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Hello again! You are hearing from us a couple days earlier than usual. Henceforth, we will publish SKYLINE on Friday mornings. The reason for this change is largely procedural (capping off one’s weekend with a heavy editing load isn’t anyone’s idea of fun, apparently), but it’s also practical: museum and school events typically happen mid-week or on Saturdays. For contributors, that means write-ups of Thursday evening events will run the following Friday. With that, we’d like to direct you to this week’s sole, but substantial, dispatch about the ineffable Álvaro Siza. Continue scrolling for event listings—we especially recommend the lectures happening as part of Climate Week at The Cooper Union.
DISPATCH
Siza the Day
Late into the Q&A of the 15th Annual Arthur Rosenblatt Memorial Lecture for the Center for Architecture in New York, ÁLVARO SIZA VIEIRA issued a koan-like directive: one must always “avoid the constant imposition of what is beautiful,” he said. The portent is characteristic of the 88-year-old architect, whose eyes are deep like wells of obsidian. He’s the only person I’ve seen who smokes mid-lecture. In keeping with the format of the event, which recognizes excellence in museum design, Siza devoted an entire hour to a single project: the Fundação Iberê Camargo in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Opened in 2008, the museum houses the paintings of Camargo (1914–94), who retired to the city in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, near Uruguay. Though the talk was held virtually, evidence of Siza’s greatness is now available locally—on West 56th Street, several blocks north of the Center for Architecture, his first North American building nears completion.
Hearing Siza and seeing Siza is to experience history. It’s no wonder so many architects seek out his mentorship and make pilgrimages to see his work. As a young graduate, HANA KASSEM, now a Principal with Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, traveled to Porto, Portugal, and waited at the architect’s office until being granted an interview one Sunday morning. She got the job and started the next day. Introducing Siza over Zoom, Kassem recalled their meeting and Siza’s “absolute humility,” which bonded everyone in the office together. In translating his ethereal sketches to measurable drawings, misinterpretation was only grounds for further conversation. She said his architecture referenced nothing and everything at once.
With the Fundação Iberê Camargo, critics saw in the building’s zigzagging, suspended ramps the influence of Lina Bo Bardi’s SESC Pompéia, in São Paulo. But according to Siza, the design owes more to the Van Nelle factory in Rotterdam, a hallmark of modernism dating to 1931. Architecture, he said, is “made with a big base of things we have seen,” from scholarly references to personal recollections. As a student during the Estado Novo regime, Siza first encountered the work of Le Corbusier, which might also explain his love of ramps.
At Porto Alegre, conflicting desires—a conventional L spread of galleries, a soaring atrium, switchbacked circulation—could have resulted in a mishmash of forms. Instead, the building is a sculptural feat: a massive block, curved along its main façade, exposing the tubelike ramps that cantilever off it. Set against a hill along the Rio Guaíba, the Fundação appears to open its arms toward the delta. With help from Kassem, Siza moved through drawings and an assortment of images on screen as he spoke, including snapshots of the project’s construction. Included were the only photos I’ve seen that depict the interior space of those arms, which soar above the plaza to create an exterior hall.
Siza’s genius naturalizes strangeness. The dramatic site, coupled with a practical concern for parking, prompted his first thoughts about the design. He suggested locating a car lot at the top of the hill and having visitors proceed down toward the building entrance but scrapped the idea. Later, local authorities were persuaded to allow parking to be constructed underneath the main street. The resulting long, subterranean box is an impressive start to the museum experience. “They wanted to make exhibitions there,” he said with pride.
Throughout, Siza spoke casually and thoughtfully. He used his hands and at times turned his webcam around so that he could gesture at the plans on the screen. Every nuance was easily recalled. A nearby tower initially presented itself as an “enemy,” only to subsequently become a friend, after he realized that it helped avoid the museum’s would-be condition of solitude. After the presentation, he answered questions about the role of drawing and recalled childhood memories that influence his architecture.
During the Q&A, Kassem referenced a famous saying of Siza’s, “Architects don’t invent anything, they transform reality.” Why make it more complicated than that? —JACK MURPHY
In the News
A timber-lined mosque, a spacious student center, and a controversial apartment building are among the finalists for the 2021 Stirling Prize, which annually awards the U.K.’s best building. Speaking of lists, Japanese architect Kengo Kuma features on the latest edition of TIME magazine’s TIME 100. Work on Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s posthumous L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped is nearing completion; the Parisian icon will remain in its cloth chrysalis until October 3. This year’s Climate Week at the United Nations will be more visible than ever before, thanks to a 505-foot-tall video installation by the art collective SUPERFLEX. Elsewhere in New York, a bid to reinstall the historic 1930s-era lobby of Times Square’s McGraw-Hill Building failed, while the Two Trees development in Williamsburg got the OK, despite community criticism. In Chicago, the organizers behind the Thompson Center Design Ideas Competition unveiled plenty of, well, ideas for rehabilitating Helmut Jahn’s 1985 postmodern classic. The winning proposals include what could easily be the greatest waterpark ever.
DATELINE
The week ahead…
Friday, 9/17
In-Person Tour: Madison Avenue, High Fashion and Historic Preservation with John Arbuckle
5:00 PM | AIANY Center for Architecture
Saturday, 9/18
Annual Shutze Fellows Lecture: Built Beautiful: An Architecture & Neuroscience Love Story with Donald H. Ruggles
10:00 AM | ICAA
“One Night with the Fugitives” with Ilze Wolff
12pm | The Cooper Union
Roosevelt Island: Cornell Tech & Four Freedoms Park (In Person!) with Kyle Johnson AIA
1:00 PM| AIANY Center for Architecture
Monday, September 20
Glass House Presents: Frank Gehry's Creative Aesthetics with Susanna Phillips Newbury
6pm | The Glass House
Climate Momentum: The Things that Keep Me Cheerful in the Face of the Worst Problem Ever with Rebecca Solnit
7pm | The Cooper Union
Tuesday, September 21
“How Low Can We Go: Historic Preservation and Carbon Reduction” with Kevin Brennan, Peter Cox, Milan Jordan, Chris Magwood, Nick Redding, Scott Henson
12pm | AIANY Center for Architecture
“The Adventure of Drawing as ‘Writing About Building,’” with Franco Purini, Guido Zuliani
12pm | The Cooper Union
“Unfolding Futures” with Ken Liu, Karen Lord
6pm | The Cooper Union
“Ground Zero: Master Plans, Part 1 The Cultural Component” with Craig Dykers, Lynne B. Sagalyn, and Frank Sciame, Jr.
6pm | The Skyscraper Museum
Launch of Sandfuture with Justin Beal and Felicity Scott
6pm | Storefront for Art and Architecture
“Monsters, Cyborgs, and Vases: Apparitions of the Yellow Woman” with Anne Anlin Cheng
6:30pm | Harvard GSD
“Being in the Negative” with Basel Abbas, Ruanne Abou-Rahme
7pm | The Cooper Union
Wednesday, September 22
“The Story of Modern Design: 1963-2000” with Daniella Ohad
10am | AIANY Center for Architecture
“Structures of Consumption” with Sria Chatterjee, Nandita Sharma, Gaye Chan, Radhika Subramaniam
2pm | The Cooper Union
Baumer Series with Anna Bokov
5:30pm | Ohio State University Knowlton School of Architecture
“Building Character: The Racial Politics of Modern Architectural Style” with Charles L. Davis II, Reinhold Martin
6pm | Columbia GSAPP
“Organic Architecture” with Javier Senosiain
8pm | CCA Architecture Division
“The Responsibility of Design” with Qin Li
10pm | CCA Architecture Division
Thursday, September 23
“Design Impact – Following the Sun: Design Futures at the Intersection of Health, Equity and Climate Change” (Conference)
8:30am | Harvard GSD
Re-Future NYC: Reflect, Redefine, Reinvent
9am | AIANY, ASLA-NY, APA-NY
“Reconstruction Deconstruction” with Billy Fleming, Doris Sung, Austin Wade Smith 12pm | The Cooper Union
“Dream BIG with Design” (Conference)
5pm | American Society of Landscape Architects
“Situated Computations, Craft + Technology” with Vernelle A. A. Noel
6pm | MIT Architecture
Lecture with Justin Beal
6:30pm | Yale School of Architecture
Launch of Icebergs, Zombies, and the Ultra Thin: Architecture and Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century with Matthew Soules, Peggy Deamer, Jack Self, and Anna Bokov
6:30pm | The Cooper Union
For the complete list and future weeks, visit: nyra.nyc/events
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
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