perspective.

168
development and contraposition of elements creates a highly
experiential environment in which the play with gravity,

expressed in the sloping ground floor and counterbalanced

forces of the masses, expresses the material qualities of

the tower as a form. Employing simple means Siza activates

a synaesthetic experience rarely encountered in

constructions of this size or use. Clearly his selection

and development of this form is supported by the particular

problem situation and a vision of architecture which cannot

be simply ascribed to a direct transposition of a form

relying only on a change of use or scale.

While we find a typological relation with Wright's

Guggenheim we may also establish correspondences with other

wo-rks of Wright and Siza. The Larkin Building of 1904 (fig.

5.14) and the Johnson Wax Laboratory Tower of 1933 (fig.

5.15) anticipate both Wright's Guggenheim museum and Siza's
proposed office building. The closed form and skylit atrium

of Wright's Larkin Building establishes a spatial solution

which prefigures Siza's proposal, but also represents a

fundamental solution to the modern office building. The
correspondence with the Johnson Wax Building is not simply
found in a superficial similarity of shapes, but in the use

of a tower to form a focal point within a strikingly similar

context.

The round form and isotropic mass of Siza's building

suggests other precedents. Stripping away the organic

169
 -

5.15

5.16

5.15 F.L. Wright, Johnson Wx Laboratory Tower, (1.933).

5.16 Le Corbusier, "The Lessons of Rome", sketch

in Vers une Architecture.

170
metaphors of Wright's Guggenheim, Siza adopts a form whose
antecedents reach back beyond the specific instance of

Wright's work to the basic compact and centric container

(fig. 5.16). However, in Siza's development of this

monumental form the inherent centricity of the round

building is significantly offset. Siza introduces an

instablility by the lean of the tower against the sloping

ground and the central void inclined through the building in

the opposite lean of the tower.

The DOM project and the market square of Evora in their

reuse and transformation of simple geometric forms and

schemes cannot be readily assimilated with the thought

process underlying the major part of Siza's production.

Siza's transformations detach these forms from a state of

stasis, as the cupola at Evora is incomplete and the DOM is

rendered visually unstable; yet no matter how fragmented

these works suggest a-temporal archetypal forms.

Approaching these forms with new concerns and a particular

vision of architecture, Siza goes beyond iconographic

conventions and simple replications; yet they are

inextricably tied to readily recognizable "type forms."

Here we might draw a distinction between these two works, as

the covered market at Evora suggests a fundamental

correspondence and reinterpretation of urban communal spaces

while the modern office building denies such

correspondences. The DOM project raises more directly and

ambiguously than any of Siza's other works, the disjunctions

171
between form, use, and meaning resulting from the
reappropriation of preestablished forms. Involved in the
unending search for an appropriate form for the modern
office building and an ambiguous institutional structure,

this work distinguishes itself not only by virtue of its

program but more significantly in its methodological

propositions. In projects such as the Antonio Carlos Siza

house or the proposals for Kreuzberg, it is not immediately

understandable how the form has been developed. Such works

do not appear to refer to an archetype or to some original

condition. These works are formed out of a dialectic with

use, purpose, and cultural image which does not remove a
conventional identity yet disallows a single interpretation.

The project for the DOM headquarters proposes what

would appear as a divergent approach; however, it like all

of Siza's works is composed of multiple events and
perspectives. Siza's more recent architecture presents an
image of contemporaneity that appears to break down the

discontinuous nature of time. Yet we find that while

incorporating experience accumulated in the past, works such

as the Antonio Carlos Siza house and the projects for

Kreuzberg and Evora assertively secure their own dimension
in time. Denying a false congruence between past and

present in these works, Siza actively acknowledges conflicts

between the legacy of the past and the values of the
present. This attitude is clearly manifested in Berlin but

172
also underlies the scheme for Evora. The plan for the

Malagueira district might be understood as a "rooted"

strategy in its consideration of the locale and its

traditions; yet it also represents a significant

discontinuity with local models, classicial urban forms, and

the modern tradition. In Berlin, Evora and other works,

tradition is not viewed in a linear or overly optimistic

fashion as Siza assimilates various posibilities without

demanding belief in one and repudiation of the other.

