Exhibitions

‘Conversations with the Álvaro Siza Archive’ is a new series of exhibitions aimed at placing the work of Álvaro Siza in dialogue with some of the most relevant contemporary architectural practices. Invited to act as guest curator for each individual exhibition, an architect is asked to select materials from the Álvaro Siza Archive and present them in connection to his/her own work. Tom Emerson, of London-based practice 6a architects, will be the first guest curator in the series. 

Openings play a very special role in the history of architecture and in the life of an architect. Openings are all the holes cut into constructed volumes for the passage of people, light and air. Mostly these are managed by doors and windows. They are in many respects the most active and useful of architectural elements, constantly opening and closing to allow the necessities of life to pass from outside to inside while excluding the perils we wish to avoid. Doors and windows have to be robust to withstand extremes of climate and use over decades, even centuries. Yet they are also the site of our most intimate encounter with architecture, the first touch of the building as you enter and the last as you leave. The opening of the window starts the daily exchange between our private selves and the world beyond, which is why openings occupy such an important part of the architect’s imaginative and technical effort. Openings reveal the most profound relationships between an individual and society.

The construction detail drawings presented in the exhibition have been selected from a collection of over 6,000 drawings in the Álvaro Siza Archive held at the Serralves Foundation. They chart the evolution of Siza’s architecture from 1954 to the mid-1970s. Focusing on the first two decades of the architect’s long career, the exhibition not only provides an opportunity to examine some important, even if lesser known, early projects, but it also intersects political and architectural developments which were to fundamentally change Portugal and Siza’s work after the 1974 Revolution.

Image: Archive  Arqtº Álvaro Siza. Col. Fundação de Serralves – Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto. Donation 2015. © Fundação de Serralves, Porto.

This exhibition proposes a three-party conversation: It involves Go Hasegawa & Associates, based in Tokyo; OFFICE Kersten Geers and David Van Severen based in Brussels; and the history of architecture.

This conversation is at the core of one of the most interesting debates in contemporary architectural practice and examines the role of the history of architecture - from recent to more distant pasts – in the work of a new generation of architects. 

By adopting the format of a conversation typical historical categories such as authorship are challenged as one architect appropriates the work of the other and represents it with his own tools, comparing it with his own work to reveal similarities and differences.

Kersten Geers, David Van Severen and Go Hasegawa belong to a generation of architects born in the second half of the 1970s who has been developing not only a consistent series of projects and works, but also maintains a clear theoretical stance. Their voices are very present and are becoming strongly influential in the broader conversation that takes place within the discipline of architecture in this second decade of the twenty-first century.

This exhibition is organized by the  Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) and curated by Giovanna Borasi, Chief Curator at the CCA. Curatorial adaptation by Carles Muro, Adjunct Curator for Architecture Programmes at the Serralves Museum. 

Photos of Kyodo House and Villa Schor by Stefano Graziani