Oct 10, 2008

Modernist Master’s Deceptively Simple World



IT’S unlikely that the Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza will ever enjoy the fame of, say, a Rem Koolhaas or a Frank Gehry, architects who have vaulted to international attention by demolishing accepted orthodoxies.
For one thing Mr. Siza rarely builds outside Europe, while his celebrity counterparts shuttle around the globe.
He has spent his career quietly working on the fringes of the international architecture scene. He dislikes long plane flights, mostly because of a decades-long smoking habit and recent back problems. And he still seems most at ease in Porto, Portugal, his native city, where he can often be found sketching in a local cafe with a pack of cigarettes within easy reach.
Yet over the last five decades Mr. Siza, now 74, has steadily assembled a body of work that ranks him among the greatest architects of his generation, and his creative voice has never seemed more relevant than now.
His reputation is likely to receive a boost from his museum here for the Iberê Camargo Foundation, his most sculptural work to date. Its curvaceous bleached white exterior, nestled against a lush Brazilian hillside, has a vibrant sensuality that contrasts with the corporate sterility of so many museums today.
(to find out more..)

passage from: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/arts/design/05ouro.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2
images from: http://particool.wordpress.com/2007/12/23/ibere-camargo-foundation/ & http://flickr.com/photos/visualcuriosity/144785931/
image edited by DeArasis

posted by afterrabbit

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