2018 volume 15 | issue 1 Architecture as representation. Notes on Álvaro Siza’s anthropomorphism Fabio Colonnese Abstract Although following in the wake of the Modern Movement tradition, Álvaro Siza Vieira’s architectural research moves along the thin red line between abstraction and representation. The apparent arbitrariness of some of his compositions is primarily an expression of his attention to the perception of a moving subject that never translates into merely illusionistic devices. Yet, in the last two decades of the 20th century, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic presences began to haunt his designs and buildings. The keys to understanding this phase of Siza’s creative trajectory reside in his metaphorical and analogical approach to design, testified by his texts, his hypertrophic graphic activity, his production as a designer and, most of all, as a sculptor. On one hand, his words and sketches reveal the tension and negotiation between architecture form and the human/animal body; on the other hand, his objects and sculptures result as intermediate moments of experimentation and clarification by responding the ergonomic demands through the semantic economy of objet trouvée. Through these two interests, Siza’s architectural anthropomorphism is here analyzed in relationship with the visual and mental effects on the observers, interpreted as both an opportunity for a theatrical architecture parlant and as a transition towards a new grade of poetic abstraction. Keywords Álvaro Siza Vieira, Human Figure, Anthropomorphic Architecture, Zoomorphic Architecture, Sculpture and Architecture, Architectural Bestiary, Architecture as Representation Stable URL: https://arcc-journal.org/index.php/arccjournal/article/view/443 DOI: 10.17831/enq:arcc.v15i1.443 Corresponding Author: [email protected] Published by the Architectural Research Centers Consortium under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license 1 One day Kandinsky had entered his studio representational expression” (Tafuri 1968).1 In the and seen a beautiful painting: he was post-war years, the impulse given by studies and surprised, then went over and checked that it critical architectural projects oriented to a new was his own painting, a landscape or a still humanism through organic and regionalist life upside down. The representation approaches contributed to opening access to a disappeared as the essential framework in its figurative dimension that had been officially censored forms, balance and colors remained. for decades. (Siza 1998, 133) In this context, a number of works of the Portuguese Although there is no acceptable universal architect Alvaro Siza Vieira (1933), whose social, code, control of project development artistic and humanistic dimension has been largely sometimes must be anchored to solid things, recognized, discussed and awarded in the last such as the shape of an animal or something decades, seem to offer an uncommon organic. It is a control element like geometry: anthropomorphic and zoomorphic approach to both I’m not able to separate totally the world of the architectural process and product. This work geometry from the natural one. needs to be framed into the post-Modernist scenario (Siza quoted by Croset 1986, 15) and into his multi-faceted architectural and artistic practice. 1.0 Introduction It can be speculated that the almost 70-years-long architectural production of Alvaro Siza reflects an The iconographical relationship between architecture evolution of both his humanistic approach to social and representation moves on two different levels. On space and the design method he adopted to one hand, drawings are generally used to understand permeate his works with it. In the boundaries of this building in both design and construction; on the other theoretical framework, this article intends to hand, a building can communicate itself by using demonstrate that Siza’s architecture, grounded on a shapes that negotiate the forms being experienced in post-war revision of industrial modernism canon, has both natural and social space. In 1886, Heinrich been gradually progressing mainly through a Wölfflin’s Prolegomena to a Psychology of metaphorical and analogical relationship between Architecture introduced the concept that aesthetic the architectural form and the human body. judgement brought to bear on an artwork is Somehow, after an initial stage of architectural profoundly influenced by the instinctive analogy formation and primary practice in which the historical between its apparent shape and the beholder’s body. and constructive problematics prevail, the human The physiognomic analogy, which was conceived to figures of his earliest portraits of his parents and clarify a principle and not to imitate human