Portuguese architect and

architectural educator born on

25 June 1933.
He graduated in architecture in 1955, at the former School of
Fine Arts of the University of Porto.

His first work was done in 1954 even before his graduation
and taught in Porto school of architecture from 1966 to 1969.

He was awarded the Pritzher prize in 1992 at the Harold

Washington Library in Chicago, USA.
He is also recognized by his academic work and
For his contributions on publications from
Luis Barragán.

His first designs to get more attention where public

pools in Portugal.

Most of his well known works are located in his home

town Porto.
SPORT FACILITIES RIBERA-
SERRALLO
Swimming pool Leça da Palmeira
 Malagueira
housing
project

He developed several well known public housing and

urban projects in several Portuguese cities, as well as
the museum for contemporary art and the faculty of
Porto.
His language is more distinguishable by the use of
more lines than perfect forms, it interests him the
fragmentation as reaction to the complexity of a
program,
Siza’s thought is not linear, absolute
and definitive. The solution can be
found in the syllogistic duality
between what remains constant and
what is presented as innovation.
Both the premises value the
existence and the absence of
“belonging”, keeping in mind the
tremendous context of: the location,
the program, the material, the
morpho-typological values of other
works, the expression of color and
curve, et cetera.
 In 1977, following the revolution in Portugal, the city
government of Evora commissioned Siza to plan a housing
project in the rural outskirts of the town. It was to be one of
several that he would do for the national housing
association(SAAL), consisting of 1,200 low-cost, housing units,
some one-story and some two-story row houses, all with
courtyards.
 SAAL Bouça Housing

Bouça and São Victor were low cost projects

designed for the SAAL organization in Porto.
The project demonstrate a
design process for building in
dense urban conditions that
Siza characterizes as “forming a
whole with ruins”.

Sparse cubic forms is used to

develop the geometry and
repetitive order typical to most
housing designs while at the
same time achieving a high
degree of architectural variety.
Alvaro Siza's style and approach to modern design by
returning to original sources has made him one of the most
important representatives of critical regionalism in architecture.
His works were often defined as poetic modernism.
RECEDINTAL BUILDING IN
BERLIN
 RECEDINTAL BUILDING IN BERLIN

This social residential building was Siza's first project to be

built outside Portugal.

As many other spaces in the city, this space became empty

after the war and an urban intervention that would integrate
the remaining buildings with this corner lot was necessary.

Alvaro Siza's urban approach is a conscious intervention

that reflects not the happiest part of urban living but reminds
and accentuates the melancholy of the area..
The curved facade
is a slight gesture
that softens the
massiveness of
the concrete and
small uniform
windows.
 The layout had to
include
commercial
spaces in the
ground level and
fit 46 apartment
units in 7 floors

Each floor does feel cramped, still the curved corner helps
ease the space in each floor.
Santa Maria Church
The Church for Marco
of Canaveses, is only a
part of a religious
complex that foresees
an auditorium, the
catechesis school and
the house for the
parish priest.

The façade is in three

sections with two
projecting towers.
In the space around the altar
a series of elements that
participate in the ritual exist:
the pulpit, the own altar, the
tabernacle, the chairs of the
celebrants and the cross, the
ones which slowly took form
and they defined the space
later, in the respect for the
movements, pré-established,
of the mass.
Public Library Viana do Castelo
Boa Nova Tea House
Mayor Wine Cellar