The Serralves Foundation and Contraponto Editores invite you to the launch of the book A Última Lição de Álvaro Siza Vieira by Patrícia Reis, which will take place at the Serralves Foundation Library, in Porto, on May 5, at 6:30 pm. The session will be attended by the architect Álvaro Siza, with contributions from Professor Manuel Sobrinho Simões and the author.
SynopsisThe architect from Matosinhos, who reached the pinnacle of world architecture, shares the sense of wonder with which he continues to draw the world — a house open to dreams and humanity, in an act of generosity that encompasses all that he has learned and taught.
As a child, Álvaro Siza Vieira would lift his head from books to look at what lay outside. Curiosity led him to drawing, in a constant attempt to transform into something else what fell short of the gaze. “We are observing, but we see nothing,” says that same boy who, as an adult, returns to books in an unending search for knowledge that must be fulfilled in a time that is increasingly finite.
After first falling in love with sculpture, he found his path in architecture, which allowed him to create the world as he saw it: a space of creation shaped by memory, dialogue, sustainability, and relationship. It was also through his work that he encountered others — whether a Turkish immigrant in a working-class neighbourhood in Berlin or a believer in the Church of Marco de Canaveses — in a continuous exercise against prejudice and indifference.
Revisiting a biography told in the first person, Siza Vieira — awarded the Pritzker Prize, the most prestigious distinction in architecture worldwide — reveals himself in a conversation that brings together the boy who grew up in a dust-free house, the man who lost his wife too soon, the professor inspired by the curiosity of younger generations, the professional who upholds ethics and does not accept everything he is told, and the architect — a fascinated creator who never tires of seeking places of beauty and still dreams of what remains to be done.