faces travel sketches seem to have been transferred first (Wölfflin 1994), contributed to delineate the theory into his buildings and then into his sculptures. As a of Einfühlung or Empathy (Kirsten and Blower 2015), consequence of this evolution, the formal results of whose success has been recently endorsed by the his architectural works, developed mainly through his discovery of mirroring mechanism in human brain celebrated ball-pen lines sketches, seem to (Freedberg and Gallese, 2007). incessantly oscillate between abstraction and figuration, often involving the observers with their After a century-long tradition, “the interest in the semantic ambiguity. In particular, a number of semantic possibilities of architecture declined buildings Siza designed in the 1980s and 1990s reveal abruptly with the Modernism” in the late 20th the presence of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic century as a consequence of a diffused “aspiration at elements. These “figures” can be interpreted as the demonstrating the autonomy of architecture” (Forty most visible effects of a sort of long incubation and 2004, 78) through the language of Rationalism which elaboration period during which the “Rationalist” Siza Manfredo Tafuri described the as a “not- of the heroic decades of the SAAL experience has 1 Modernist architects were not immune to figurative Mondaneum (Teige 1929) to Jacques Tati’s moving- attitudes, which were often attacked by critics, from eyed La Villa Arpel in Mon Oncle (1958). Karel Teige’s words against Le Corbusier’s pyramidal ENQUIRY: The ARCC Journal | VOLUME 15 ISSUE 1 | 2018 2 http://www.arcc-journal.org/ been turning into the “Poetic” Siza of the sculptures 2.0 Toward a humanistic architecture made of scraped pieces of wood and fluent enwrapping buildings. Under Fernando Távora’s guide, Siza spent the first part of his career to master construction techniques Alvaro Siza is a complete and polyhedral figure, who as well to consolidate a critical approach to has been practicing not only architecture but also modernism through an active inquiry on the drawing, sculpture and writing with continuity. Portuguese architectural tradition (Frampton 2006, Therefore, this hypothesis is here explored through a 14) and by deeply studying the works of Frank Lloyd multifaceted approach to Siza’s work which is taking Wright, Adolf Loos, and Alvar Aalto (fig. 1). His into account: his parallel formation as an artist and architecture was first framed by the Portugal political architect; his parallel complementary practice as a context and then into the wider scenario of an furniture and industrial designer as well as sculptor; architecture critical towards the Western Capitalist his own statements about his design method in paradigm. While the 1970s experience of SAAL social interviews and articles; some of the critical housing favored his access to an important circuit of observations and conjectures expressed on his work competitions and contracts for public buildings in by collaborators, colleagues, reviewers and Europe, his private assignments allowed him to historians; the author’s direct experience of some of develop his human scale formal poetics. Regardless to the building Siza designed in Portugal, Spain, Siza’s poetic intentions, he has been defined as “the Germany and Italy as well the vision of some of his most genuine exponent of the architecture legacy of travel and design sketches, presentation drawings Modern Movement’s thought and principles,” and models, and sculptures in exhibitions, museums, (Moneo 2005, 167) resistant to labels (Curtis 2000) and archives; the survey of some of the above and produced work that encourage a multiplicity of mentioned works through pictures, sketches from life interpretative and conflicting approaches. For and direct measuring. example, Frampton’s (1985, 317) early framing of Siza’s works as “tight responses to the urban, land and marinescape of the Porto region,” as well “his Fig. 1. Comparison between the facades of Adolf Loos’ Villa Muller in Prague and Álvaro Siza’s Carlos Ramos Pavillion in Oporto ENQUIRY: The ARCC Journal | VOLUME 15 ISSUE 1 | 2018 3 http://www.arcc-journal.org/ deference towards local material, craftwork, and 3. inclusion, intended as both the opportunity subtleties of local light,” painted him as a perfect of moving freely through his buildings with exponent of the theory of Critical Regionalism. By the sensation of exploring and finding focusing on Siza’s doubtful, intimate and tailored human-measured events, and the design process, Peter Testa (1987, 24) demonstrated engagement of all the subjects and the question was far more complex: “His works suggestions coming from the site. maintain an unstable and fluctuating relation with their surroundings