Buildings That Tell Stories

For nearly half a century, Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza has worked on the fringes of the architectural establishment.

A soft-spoken man with a distaste for celebrity, he spends much of his time sketching at local cafes. Almost all of his buildings are located in his native Porto, and it is generally accepted that the quality of his designs do not come across in pictures. Their clean, Modernist lines lack the visual splash of high-profile designers.

Yet to insiders, the 67-year-old Siza has long been considered one of architecture’s great living talents. His genius lies in his ability to imbue his designs with a deep narrative meaning. The best of them--taut, elegant compositions--seem to crystallize the ageless conflicts between a building and its context, the individual and the collective.

His 1966 swimming pool complex at Leca da Palmeira in Portugal, for example, is a remarkable fusion of natural and man-made landscapes. Designed as a series of ramps and walls that connect a waterfront promenade to a rocky beach and enclose a series of natural pools, it is almost invisible from the street. The impression is of a tracing, as if Siza were simply drawing attention to something already there, invisible to the untrained eye.

Similarly, projects like the Porto School of Architecture, currently under construction, and the 1993 Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, reveal a deep sensitivity to context. The museum, for example, is composed of two simple rectangular forms that seem to crash together as they meet at the intersection of two streets. Walls break open to create an entry, surfaces bend to draw you through the galleries. As you circle the site, your eye follows the lines of the building to unexpected views of the urban landscape and gardens. Rarely has a building expressed such empathy for its surroundings.

Now Siza is bringing that sensibility to Los Angeles. This month, the architect began a collaboration with Frank O. Gehry on the master plan for a $100-million expansion of Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design. Eventually, Gehry will design a new library, while Siza will design a technical skills building. The project will mark the first collaboration between two of the great architects of their generation, and Siza’s only project in the United States. Completion is scheduled for 2005. During a recent visit to Los Angeles, the 1992 Pritzker Prize-winning Siza discussed his work in an interview with The Times.

Question: Among architects, you are thought of as a reclusive figure, someone who has always worked outside the main currents of the architectural establishment. Why have you spent your whole career so close to home?

Answer: When I began working, in 1953-54, it was very unusual for Portuguese architects to work [abroad], mainly because of the country’s political isolation. And in the interior of the country, the work was not done by architects--only in Porto and Lisbon. So for those that were not well related to the regime, the work was a few small houses.

Q: When did that change?

A: What brought attention to Portuguese architecture was the revolution in 1974. After that, many visitors came to Portugal, seeing what was going on. Most of what was published was work with neighborhoods, new housing, the rehabilitation of slum areas. In fact, if you see the first invitation I had [to design outside of Portugal], it was social housing in Holland. Half of the population were immigrants, and most of them from Islamic areas or southern Europe. So I think they thought I was a kind of specialist in social work.

Q: I assume those preconceptions were confining?

A: I had to make a lot of work to become free of that idea, that I was mostly [suited for] work with people from the south. You know, there is this tendency today to put a stamp of specialization--some architects that make museums, some that make houses, and so on. That is crazy, because architects have to have experiences making everything--large-scale, small-scale, public buildings, private buildings. Understanding the relation between all these types of buildings is how you master the metier --not through specialization.

Q: How did that background affect the development of your ideas?

A: It was difficult to make a trip out of Portugal. But I had information through teachers, mainly one teacher that was a member of the [Congres Internationaux de l’Architecture Moderne], Fernando Tavora. He went to meetings, and coming back he would explain the new ideas, the new buildings he had seen. The dominant personality then, almost exclusively, was [French Modernist] Le Corbusier. Later, in the 1960s, Alvar Alto became really influential in Europe, but maybe in a special way in Portugal and Spain. They were countries on the periphery [of Europe], as was Finland, places where handicraft work was still alive, where there was no developed technology, no concrete or steel structures, and so on. [Alto’s] work had a connection to tradition. At the same time, it was universal.

Q: Your own work, however, is philosophically very different from the work of those earlier Modernists. How did it evolve?