The conflict between past and present is also manifest

in the compromise between the techniques of modern building

and architectural forms derived from past traditions.

Siza's architecture is essentially crafted and the pragmatic

demands of modern building are generally de-emphasized. His

works demonstrate a marked preference for massive systems

which incorporate elements that are simultaneously bounding

and supporting -- these works appear to be built rather than

assembled. This is a distinction which may be interpreted

as a return to a pre-modern or pre-industrial architecture

for his works imply a basic non-interchangeability of

elements demanded by industrialization and a rationalized

building industry. Questioning the alignment of

architecture with industial processes, these works do not

test the limits of building technology; but they also do not

imply a flight from the relations of production or a Luddite

anti-industrialism. Siza employs old and new technologies

and it is particularly evident in his housing projects for

173
 7

5.17 Alvarob Siza, corner building, Berlin, Kreuzberg, 1980-84.

174
Oporto and Evora that he does not reject rationalized
processes of construction.

In discussing the work at Evora it was observed that,

while Siza maintains an uneasy relation between the various

models from which his architecture is compounded, the

building systems employed do not fundamentally contradict

these precedents. In this and other works we find that

Siza's composite works draw on different architectural

traditions yet he does not employ historically determined

schemes or motifs arbitrarily. In his works, material and

device are related, but as in the example of the inner block

construction for Kreuzberg where a regular facade is

excavated by employing the classical device of the niche, we
may also establish a fundamental sameness of purpose. In

this example the niche serves to establish Siza's

construction within the heterogeneous order of the block, in

much the same way as Baroque architects inflected the

facades of churches to establish a break in the street. In

this and other works, Siza appears to recognize Loos's

sophisticated analysis of the impossibility of reviving the

figures and motifs of past architectures. In the context of

this discusion we might also consider Siza's recently
completed corner building in Berlin where the architect

picks up the cornice line of an adjacent building (fig.

5.17). Significantly, here this detail establishes a

figurative edge which serves to emphasize the undulating,

175
plastic form of the building as it detaches itself from its
19th century context. Lacking in applied historicist motifs

it is the whole mass of the building that engages the viewer

rather than particular details.

Siza is deeply involved with the material qualities and

the craft of building and his apparent effort to align means

with ends is not to be confused with the "structural

moralism" of the Modern Movement or the revival of older

material systems which are no longer practicable. In his
works Siza appears to acknowledge the location of forms not

only within cultural but also material systems and in so

doing returns to the contradictions and conflicts which

revealed themselves in architecture as a result of the

industrialization of building.

An analysis of Siza's architecture suggests that he

maintains a relatively consistent set of principles

regarding the reappropriation of architecture and its

history. Like Loos, Siza apears determined neither to

revive old forms nor to invent new ones, and his works

appear to acknowledge a relative availability of forms. The

works we have discussed describe a complex positon which

acknowledges that architecture is based on regrouping given

elements and schemes while maintaining that architectural

forms are related to cultural and material systems. While

historicist in his recognition that values change over time,

Siza does not appear to ascribe to a developmental idea of

history or to a historical determinism. Involved in a

176
search for basic principles and the accumulation of

experience, Siza appears to secure an autonomy for

architecture as a discipline, yet he simultaneously

acknowledges that his works participate in the creation of

the present cultural moment. Viewing the past as

irretrievable as a whole and that the future remains

uncertain, Siza's works paradoxically suggest the

possibility of a creative historical continuity. In this

view history is made up of continuities and ruptures of

diverse sorts denying the possibility of reconstructed

meanings but also the certainty of definitive ruptures with

past traditions. This precarious position is constructed to

maintain an integrity to his works, yet it presents a set of
seemingly intractable problems and contradictions. It would

appear that for Siza the history of architecture forms an

inseparable part of architecture itself and is essential to

its further development -- it provides both the material for

architecture and the background against which he measures

his work.

177
NOTES

1. Alvaro Siza, "Entretien avec Alvaro Siza,"

Architecture, Mouvement, Continuite (AMC), No. 44,
1978.

2. Notes by Siza on sketches prepared during the IDZ

symposium in Berlin, "Project for a City," in 1976.

3. Alvaro Siza, "Cave di Cusa: tre 'viaggi'," Lotus

Documents, No. 2, 1983.

4. The OED defines context as -- "Parts that precede or

follow a passage and fix its meaning."

5. Ellen Frank, Literary Architecture, Berkeley,

University of California Press, 1979.

6. Alvaro Siza, "Entretien avec Alvaro Siza,"

Architecture, Mouvement, Continuit4 (AMC), No. 44,
1978.

7. Alvaro Siza, "Un Immeuble d'Angle a Berlin,"

Architecture, Mouvement, Continuits (AMC), No.
1984.

8. Alvaro Siza, "Entretien avec Alvaro Siza,"

Architecture, Mouvement, Continuit6 (AMC), No. 44,
1978.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11. Jean Paul Rayon, "Il quartiere Malagueira," Cassabella,

No. 478, 1982.

12. As Rudolf Arnheim notes, "When one looks over the city
of Rome from the hills of the Janiculum, one sees the
various circular monuments -- the Pantheon, the Castel
Saint' Angelo, the Collosseum -- detach themselves from
the fabric of the streets as self-contained units.
They mark the high spots of their setting but refuse to
conform to it." Siza's building not only recalls these
circular monuments but also clearly suggests the
metaphor of the common cylinder lock.

178
CONCLUSIONS

ALVARO SIZA'S IMPOSSIBILISM

In the preceding essays we have sought to articulate

those principles that lie behind the forms of Siza's works

and which provide them with a theoretical foundation. We

established two related themes that appear central to Siza's

enterprise. The first is found in an effort to relate

architecture to social, material, and historical contexts,

and the second is found in an understanding of architecture

as a transformational process operating on existing and pre-

existing architectural systems and conventions. These

themes do not exhaust the meaning of Siza's work, nor do

they encompass the scope of his concerns. In an effort to

establish a wider frame of reference it was suggested that

Siza consciously situates his works within an objective

reality and the discipline of architecture. This concept

describes a complex position by which Siza seeks to secure a

relative autonomy for architecture as a discipline, allowing

for the accumulation of knowledge that is tested by its

usefulness in the present and in response to changing social

179
and material conditions. This general understanding of

Siza's position is suggested and sustained by an analysis of

his works.

Siza's work forms part of a wider critical movement

which, from various perspectives, has attempted to re-

evaluate architecture. While such an analysis lies beyond

the scope of the present inquiry, in order to cast our

assertions in a different light we might begin to place

Siza's research program within Portuguese architectural

culture. Without "any illusion" of providing a

comprehensive account of the various contacts, influences

and debates which formed the points from which Siza began to

formulate his position, we might tentatively establish what

appear to have been the key issues particular to the Oporto

architects in the 1950's and 60's - Siza's student years and

first years of practice.

Any discussion of Portuguese architecture must

inevitably recognize a basic paradox developing out of the

isolation and marginalization of the country and its

architects relative to the centers of European culture.

While isolated, since its earliest times, Portuguese

cultural life has been shaped by a diversity of influences

and exchanges. This paradoxical condition, while not

specific to the 20th century, is particularly evident in the

uneven development of modern architecture in Portugal.

Receiving news of the events and various architectural

movements often second and third hand, architects in

180
Portugal during the 1920's and through the post-war years

developed their own highly eclectic and generally

superficial "modernisms." As Siza himself notes, "purism

among us was rarely pure - we had a bit of everything for

each and every occasion."1 Portuguese architecture in the

20th century may be described as oscillating between various

positions in a search for an illusory internationalist

architectural culture, whose driving forces were all but

non-existant within Portuguese society, and a search for

roots within a strong vernacular tradition. Unable to dig

down to discover an a-temporal essence within traditional

architecture and equally unable to re-enact architectural

movements identified with radical social transformations and

industrialization, Portuguese architecture through most of

the century manifested eclectic and provincialist tendences.

