40 41

Eduardo Souto de Moura’s Pritzker Prize about the man. A Miles Davis CD set sits ’s School of Fine Arts, it was ‰ nally in 2011 was ’s second after on a small stereo, and around the walls, emerging from the right-wing Estado Novo Alvaro Siza’s in 1992. It’s extraordinary photographs of industrial silos by Bernd dictatorship, which had obliged architects PROFILE for such a small country to win twice. and Hilla Becher lean against architectural to design postmodern columns rather than PORTUGUESE PRITZKER LAUREATE, More extraordinary still, the two laureates plans, facing big images of the Flatiron and piloti, which were deemed ‘modernist, EDUARDO SOUTO DE MOURA, DENIES actually work in the same building. It’s Mies van der Rohe. Enter the man himself, linked with socialism and communist HE IS A PURIST AND CALLS HIMSELF located behind a long wall that slopes up with the physique and beard of a tenor. ideas’. He worked for Siza and ‘decided it EDUARDO from a sleepy square beside the river Douro, He immediately surprises by speaking was intelligent to take something of the ‘POSTMODERN USING THE LANGUAGE OF towards some of the city of Porto’s dodgier English, a language he is competent in but ideas of Mies van der Rohe, because it was THE MODERNIST.’ HERBERT WRIGHT social housing estates. A door in it opens rarely deploys. His practice is busy with simple, clean, it was like fresh air against to stairs beneath a rusty pump-wheel, competition work, so he’s tired. His the postmodernism.’ He started his own FINDS THAT THE FORMER SCULPTURE and above, a nondescript post-war block. manner suggests a wise but weary uncle. practice in 1980 and worked with stone, SOUTO DE STUDENT IS ALWAYS LEARNING, It doesn’t feel like a global epicentre of ‘Portugal is a strange country because it not because it was ‘neo-vernacular’ but architectural inspiration. is outside of Europe,’ he declares, ‘a little bit ‘because it was cheaper than concrete’. AND REMAINS A BELIEVER THAT Souta de Moura’s meeting room, out of step.’ As he was studying sculpture, His ‰ rst competition win, Porto’s Casa des ‘ARCHITECTURE IS SOMETHING however, is full of inspiration and clues then architecture, in the Seventies at Artes (designed 1981 but ‰ nished 1991), MOURA LINKED TO LIFE’ TELMO FERREIRA TELMO BLUEPRINT JULY 2013 BLUEPRINT JULY 2013 42 43

HE HAD BEEN IN TROUBLE OVER TREES BEFORE, WHEN STATION BOXES FOR THE CALLED FOR SOME TO BE LOST. ’YOU CUT ONE TREE, IT’S IN THE NEWSPAPERS. YOU PUT 200 TREES IN A BOULEVARD AND NOBODY KNOWS,’ HE OBSERVES SYLVAIN DELEU COURTESY SERPENTINE PAVILLION DELEU COURTESY SYLVAIN PROJECT IMAGES LUIS FERREIRA ALVES, EXCEPT SERPENTINE PAVILLION EXCEPT FERREIRA ALVES, LUIS PROJECT IMAGES