A: I think it is the circumstances of my education as an architect. When I began my studies, I still had to paint in watercolor--the Ionic column, the Doric column. The first project, for example, would be a classical fountain--and it was not a bad exercise, I must say. . . . And so [we] were very close to tradition. Some of my professors were of old families. They knew and maintained that relation with history and tradition. So this connection between contemporary architecture and history appeared to me to be the most natural thing. I was educated with this principle of continuity, not rupture.

Q: Can you explain how those ideas are expressed in your designs? Do you always begin with the functional requirements?

A: Generally, yes. I usually begin with sometimes crazy ideas about where to put the building. But then I analyze the functional problems.

Q: So the relationship between the building and its context becomes stronger as you develop the design? Many of your buildings, it seems, become an expression of that conflict--between internal and external forces.

A: Maybe. I never make a project with the idea of illustrating my position. But, of course, my position is implicit in everything I do. So the building discovers the context. You transform the site, but also the building is transformed from discoveries about the context in general.

Q: Is that how the design for the first building at the architecture school in Porto developed?

A: There, what happened is very simple in the end. There was a beautiful garden I did not want to destroy. There were wonderful trees. So the two ends of the building are directed to these fantastic trees. There are also lines in the plan that had to relate to other buildings.

Q: Visually?

A: Yes, visually. But sometimes not visually, because as you walk, you see things differently. There is a memory. And when you arrive at a certain point, you still feel the origin of your walk. And the building is meant to reflect that.

Q: The swimming pools at Leca da Palmeira also seems like an example of that. It is a very delicate project. There is almost nothing there.

A: Yes, it took a lot of work to be almost nothing. But that was done at a moment when I could be at the site almost every day because I did not have much work. There didn’t exist the bureaucracy. You almost put the walls up yourself. Today, the profession is dominated by bureaucracy, regulations, controls. It was very different at that time. It was so simple. Today, sometimes it is despairing.

Q: What were the elements you were working with in that design?

A: I used to pass my childhood on that beach. So I knew every rock, and I loved it. I thought that the wonderful balance between nature and the town could be maintained. So I tried to organize this dialogue, between the built things and nature, between this fantastic element of the long wall and the rocks. I proposed not to make a box. Instead, the work was to find exactly how the walls should meet with the rocks in a natural way, in exactly the right place. I think it almost doesn’t change the site.

Q: Do you think that kind of work is still possible today? What are the conditions necessary for creating that kind of architecture?

A: Obviously, if we think about architecture over many centuries, it is clear that we need time to think, to mature the ideas, to consider the material part of architecture, how it is built. We need always time. On the other hand, there are many people who consider that this is no longer possible today, that the idea of maturity, of continuity, is dead. Many times I think it is crazy the way I work, because it is not a way that seems to be possible right now. But in a way I also see a contradiction with this idea, because things that are built are rather solid in the end. They have a permanent presence.

Q: What then, convinced you to collaborate with Frank Gehry on the Art Center project?

A: I do not have the energy I had years ago, so I have to concentrate on the things that I like. And I like the architecture of Frank very much. When I went for the first time to Bilbao, I thought of how this building fits. I thought it is an impossible task. But it is a contextual building. There is a marvelous view down this very austere street, and in the end there appears that explosion of silver. It fits that way.

Q: Have the two of you visited the Pasadena site together?

A: Yes. We had our first meeting today and we found consensus on some basic things, what should be the balance between the old building and the new ones, for instance. I had a surprise because [Craig Ellwood] made his building very artificial in a way. The landscape is very worked in the area of the building. But then there is this surrounding of mountains that is fantastic. The relation of mountain, platform, building--it is wonderful. And in a way, it appears as a surprise, because you can’t see it from far away. It has an elaborate approach, and then it comes into view suddenly.

Q: Did the city, in general, surprise you?

A: Well, from the window of my hotel I look and I see this extension of green and then many small houses, this architecture mixed with a lot of space. It makes really a clear pattern. I remember some views of Oriental towns like that in etchings and drawings--in China, Macao--where you have small construction, fantastic gardens. You feel happiness around. That is the impression I have.