This apparent impasse, exacerbated by the isolationism and

provincialism imposed by the fascist regime which dominated

Portuguese social life for most of the century, failed to

produce a significant architectural culture.

It is within this general problematic that we may begin

to understand the importance of the work undertaken in the

1950's by Fernando Tavorra and a small group of Oporto

architects centered around the school of architecture in

this northern industrial city. Tavorra, Siza's teacher and

first employer, addressed the two poles of a perennial

debate with a rare intelligence and from a new perspective.

181
Following a path not unlike that pursued twenty years

earlier by Aalto in Finland, Tavorra sought to relate

ongoing developments in Europe to the objective conditions

of Portuguese society. It is significant that this is a

period, the 1950's, of growing disbelief in the modern

project and of a questioning of its unitary nature. An

invited participant at the CIAM/Team Ten meetings at Otterlo

in 1959, whose participants included Ernesto N. Rogers, Aldo

Van Eyck and Louis Khan, Tavorra was engaged in, and exposed

to, the process of questioning and revision of what was now

seen as the positivist mythology of the Modern Movement. By

the late 1950's appeals to a "modern architecture" could no

longer provide a simple unitary world view and a bulwark

against individualism and eclecticism. Internationalist and

progressivist notions, which once provided a simplistic

argument against the pursuit of a regionalist or "national"

architecture, no longer remained unchallenged. These are

among the conditions which led Tavorra to assume a complex

and nuanced position.

It is also significant that the late 1950's was a

period in which Tavorra was a principal investigator in an

ambitious study of traditional architecture in Portugal.

Siza describes the intentions of this inquiry in the

following terms,

It was an effort to understand the relations

between a way of life and architecture, not as a
source for proposals of spatial organization but
in order to understand the concrete problems of
society. 2

182
 Examining Tavorra's works from this period it appears
that he was engaged in an effort to reconcile tradition and

modernity. The architecture of Alvar Aalto formed a

privileged reference for Tavorra and the Oporto architects

as they pursued his particularized mode of c'omposition in

the small projects to which they were relegated.

Concentrating on the relation of building to landscape, the

use of inflected geometries, and the combination of new and

old technologies and materials, Tavorra's works demonstrate

a synthetic and harmonizing power. Tavorra's enterprise,

however, is distinct from the synthesis proposed in the

1940's and 1950's by the so-called Italian neo-realist

architects. His works do not seek a direct translation of a

form of life into built form, nor do they reflect repetitive

and retrospective tendencies leading to a literal re-use of

traditional forms and figurative elements.

While Siza's earliest works appear to pursue Tavorra's

synthetic approach, we cannot establish a direct line of

continuity and, in fact, already by the early 1960's we find

Siza breaking away from the almost picturesque formal

vocabulary of his earliest works. This rupture is readily

apparent in Siza's austere Manuel Magalhaes house in Oporto

of 1967-70. In this and subsequent works we find no echoes

of traditional architecture, spatial organization, or

materials. This work in particular is acknowledged by Siza

as a transition towards a systematic process of revision and

183
criticism as Siza gradually began to formulate his
position.

From this perspective the bank at Oliveira das Azmeis

(1971-74) assumes a particular importance. This work and

Siza's other projects of the late 60's and early 70's appear

to return to the rationalist architecture of the 1920's and

30's, yet they are not simply a recitation of something

which has alread been said. Approaching the modern

tradition with a different set of issues, Siza initiates a

new discussion which is both broadened and deepened. Highly

consistent in its reduced referential content, its

minimalism is evidence of a reflection upon the basic

resources of architecture. Yet Siza's bank is also hybrid

in the way in which it interacts with its surroundings.

