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House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

House in Oporto by Álvaro Leite Siza

Architectural photographer Fernando Guerra has sent us some images of a house and studio in Oporto, Portugal that architect Álvaro Siza Álvaro Leite Siza designed and built for himself.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

The house was completed earlier this summer by Siza.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

Siza spent 12 years assembling the site, designing the house and building it.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

The long, narrow, rectilinear ground level is capped by an oversailing, faceted white carapace.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

Photographs are by Fernando & Sérgio Guerra.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

Siza is the son of Pritzker-prize winning architect Álvaro Siza.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

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House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

The following statement is from Siza:


To do architecture it’s necessary a client, a promoter. When I realized, in certain moment of my career that to continue my path I would need to occupy that role too, I didn’t hesitate.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

Was needed a lot of courage.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

I conciliated objectives, interests, goals, I pursued an ideal and I achieved a dream.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

I also had the need to be, in this work, supervisor, coordinator and project director, in an organization in direct administration.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

I started this work in 2004 and I finished it in early of 2005. The construction begins in February of 2006 and was concluded in July of 2010.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

The project of personal house-atelier is the first where is present touching figures in their own atmosphere, exalting pieces, personalities that derive from history, versus the sensibility, recreating individually realities, with no intention previously defined.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

They appear in the middle of delivery to ones believe beyond what we need (specific program and functional), sublimation underlying to authentic communication of the creative process.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

When the modern is old, a pass appears in the most eloquent and distant expression.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

The affirmation of a new Romantism, of a Classic Renaissance, came directly of the origins, with the interior load not less important.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

The home like laboratory of ones dream that represent the drives, ideas, tensions and strength behind de matter.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

The stories and its emotions that condense the symbolism that represent. The figures and humans relations.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

In this project, borned from free drawings of harlequin - laughing about the problems, the tensions, the conflicts, the mismatches, between other dramas that surround this activity - that transforms in a geometric abstraction, where there’s no place for frames or glasses, I rehearse the affirmation of a new Classicism.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

Transitional spaces, the porticos, the lamps, the light, the doorknobs, the doors, the hand rails, even some paintings and the furniture was designed for me, but also other of XIX century (timeless pieces) that came from my family that fit the environment perfectly, beyond other elements, complement the creation of environments that exalt Mozart, Leonardo da Vinci, Miguel Angelo and surrounded by a lot of extraordinary Art works, that aren't limited to the atmosphere of purely imaginary architectural.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

The conclusion of this ideal was possible due to a personal characteristic of obstinated stubbornness and dissatisfaction non less expressive.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

It’s started 12 years ago, with an acquisition of a lot without access to the street and for that a lot more financially favourable.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

In the next 6 years I tried to find a connection that would make this possible.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

I was lucky that a promoter of one unoccupied lot was a direct cousin of my mother that finally would sell it to me.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

I was forced to buy another lot next to this one to make the business feasible, that I sold with a personal approved project.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

In this way, I capitalized, investing all the money in this business.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

During the necessary operation of regrouping of the lands, appears the project, result of one discourse of paradoxical intentions.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

Home/Atelier; Interior area/Exterior area; Social area/ Cultural area; Private/Public; Leisure/work.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

Their volumetry organized themselves by vertical and horizontal sections.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

One programme built by one atelier facing to the street, garages and service areas working with a hinge and finally the House related with the garden.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

One of underground storey corresponds to the foundations, another ground storey in granite, corresponding to the public and social areas, and even the top storey.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

If In one hand, the ground floor expressed them self of inside to outside, of the intimacy to the exterior in an explosive manifesting, creating the necessary openings, the porticos of transition and the respective skylights of natural light; for other hand, the upper storey implode.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

The aggression of exterior create symbolic tensions, pressures that recognize themselves of outside to inside, reducing their volumetry, giving rise to one figurative image.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

Through a geometric rigorous abstraction to make possible the constructive system, built by lozenges associated in different angles that confer higher tridimensionality, I found the proportion that I wanted, the horizontality I wished, the orientation predefined, the objectified and determined direction.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

The symbolism of the figure that sublime the oppression of one system.

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

Álvaro Leite Siza Vieira
Porto, Julho de 2010

House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza
House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

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House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

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House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

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House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

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House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

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House in Oporto by Alvaro Siza

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See also:

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