includes a medieval-like stone wall facing a contact address in a book: Marfa, Texas, Clockwise from above left: Building and Alexander Calder sculpture. (Blueprint, November 2009) in , near must walk.’ That is the origin of the legs Above: The artist Paula even more expensive, the deputy mayor a low modernist volume, in which copper where he was amassing a vast collection Porto Metro; the 2005 But, Souto de Moura wanted a sculpture Lisbon, actually has a deep red exterior, to supporting the wooden structure, detaching Rego commissioned the reportedly asked: ‘What about yourself, Serpentine Pavilion, gallery that bears her and wood meet glass and steel. But local of contemporary sculptures. ‘Three weeks to link the tower and lower volume, ‘like contrast with the surrounding trees. It has it from the ground (evoking perhaps do you want to do it?’ London; the Burgo Tower, name after seeing the materials ‘are ‰ nished... Chinese marble is later, Judd was dead,’ recalls Souto de signature pyramid towers because otherwise It’s a stadium of two halves, each a Porto; Casa das Históricas a knee’, and unlike Mies, he’s happy if a turtle shell). It also makes it possible architect’s joint design for cheaper than Portuguese marble’. Moura. ‘So I said, the minimum is to go , Cascais; people clutter his plaza: ‘I think that trees, which he insisted were all retained, that ‘when you have a beer at the bar, the Serpentine Pavilion vast 15,000 capacity terrace, one built into The Pritzker Jury said his early works there... It was incredible, this land, these La Pallerasa, Barcelona, architecture is something linked with life, would have hidden the building. He had you can see Hyde Park’. That human the face of a disused quarry and the other were ‘brave’ to resist postmodernism, but boxes by Judd in the landscape – something designed with and I’m not a purist, saying “don’t touch!”’ been in trouble about trees before, when he functionality relates to ‘the Le Corbusier formed of great sculptural ‰ ns, with a solid, he says: ‘No, it’s not true. I think that when very strong. A lot of people say I have a Terrados Arquitectos When commissioned in 1991, the worked on the Porto Metro and station box thing that the house is a machine for cable-strung roof between them inspired I started with proposing , Mies link, some similarities, I don’t know...’ Burgo Tower was Souto de Moura’s excavations involved some loss of trees. living,’ to which he adds mysteriously: by Siza’s Portugal Pavilion but open along van der Rohe, it was an idealogic comfort. One similarity could be in Souto de ‰ rst multistorey design, and he is still If you cut one tree, it’s in the newspapers,’ ‘The astronauts like to return home.’ and above the ‰ eld, revealing the adjacent I could work in a new culture with this Moura’s Burgo Tower in Porto, an office learning. The Complejo La Pallaresa (2011), he observes. ‘If you put 200 trees in a Asked what building he wishes to city and forests. Souto de Moura says: grammar.’ But it was the formal language complex completed in 2006 that is actually Barcelona, designed with Spanish practice boulevard, nobody knows.’ be most remembered for, Souto de Moura ‘The top of architecture is Greece for me, of modernism rather than Corbusian ideals two volumes, one a square-plan 20-storey Terradas Arquitectos, is three residential The London-based artist Rego immediately names the Stadium, the Parthenon.’ Braga was ‘con‰ rmation that held him. ‘I like piloti!’ he confesses. tower and the other a three-storey long blocks with different orientations; the wrote personally to Souto de Moura to built for the Euro 2004 soccer competition. that there exists a continuity in ‘I think I am postmodern, using the block, set in a plaza. The tower’s facades highest is 25 storeys. Reading Venturi design the Cascais gallery, because she In 2011 at Columbia University, New York, architecture’ here, not just typologically language of the modernist.’ alternate between solid and glass, the helped him ‘rediscover windows’. had been impressed by his work on the Souto de Moura told a story of with Greek and Roman amphitheatres, but In 1994, while teaching at the Swiss latter grids of metal beams with each Porto’s often grey light is very different 2005 Serpentine Pavilion, a collaboration its commission. The deputy mayor of with ‘the landscape, the natural material, Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), £ oor horizontally divided into three. It from that of the south. ‘When I design with Siza and . Souto de Braga called to ask if he had Calatrava’s the arti‰ cial material, the way they are Souto de Moura encounterd the seminal chimes with Judd’s stack sculptures, but something to the south or to the north, it is Moura made sketches when he visited the number, to which he replied: ‘Siza works linked and calibrated’. minimalist Donald Judd (who refuted Souto de Moura says that ‘this is more completely different’, he says. ‘The light is London site and started sending them to above my office, I’ll go ask him. They Braga is the most complex structure the label) in Zurich. He recognised Judd’s in£ uenced by Jacques Herzog than Donald very strong and very hot in the south, I have Siza, who was too ill to travel at the time. worked together with pavilion and railway Souto de Moura has designed, even more so multicoloured coat and overheard him Judd’. The effect he wanted was stacked to protect. Also, in the south I use much ‘There is a mad story with the evolution station’ [for Lisbon’s Expo 98]. Apparently, than the Porto Metro, a 70km super-tram talking about Siza and a visit to his pallets. The supremely rationalist tower, £ atter materials, painted white or grey’. of the sketches,’ he says. When Souto de Foster’s proposal was too expensive and system below ground in the central city, Serralves museum in Porto. Souto de the plaza and a great colourful sculpture His most celebrated southern work, Moura sent a concept drawing, Siza faxed looked like Wembley Stadium, so Braga which required him to divide the work up Moura introduced himself and Judd wrote by Ângelo de Sousa recall Mies’ Seagram the sublime Casa das Histórias Paula Rego back with big letters saying: ‘The animal wanted Calatrava. Hearing he might be between several practices. He jokes that

