Focused on the line and design of Álvaro Siza, this exhibition will cross-reference the archive material deposited at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, in Montreal, Canada, at the Serralves Foundation and at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Art Library, and also present pieces from the British centre Drawing Matters and from the studio of the architect himself, born in 1933, in Matosinhos, Porto district.

The exhibition "will make clear the need that Siza has to put on paper what he imagines and sees" and also the use of "design as a way of thinking", according to the architect, critic and curator of the exhibition Carlos Quintans, quoted by the Gulbenkian.

Álvaro Siza "designs while he works, when he eats, in the moments when he relaxes listening to music, watching a film or while talking", and "there are no moments when design ceases to be a need", assures the curator.

The main gallery of the Gulbenkian headquarters building will be occupied by sketches, plans, books, many of the A4 format notebooks, where the architect has been leaving his mark throughout his 90 years of life, and other objects - of furniture and design, with his signature - that are part of his professional universe.

Álvaro Siza -- winner, in 1992, of the Pritzker Prize, the world's highest award for architecture - has developed an activity through multiple artistic expressions, including drawing, tiling, tapestry, sculpture, furniture and object design, jewellery and graphic design.

"Siza begins, from his first works, to design the chairs, tables or lamps that he needs, and this work continues and is shown both in the physical objects, as in the designs necessary to build them, highlighting how his work is a total work, in which he does not abandon any creative aspect", also refers Carlos Quintans.

This "total work, much of it built, but much left to be built", will be analysed, along the gallery, through thirty concepts that translate into verbs such as heating, lowering, illuminating, swimming, looking, praying, flying, indicates the exhibition organisation.

Accompanying this analysis of the work, there will be 900 photographs - exhibited and projected - of Siza's projects, by the Spanish photographer Juan Rodriguez.

The most personal and intimate universe of Siza can be discovered by visitors in the temporary exhibition gallery of the Gulbenkian Museum, where "drawn portraits of family and friends, notes, views of his travels, watercolours, and drawings that -- in the absence of his usual A4 notebook, of any tablecloth, airplane bags, exhibition programmes or another surface with enough white space to occupy with his line -- are recorded in a pack of tobacco".

In this room, works by his wife, also an artist, Maria Antónia Siza (1940-1973), by his daughter and grandson, as well as furniture, personal sculptures and pieces from some of his references in the plastic arts, namely artists such as Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, Picasso and Matisse, will be exhibited.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a public programme, which includes guided tours, drawing workshops, a round table, with two sessions, to "Think Siza Vieira", and a cycle composed of three films, chosen by Siza himself: "The Architect and the Old City", by Catarina Alves Costa, "Neighbours", by Cândida Pinto, and "The Lady of Chandor", by Catarina Mourão.

In 2014, the architect donated his collection to the Gulbenkian and Serralves foundations, and to the Canadian Centre for Architecture.

Álvaro Siza Vieira studied at the Porto School of Fine Arts, where he was a teacher, and has projects from Asia to Latin America, passing through Europe, having signed in Portugal emblematic works such as, among others, the Piscina das Marés, in Matosinhos, and the Casa de Chá da Boa Nova, in Leça da Palmeira, the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art and the Bairro do Bouça, in Porto, the Portugal Pavilion of Expo'98 and the reconstruction of the Chiado area, in Lisbon, destroyed by the fire of 1988.

In 2017-2018, the Centro Cultural de Belém, in Lisbon, hosted the exhibition "Neighbourhood - Where Álvaro meets Aldo", curated by Nuno Grande and Roberto Cremascoli, which constituted the official Portuguese representation at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale. The exhibition had as its central theme the work of Álvaro Siza in the field of social housing, namely in the neighbourhoods of Campo di Marte (Venice), Schlesisches Tor (Berlin), Schilderswijk West (The Hague), and Bairro da Bouça (Porto), as a reflection of "a democratic understanding of the city, citizenship and collective memory, also close to the thought of his contemporary [Italian architect] Aldo Rossi".

Leia Também: Siza Vieira diz que extrema-direita ameaça as pessoas e a arquitetura (Portuguese version)

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