Álvaro Siza and the construction of a trend school

Abstract

The Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza (1933) was a student of the “Oporto School” between 1949 and 1965. In 1966, he began a teaching career there. He would play a key role in the school’s reputation and witnessed, as a student and as an educator, crucial changes in the teaching of architecture. He graduated in the transition from the “beaux-arts” system to the “modern” form of teaching architecture, and later, as a teacher, witnessed the transition from arts-school to college. As a teacher and as a practitioner, he was an example. He was actively involved in the struggle and debate for curricular, pedagogical and disciplinary autonomy of both school and architecture. At key moments, he left testimony of frank positions. With the transition of the arts-school to college, he would design, already in a period of great international recognition, the new facilities, of the now Faculty of Architecture. This article retraces Siza’s period of greater involvement in the “Oporto School”, between 1966 and 1990, allowing us to understand his contribution in the
construction of the school’s pedagogical project, as well as his position and practice as an architecture teacher.