BLUEPRINT JULY 2013 BLUEPRINT JULY 2013 44

ARCHITECTURE SHOULD the design rule book was like the Crucially, explains Souto de Moura, Above: The Estádio Portuguese military manual that allowed good Lisbon architects worked on Municipal de Braga, also BE SIMPLE TO RECEIVE any colour of gloves as long as they were public projects, and were called in when known as the The Quarry, is Souto de Moura’s white. What’s striking in his Metro stations ‘something important’ was needed in Porto. COMPLEXITY... YOU CANNOT favourite project DESIGN A UNIVERSAL is the clarity and simplicity of the design, ‘So’, he continues, Porto’s ‘good architects which used just ‰ ve materials, including were in the School of Fine Arts, from ARCHITECTURE WITHOUT granite. ‘Architecture should be simple to which architecture was only separated A CULTURE AND SITE receive complexity,’ he says. He laments after the revolution, and it mixed painters that ‘nowadays details are not designed, and sculptors. The tradition was that these AND MATERIALS. IT’S they’re from a catalogue’, but on some people went to Paris to study painters, LOCAL AND UNIVERSAL platforms, curvy metal lettering gives sculpture, architecture... They introduce the station names. The style detail, often used avant-garde in the school.’ Souto de Moura by Souto de Moura, was designed by Siza. singles out one teacher, Fernando Távora, Souto de Moura’s last project in who knew Le Corbusier and attended CIAM Portugal was a hydro-electric plant, but meetings across Europe in the Fifties. It is it was cancelled because of UNESCO he who stands behind Porto’s extraordinary objections. He says that France is the ‘last architectural impact. Távora died in 2005. country in Europe where they pay’, and Souto de Moura consulted with him on the he is working on a mixed social-private Burgo Tower. From him, Siza and Alvar residential project there. But he has also Aalto, he has learnt ‘You cannot design a been jetting to Colombia, and at the universal architecture without a culture and invitation of has proposed site and materials. It’s local and universal.’ 120m-high towers for Zhengzhou in China, Despite the meeting room’s that conically expand with height around ‘fumadores’ (smokers) notice, there’s no a hollow axis: ‘a negative core of light’. whiff of tobacco. Souta de Moura, who So, what is behind the mystery of used to get through two or three packs Porto’s Pritzker winners? Both Siza and a day, was told late last year he didn’t Souto de Moura took modernism and found have long to live if he continued, and he Eduardo Souto de Moura is giving the Royal new directions with it, producing buildings quit. He muses that ‘when God designed Academy of Arts Annual Architecture with tranquility, clarity and a strong sense Earth, he rested on the seventh day. He Lecture with Blueprint on Monday 8 July. For of materiality that springs from the local. forgot to do a lot of things...’ Hopefully, more information and to book tickets, visit: To Souto de Moura, Siza is ‘the key... we can now expect this architectural www.royalacademy.org.uk/architecture who changed the architecture in Portugal’. giant to tackle yet a few more of them.

BLUEPRINT JULY 2013