The most recent collaboration between Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza and Italian architectural photographer Duccio Malagamba is a hard-to-miss structure e-book of pure aesthetic delight. Earlier than / After: Álvaro Siza Duccio Malagamba is half the size of the authoritative Siza monograph Phaidon revealed in 2000 and limits itself to twenty initiatives from this architect’s 70 years of follow. Nevertheless, its impression is way higher, supported by Malagamba’s knowledgeable imagery. The images are paired with Siza’s expressive idea sketches on each unfold, which explains the subtitle of the e-book (Siza loosely stands for ‘earlier than’, and Malagamba for ‘after’).
The manufacturing is good-looking and of manageable dimension; the structure is spacious, giving every constructing room to breathe. It’s laborious to convey the sensual expertise of structure in a e-book, particularly when it’s as visually reductivist as Siza’s, however these photos seize the qualities of sunshine and house, subtleties of kind and refinement of element.
Earlier than / After: Álvaro Siza Duccio Malagamba, £79.95 from phaidon.com; additionally out there from Amazon
(Picture credit score: Duccio Malagamba)
Flick by the Alvaro Siza monograph, created in collaboration with photographer Duccio Malagamba
At age 91, Siza continues to be pursuing a solitary path. He shuns all extra in favour of refined minimalist structure. His work is rooted within the land and takes its cues from the agricultural Portuguese vernacular of frugal whitewashed cubes – akin to the Mediterranean villages that impressed Le Corbusier in his early years.
However not like that grasp modernist, who switched from Purism to Brutalism, and from white stucco to uncooked concrete, mid-career, Siza has continued to discover the potential of pure white kinds all through his, whereas using completely different supplies wherever acceptable.
Galician Centre of Up to date Artwork by Alvaro Siza, Santiago de Compostela, Spain 1988–1993
(Picture credit score: Duccio Malagamba)
Most of those photographs had been taken proper after the buildings had been accomplished and occupied, however earlier than the interiors received cluttered. Malagamba recollects that his 40-year love affair with the architect’s imaginative and prescient started when he and his girlfriend chanced upon the ocean swimming swimming pools of Leca da Palmeira. His photographs present the buildings after they had been, to cite Colette, ‘fraiche comme la naissance du monde‘ (contemporary just like the delivery of the world).
Thus, we’re spared the lamentable spectacle of uncared for masterpieces, notably the Ibere Camargo Basis within the Brazilian metropolis of Porto Alegre. Siza deplores the decline of craft in development and his fondness for white stucco presents a problem in a humid local weather. A lot of his work requires fixed upkeep, and the meticulous care the architect invested in these initiatives must be matched by the homeowners.
VMD Home and Artwork Gallery by Alvaro Siza, Oudenburg, Belgium 1997–2003
(Picture credit score: Duccio Malagamba)
This survey ought to spur everybody to expertise the work, up shut and private – strolling by the Serralves Basis galleries, savouring the play of sunshine inside the Marco de Canaveses church, or sitting within the Boa Vista tea home because the late afternoon solar streams in by the retractable home windows. I recall the shock of pleasure to find the SAAL Bouca social housing to be in good condition – a undertaking begun below a short-lived communist administration within the early Nineteen Seventies and accomplished on the residents’ urging 30 years later.
These had been memorable encounters with structure distilled to its essence and they’re all comparatively simply accessible, for Siza has completed a lot of his finest work in and round his house base of Porto. That ought to whet your urge for food for a extra intensive pilgrimage, exploring his oeuvre additional afield, discovered throughout Europe and in Korea.
Saya Park Artwork Pavilion by Alvaro Siza, Gyeongsangbuk-do, South Korea, 2015–2018
(Picture credit score: Duccio Malagamba)
Earlier than / After: Álvaro Siza Duccio Malagamba, £79.95 from phaidon.com; additionally out there from Amazon
Supply: Wallpaper