Questioning the counterfeit synthesis of earlier works, the

bank building announces a significant discontinuity between

past and present. Formalist in its self absorption, this

work simultaneously questions the grounds for certainty in

the conception of buildings as finite, isolated objects.

The problematic explored by Tavorra is now extended in

Siza's works of the early 1970's to become a basic research

into the nature of architecture itself.
While addressing issues central to Portuguese

architecture and architecture in general, the bank at

Oliveira das Azmeis remains largely on the level of a

disciplinary discourse and does not capture the breadth and

scope of Siza's emergent position. Commenting on this work

184
in 1977 Siza qualifies it as "architecture for the museum."

His use of the word museum may refer, as Aldo Rossi's text

of the same title, to the discipline of architecture, but it

also alludes to another set of issues with which Siza is
concerned. The word museum has certain connotations as

Adorno suggest in the following passage.

The German word museal [museumlike] has unpleasant

overtones. It describes objects to which the
observer no longer has a vital relationship and
which are in the process of dying. They owe their
preservation more to historical respect than to
the needs of the present. Museum and mausoleum
are connected by more than phonetic asssociation.
Museums are the family sepulchres of works of art. 3
In qualifying this work as "architecture for the

museum" Siza acknowledges the necessary yet tenuous nature

of the connections between his work and social life.

However, Siza's reservations are not to be confused with the

socially committed stance within orthodox modernism, for

Siza's view of the relation between architecture and society

is located within a different set of coordinates. This

qualification and Siza's building itself engages the basic

idea identified at the outset of this discussion, namely

that Siza attributes a realtive autonomy to architecture

allowing for a non-deterministic view of the multiple

relations between society and the spaces it shapes and

inhabits.
The urban/housing projects for Oporto, at Bouga (1973-

77) and S. Victor (1974-77), provide an expanded field of

activity for Siza and allow us to begin to formulate the

185
themes which he choses to address in his work. Siza's
multiform response to the urban context at S. Victor

introduces a new set of considerations pertaining to the

relation of architecture to the city and the notion that

architecture is based on the transformation of pre-existing

models formed by earlier works and architectural traditions.

The work in Oporto begins to qualify the idea of the
city that is at issue in Siza's work. While his
interventions appear to be grounded in a critique of the
modern consumenist city, Siza does not appeal to a

particular urban model. Finding support in the collective

character of certain aspects of the traditional city, we

find in his urban projects for Oporto, and later at Evora

and Berlin, a tension between the order of the traditional

European city and an effort to uncover and support new

possibilities for social organization.

To work in a particular spatial context involves a

temporal dimension. Siza's works which seek to establish

multiple relations with their context necessarily involve
the reinterpretation of conventions and models operative in

the setting but also lead to an effort to reappropriate

architecture and its history. By the mid 1970's in works

such as the Antonio Carlos Siza house (1974-77) we find

Siza's references expanded beyond the modernist sources of

earlier works to encompass the whole history of
architecture. Siza's use of historical material in this and

186
other works we have examined is not undertaken in a search

for styles or a language but represents a means of

establishing a wider reference. More concerned with the

historicity of his own works than his multiple sources,

Siza's attitude may be summarized by the notion that "the

whole history of a subject (architecture) is utilized in an
attempt to improve its most recent and advanced stage." 4
All these perspectives are meshed into each of Siza's

more recent works including those discussed at some length

in the preceding essays, the Antonio Carlos Siza house, the

proposals for Kreuzberg, and the plan for Evora.
The most intriguing work to date is probably found in

Siza's proposals for Kreuzberg of 1979, as they represent a

condensation of the issues and ideas involved in his

research. Siza's interventions within three contiguous

urban blocks form an elaborate construct within which to

refer to and reflect on architecture - its relations to the

city, to the past and the present, and between architectural

space and social life. Pursuing Loos's disjunctive cultural

strategy Siza does not cover up the contradictions and

conflicts between diverse architectural traditions, and

between an environment formed in the past and the values of

the present. By exposing the conventional nature of the

structure of urban districts, Siza removes any nostalgia for

the past and any belief in a utopian architectural future.

