PB 07 ÁLVARO SIZA - UNBUILT WORKS

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PB 07 ÁLVARO SIZA UNBUILT WORK is the seventh title from AMAG POCKET BOOKS COLLECTION. A very special compilation of almost all unbuilt works by Álvaro Siza, that includes sketches, drawings, and plans, as well as in-depth analysis by José Manuel Pedreirinho, along two Foreword essays by Manuel Aires Mateus and Marc Dubois.

“If I were asked to associate an image to Siza’s work, I would say a bird. Astonishing, inexplicable and yet incredibly familiar. With Siza, as with Pessoa, the common and the sublime meet on a gentle game of freedom, creating images that touch us for their intelligence as disturb us for its evidence.

In each drawing, Siza finds the right way to show us the problem through clear solution. The physical and cultural reality of each situation, is an intrinsic part of his reflexion and his thought, making each response unique. On the surprising responses and apparent simplicity, Siza generously allows us imagine that we also could have created, drawn. “

Manuel Aires Mateus

“In a design process, the initial phase can be seen as an “unbuild”. A proposal that is far removed from the realised project. It is an initiative with potential that is however abandoned at a certain point in order to follow another path. Archival research into how a design evolves is therefore extremely fascinating. With preserved sketches one can gain insight into the intellectual process. A form of modern archaeology, the question of where it started with the first sketch on paper.

The chosen path is abandoned and this can be for various reasons, a complex decision-making process that can lead to speaking of an “unbuild” phase. The oeuvre of Álvaro Siza is fascinating because in certain projects a radical change takes place that is undoubtedly determined by a diversity of factors that are sometimes difficult to trace. The project for the new architecture school in Porto (FAUP / 1986-1993) is a key work in his oeuvre and consists of two phases. The first phase (1985-1986), also the smallest intervention, is a free standing studio building. It is the “garden pavilion”, an inwardly folded U-shape around an big and existing tree. On the adjacent site, Siza worked from 1986 to 1993 on the second phase, a whole with studios, auditoriums, library and a semi-circular exhibition space. It is an exceptional composition with an open courtyard facing the higher situated first phase with the old villa and the trees.”

Marc Dubois

“I don’t know of any world study about unbuilt works of architecture, or about “percentage” of unprofitable works and studies, mostly forgotten.

Most probably there is none and we may eventually have to consider it as one of the conditions of the practice of architecture.

The fact is that a great lot of projects rest with no sequence and lost.

We all know recognize there are often unexpected reasons that prevent or impose the change of decisions already taken. Competitions also, more and more numerous, oblige a proliferation of proposals from which only one, at the best, will be built.

History tells, however, that many unbuilt projects became, instead, references and belong to the history of architecture, such as Boulée’s or John Soane’s.

By the twentieth century examples multiply: Loos’ project of the columns for the NY Herald Tribune competition, F.L. Wright ‘s tower for Broadacre City, the plans and projects by Speer for Berlin, to which must be added the also monumental stalinist projects, the utopian Archigram ones, the Third International monument by Tatlin, or Le Corbusier’s work for the Society of Nations. Regarding this set only, there is a bit of everything, from charged and abandoned works to competition entries, even purely utopian proposals. “

José Manuel Pedrerinho

PB 07 ÁLVARO SIZA - UNBUILT WORKS

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