Trento | Álvaro Siza – Inside the human being

Álvaro Siza. Inside the human being | exhibition at the Mart Museum Rovereto

“Transforming space as we transform ourselves: confronting our pieces with those of others” (Alvaro Siza)

The great exhibition Alvaro Siza. Inside the human being is running until February 2015 at the MART museum in Rovereto. The event pays homage to one of the masters of contemporary architecture, winner of the Pritzker Prize in 1992.
The exhibition, supported by a copious set of documents and objects, depicts the personal and professional experience of the Portuguese architect and designer, whose approach has always been marked by particular attention to the relationship between men and their physical and cultural environment.

Inside the human being offers a narration characterized by different viewpoints, arranged in the space by adopting different interpretative layers overlapping on one another. The exhibition itinerary opens with a collection of pages from Siza’s notebooks, plenty of sketches, and travel notes, followed by videos where architects and artists report their personal recollections of working with Siza. The part entitled “Inside Image” features captivating photographic coverages of Siza’s realizations and their sites, while “Inside City” is a thematic presentation of Siza’s urban renewal projects, composed of drawings, texts, and photos.

The core of the exhibition, characterized by a long sequence of large wood tables stretching across the whole gallery, presents Siza’s works in chronological order, through an impressive set of original blueprints and scale models. At the end of the exposition, a collection of chairs, stools, lighting fixtures, and door handles, testifies the activity of Siza also as an industrial designer.

Siza’s early works date back to the late Fifties, among them, the Boa Nova restaurant in Leça de Palmeira (1958) and the Conceição swimming pool (1958-1965) need to be particularly mentioned. During the 1970s, after the end of the dictatorship in Portugal, Siza, through his participation in the association SAAL, (Servicio de Apoio Ambulatorio Local ) dealt with public housing development. In the same period, Siza obtained his first international recognition and began to work on the rehabilitation of the Kreuzberg site in Berlin. In the following years, he designed houses, schools, and university buildings (such as the Architecture School of Porto University) as well as cultural centers and museums in South America and Asia. In Italy, where Siza is active since the 1980s, he recently designed an underground station and the new MADRE museum in Naples.

top: the Chiado district restoration project, Lisbon, Portugal, 1988
middle: Champ de Mars project at the Giudecca island, Venice, Italy, 1985
bottom left: the entrance of the MADRE contemporary art museum, Naples, 2003-2006
all images courtesy of Mart
bottom right: the MADRE scale model on exhibition at the Mart, photo Inexhibit

Álvaro Siza. Inside the human being
from 4 July 2014  to 8 February 2015
Mart – Museo d’arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto
Corso Bettini 43, Rovereto (Tn)
www.mart.trento.it