Siza's works for Kreuzberg are tangible and immediate yet

acknowledge and assimilate the experience accumulated over

187
time within the structures and spaces of this city and
within the larger history of architecture and urban

construction. The transformations of the urban space of

Kreuzberg are no longer those of the avant garde, nor are

they based on a particular model or a-historical conception

of a closed and finite body of architectural knowledge.

Like Duchamp, Siza does not indulge in melancholy but

suggests that we in fact determine the conventions by which

we order the environment and, moreover, that these are

subject to transformation and open to new possibilities and

renewal. This work and all of Siza's works directly engage
the notion that architecture must be continuously challenged
and renewed.
Departing from a peripheral and marginal position

Siza's work in Berlin, a major center from which modern

architecture developed, attains an anticipatory character.
Today, Siza's observations on Aalto may be equally applied

to his own work, for as he noted in 1978:

Aalto's work which allowed one to speak so little
of method proves to be particularly exemplary in
its methodological propositions. 5

It is precisely the methodological implications of

Siza's research program that are of an importance which
extends beyond the particular circumstances and experience

of his individual works. By refusing to absolutize his

principles, and systematically avoiding simple moral
solutions to architectural problems, Siza's research program

188
does not escape the uncertainty inherent in the present

historical contingency. Siza's work represents a highly

sophisticated and rigorous epistemological inquiry. We

might suggest that for Siza architecture is a form of

knowledge, and like all knowledge it is not a static network

of eternal universal truths but a social process. Siza's

work and thought provide no solutions, yet he raises in an

exemplary manner the essential questions which confront

architecture in the late 20th century.

189
NOTES

1. From an untitled statement by a group of seven Oporto

architects, which included Alvaro Siza, submitted in
lieu of examples of their work to the exhibition,
"Depois do Modernismo" (After Modernism) held in Lisbon
in January, 1983. This dissenting statement provides
an oriented reading of the history of modern
architecture in Portugal during the 20th century.

2. Alvaro Siza, "Entretien avec Alvaro Siza,"

Architecture, Movement, Continuits (AMC), No. 44, 1978.

3. Theodor W. Adorno, "Valery Proust Museum," quoted in

Douglas Crimp, "On the Museum's Ruins," The Anti-
Aesthetic, Port Townsend, Washington, Bay Press, 1983.

4. Paul Feyerabend, Against Method, London, Verso, 1978.

5. Alvaro Siza, "Preexistence et desir collectif de

transformation" L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui, No. 191,
1977.

190
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Writings of Alvaro Siza

"L'accumulazione degli indizi", Cassabella, No. 498/9, 1984.

"Cave di Cusa: tre viaggi", Lotus Documents, No. 2, 1983.

"Salemi: un progetto di progetti", Lotus Documents, No. 2,

1983.

Untitled statement by seven Oporto architects in Depois do

Modernismo, Exhibition catalogue, Lisbon, 1983.

"To catch a precise moment of flittering image in all its

shades", Architecture and Urbanism, (A+U), No. 123, 1980.

"The starting process: 3 works", Lotus International, No.

22, 1979.

"Tres intervenciones en la ciudad de Oporto", Proyecto y

Ciudad historica, International Conference on Architecture,
Santiago de Compostela, 1977.

"Preexistence et desir collectif de transformation",

L'Architecture d'Aujourd'Hui, No. 191, 1977.

"L'isola proletaria come elemento base del tessuto urbano",

Lotus International, No. 13, 1976.

"SAAL Port: operation Sao Victor", L'Architecture

d'Aujourd'Hui, No. 185, 1976.

Interviews with Alvaro Siza

"Alvaro Siza projets et realisations 1970-1980",

L'Architecture d'Aujourd'Hui, No. 211, 1980.

Beaudouin, L., Bousselot, C., "Entretien avec Alvaro Siza",

Architecture, Mouvement, Continuite (AMC), No. 44, 1978.

