“Siza Baroque” is a research project designed to highlight the relationship between the idea of the Baroque and the work of Álvaro Siza.

The Baroque is an attempt to reconstruct classical reasoning. The Baroque aspires to the complexity that is characteristic of difficult things. This is how we understand the path takenby the planets as they revolve around the sun (which is, after all, an elliptical trajectory, instead of the simple and central circular trajectory that was thought to be perfect), just as we do, also, the preference for an elliptical or oval floor plan (construction is better suited to the oval floor plan, which is easier to build, unlike gardening, which adapts better to the “gardener’s method” of setting out elliptical flower beds; in any case, the Baroque is elliptical and oval, not only in formal, but also in conceptual terms). The Baroque is the difference, but it is also the repetition that enables this difference to be established.

The baroque city, i.e. its principles, are simply formulated: repeated lines of houses in always identical streets (without revealing the personal identity of their inhabitants from the outside) coexisting alongside exceptional urban spaces (the city’s plazas and squares), preparing and announcing the monuments that, later, after the French Revolution, would be replaced by urban equipment. Baroque architecture cannot be understood without this underlying idea of the city. For this reason, baroque exuberance is not homogeneous. Nor is baroque excess always directed towards material, chromatic or ornamental excess. Excess can also be viewed in an opposite way: Less is More (Mies).

The preference for the minimum, for the varietal, for the monochromatic or the unornamented, is also typical of the Baroque in architecture. In its plainest version, it is embodied inalmost complete whiteness; in its more resplendent version, in gilded woodcarving. As a tendency in art in general and in architecture in particular, the Baroque seeks to build a newworld based on the old one that the latter believes isn’t prepared for the present and the future that is yet to come. This is why the Baroque insists on a common and shareable world-view and, in that sense, in architecture, novelty and renewed tradition are not only compatible, but also, above all, preferably the path to be followed.

Alexandre Alves Costa reports how, in Moledo do Minho (Casa Alves Costa, 1964-1968), “the varnished wood is unexpectedly painted in an identical colour to the walls. Siza justifies his last-minute decision: ‘There is too much design.’ In fact,” the author concludes, “detail will never be a decorative occasion…” This episode corresponds to the moment when, soto speak, Siza “cracks the varnish” and, on the outside, almost definitively abandons the emphatically expressive details in exposed wood that had characterised almost all of his earlier architecture (with the notable exceptions of the tidal swimming-pools and the Casa Manuel Magalhães, for example). And what does Siza offer us as an alternative to the abstraction that these two earlier works heralded? The baroque whitening of the alettes and overhangs (the modern replacements for the scotias, listels and astragals), which, in this way, corresponds to the direction that Siza has since imprinted on his work, with ever more conspicuous conviction.

For all of these reasons, we believe that Siza can be inscribed in the baroque world-view. The aim of this project is precisely to put this interpretive possibility to the test, which, in our opinion, will bring considerable gains in our knowledge and understanding: of Siza’s design methods, his path over time, the metamorphosis of his work and his designs (from his first sketches to the drawing of the solution communicated to the builders), the artistic solutions that he proposes and requires from his projects, his obsession with the rigorous fulfilment of his solutions, and the way that, in his work, his excessive emotion is tempered by his practical reasoning. In short, the aim is to arrive at a better and deeper understanding of Siza’s architecture.

Aware that the placement side by side of the idea of the Baroque and Álvaro Siza’s architecture will bring yet further gains in knowledge by revealing what the Baroque is in the final analysis, we also believe that the programmed research will be a particularly fertile occasion for better understanding what has been described, rather to the author’s reluctance, as “the genius of Siza”. Unfolding Siza’s architectural work (in the manner of Deleuze) and seeking primarily to observe it and then show it through a baroque lens is the first and last aim of the proposed research.

Team

José Miguel Rodrigues (Principal Investigator)
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Joana Couceiro (Co-Principal Investigator)
Escola Superior de Artes e Design

Ana Tostões
Instituto Superior Técnico da Universidade de Lisboa

Graça Correia Ragazzi
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Hélder Ribeiro
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

João Pedro Serôdio
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

José Quintão in memoriam
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

José Fernando Gonçalves
Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores Tecnologia e Ciência

Luís Urbano
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Marco Ginoulhiac
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Miguel Araújo
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Nuno Brandão Costa
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Sílvia Ramos
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Mafalda Lucas (Research grant)
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Inês Sanz Pinto (Research grant)
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Consultants

Maria Filomena Molder
Instituto Superior Técnico da Universidade de Lisboa

Juan Luis Trillo in memoriam
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Juan Jose Lahuerta
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Invited researchers

Mariana Sá
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Ricardo Leitão
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto