About the Talk:
In a career spanning more than six decades, Álvaro Siza (born in 1933, Pritzker Prize in 1992) has nourished his professional discipline with an undisciplined passion for the universal history of architecture and the various personal ‘companions’ inscribed in it. Fernando Távora (1923-2005) was one of the first, among many others. Siza always seems to think and design in alterity – in the place of the ‘other’, in the culture of the ‘other’, in the skin of the ‘other’ – as if transforming Fernando Pessoa’s heteronomy into his own ‘poesis’.
But trying to be the ‘other’ is not enough to understand the world. We must be able to ‘take’ the other, to make it our own, in a more prosaic, daring, childish and even ‘cannibalistic’ way. It is through this kind of cultural ‘anthropophagy’ that Siza manages to escape the impasse, the ostracism or the failure, to move forward and conquer, with warmth, the different places along his routes: Matosinhos, Porto, Berlin, Lisbon, Macau, Porto Alegre, Hangzhou, Manhattan…. In a completely undisciplined way, Álvaro Siza, now 91, remains the youngest Portuguese contemporary architect.
About the Speaker:
Nuno Grande (Luanda, 1966) is an architect, curator and researcher in Architecture. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture of the University of Coimbra, Portugal. He graduated from the University of Porto (1992) and received his PhD from the University of Coimbra (2009), where he is a researcher at the Centre for Social Studies (CES). He is the coordinator of CoimbraStudio, PhD programme in Architecture of the University of Coimbra, and of the Master Design Studio ‘City and [Infra]structure’.
He has curated international exhibitions at: the 1st Lisbon Architecture Triennale (2007); the 7th São Paulo Architecture Biennale (2007); the Cité de L’Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris (2016); the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale (2016); and the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto (2019).
He has authored numerous publications on Portuguese architecture, contributing to specialised magazines both within and outside Portugal. He is a founding partner of Pedra Líquida, an architecture studio based in Porto, Portugal.
Details:
Date: Thursday, 16 January 2025
Time: 7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m (Macao)
Location: Media Lab (USJ605), USJ Ilha Verde Campus
Organised by: Department of Architecture and Design – Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Moderated by: Prof. Filipe Afonso, Programme Coordinator of the Bachelor of Architectural Studies
Contact: filipe.afonso@usj.edu.mo
*Free event, open to the general public
