Álvaro Siza: Bouça

From start to finish, it took the Modernist Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza, winner of the 1992 Pritzker Prize and designer of The Serpentine Gallery's 2005 Summer Pavilion, 33 years to construct the Bouça Residents' Association Housing in the northern city of Porto--which he realized in association with architect António Madureira. During those years, Siza completed numerous important commissions, including the architecture faculty building at the University of Porto in 1985 and the Fundação Serralves museum of contemporary art in that same city in 1999. In 1988 he restored the Chiado district of Lisbon, Portugal, after a devastating fire; and his Portuguese Pavilion for Lisbon's EXPO 98 was internationally recognized. While Siza was busy with all of these buildings and plans, the first phase of the Bouça project was falling ever deeper into disrepair, hampered by municipal neglect. It has since been brought up to Siza's standards, and this publication appraises the project, now happily completed. Siza's sketches, many of which are published here for the first time, reveal the tenacity of his search for the right solution.