Cassirer, B., "Un Immeuble d'Angle a Berlin", Architecture,

Mouvement, Continuite (AMC), 1984.

191
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Writings on Alvaro Siza

Alvaro Siza: architetto, 1954-1979, Exhibition Catalogue,

The Museum of Contemporary Art of Milan, 1979.

"Alvaro Siza projets et realisations 1970-1980",

L'Architecture d'Aujourd'Hui, No. 211, 1980.

Beaudouin, L., Bousselot, C., "Entretien avec Alvaro Siza",

Architecture, Mouvement, Continuite (AMC), No. 44, 1978.

Beaudouin, L., Bousselot, C., "Berlin, Landwehrkanal",

Baumeister, No. 1, 1977.

Bohigas, O., "Alvaro Siza Vieira", Arquitecturas Bis, No.

12, 1976.

Cassirer, B., "Un Immeuble d'Angle a Berlin", Architecture,

Mouvement, Continuit6 (AMC), 1984.

Collova, R., "Action Building", Lotus International, No. 37,

1983.

Duttmann, M., "5/architekten zeichnen fUr Berlin",

Werkstadt, No. 4, 1979.

Frampton, K., "Modern Architecture and the Critical

Present", Architectural Design Profile, 1982.

Gregotti, V., "Architettura recenti di Alvaro Siza",

Controspazio, No. 9, 1972.

Hubeli, E., "Architektur jenseits modischer tendenzen:

Alvaro Siza Viera", Werk, Bauen + W.ohnen, No. 38, 1983.

Huet, B. "La passion d'Alvaro Siza" L'Architecture

d'Aujourd'Hui, No. 185, 1976.

Lovero, P. "Z.E.N. generation: Evora, Vitoria, Palermo:

three quarters compared", Lotus International, No. 36, 1982.

Marconi, F., "Zona di Sao Victor", Cassabella, No. 40, 1976.

Moneo, R., "Arquitecturas en las margenes", Arquitecturas

Bis, No. 12, 1976.

Nicolin, P., "Alvaro Siza: 3 projects for Kreuzberg", Lotus

International, No. 32, 1981.

192
Oliveira, P., Marconi, F., "Plano de Pormenor para a zona da
Malagueira - Evora", Arquitectura (Lisbon), No. 1321, 1979.

Portas, N., "Tres obras de Alvaro Siza Vieira", Arquitectura

(Lisbon), No. 68, 1960.

Portas, N., "note sul significato dell'architetura di Alvaro

Siza nell'ambiante portoghese", Controspazio, No. 9, 1972.

Rayon, J.P., "Alvaro Siza Vieira: Il quartiere Malagueira",

Cassabella, No. 46, 1982.

Santos, J.P. dos, "Two Projects by Alvaro Siza, One for West
Berlin and One for Vila do Conde, Portugal", 9H, No. 2,
1980.

Souto de Moura, E., "An Amoral Architect", 9H, No. 2, 1980.

Venezia, F., "Built on the Site: Alvaro Siza in Evora",

Lotus International, No. 37, 1983.

193
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anderson, Stanford. "Environment as Artifact:

methodological implications", Cassabella, No. 359-60, 1971.

Anderson, Stanford. "Studies toward an ecological model of

the urban environment" Thresholds, working paper, No. 2.
Cambridge: MIT Laboratory of Architecture and Planning,
1975.

Anderson, Stanford. "Types and Conventions in Time: Toward

a History for the Duration and Change of Artifacts",
Perspecta, No. 18, 1982.

Feyerabend, Paul. Against Method. London: verso, 1978.

Kubler, George. The Shape of Time. New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1962.

Lakatos, Imre, and Musgrave, Alan (eds). Criticism and the

Growth of Knowledge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1974.

Landau, Royston. "Notes on the concept of an architectural

position", AA Files, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1981-82.

Loos, Adolf. Spoken into the void: coll-ected essays,

1897-1900. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982.

194