As parallel programming of the C.A.S.A. (Collection, Álvaro Siza Archive) exhibition, is taking place from 4-15 July 2024 the visits cycle “A Nossa Casa”, offering on-site visits to the projects on display in the Álvaro Siza Wing of the Serralves Foundation.
Each work is presented by experts and/or even the owners, providing unique perspectives on its genesis, evolution and interior occupation. In this sort of anthropology of architectural space, not only the thoughts of Álvaro Siza are revealed, but also the intimacy of each person’s dwelling.
This direct experience of the buildings will later be analyzed by the architect António Choupina during curatorial visits to the exhibition, revealing some of the many secrets of the Sizian archive, and explored in greater depth during a series of conversations with national and international guests.
Ciurated by António Choupina, the exhibition C.A.S.A. (Collection, Álvaro Siza Archive) thusly focuses on the Serralves Foundation Archive, particularly on the seminal experiences of Álvaro Siza early houses, as well as on the post-revolutionary social housing movement that swept through Europe, and on the invention of a kind of House for the City, in Porto’s unfinished Avenida da Ponte, or a House for the Nation, in the now empty Portuguese Pavilion. Later on, he would propose Houses for Architecture itself, one unbuilt in his hometown of Matosinhos, another recently completed in the Serralves Park.
With a dedicated floor to architecture, the Álvaro Siza Wing of the Serralves Foundation was built to be a House for the Collection. Hence why the first and main chapter of the show was named ‘Coming Back Home’, displaying the largest global ensemble of Sizian designs. After all, Serralves has played a major role in denying the old proverb: “No one is a prophet in their own land.” From the renewal of the Serralves House, to the construction of a Cinema House or a Gardeners House, the Foundation has become its architect’s home away from home, bringing together the extended celebration of his 90th birthday and the Museum’s 25th anniversary.
“One could not help but name the exhibition after that one true word, CASA, which doubles as an acronym for: ‘Collection, Álvaro Siza Archive’. It covers a wide range of projects beyond the walls of Serralves, other Houses of Culture, Houses of Knowledge, Houses of Faith, Houses of Idleness, Houses of Commerce, Houses of the Family, Houses of the People, Houses of Work. Siza’s office is sometimes more of a house than his own apartment, so the nine segments of the exhibition — one for each decade of his life — are topped off by the art that he produces on the side, for sheer pleasure, and which he generously donated the Serralves Collection.”
More information on the visits and the exhibition at the Serralves website here
