Memory of Mourov's Realizations - Exhibition at Casa da Arquitectura

“Some writers spend their entire lives writing the same book over and over again. As with all simplifying statements, this is not entirely true, but I can partially agree. There are also those who claim that all books are autobiographical.”
“Based on 'my' first houses, I must agree with both previous statements. Fourteen years after completing my first house, I am still drawing variations of the same thing, over and over again like a possessed person. The results are different enough each time that they start to resemble each other again (they resist being shaped by their location). I keep drawing the same house for the same person – under different pseudonyms – as if my idea is carved in stone, as Aldo Rossi once said: 'without allowing myself to be distracted by unnecessary people or things, in the faith that progress in art and science depends on that kind of continuity and stability, which are the only means of achieving variation.'”
Since last October, you can visit the extensive retrospective of the 2011 Pritzker Prize winner at the largest Portuguese institution dedicated to modern architecture. Spanning over 1000 m², forty projects and realizations created in the office of Eduardo Souto de Moura over the past four decades are on display.

Casa da Arquitectura holds the largest architectural collection in Portugal. Since 2017, it has been located in a renovated site of the former winery Real Vinícola. Before that, it operated for nine years (2009-17) in the historic house of Siza’s parents, which was built at the end of the 19th century by Siza's great-grandfather on his mother’s side, José Gonçalves de Lima Camacho, and in 1961 Álvaro Siza renovated it for family needs, with Casa da Arquitectura moving into the renovated house in May 2009.

One of the biggest donors to Casa da Arquitectura is Souto Moura himself, who donated 188 sketchbooks, 604 models, 8863 drawings, and all written and photographic documentation covering his entire professional career to the architectural archive.

The significance of the entire event becomes clear as soon as you arrive in Porto, when on your way from the airport you see posters in the tram advertising Moura's exhibition. Later, as you venture into the streets of Matosinhos, you are again welcomed by dozens of banners fluttering on the city’s streetlights. Moura is omnipresent in the port city not only on posters but also through the impressive kilometer-long paved waterfront, where a granite promenade with an underground parking lot is planned to be supplemented over time with technical pavilions with public functions.

Moura's exhibition “Memória, Projectos, Obras” (Memory, Projects, Works) is the first major event since Casa da Arquitectura moved to the Real Vinícola site in 2017. Curated by architectural historian from the Venetian university IUAV Francesco Dal Co and Moura’s son Nuno Graça, the event will last nearly a year and will be accompanied by a rich program of events. They also conceived a substantial catalog published under the Yale University label, where you can learn much about the background shaping Moura's fondness for ancient culture, French philosophy, his Marxist period, collecting his first work experiences in Siza's studio, and especially studying Mies's work (he has over three meters of volumes about this German modernist in his library and can say that Mies's details were not always as truthful as his writings proclaimed).

From hundreds of proposals, forty works (34 completed and 6 in progress) were ultimately selected and laid out on a monumental table (65.79 m long and 3.02 m wide) in the main hall of the historic building with its exposed roof structure. Larger exhibits are displayed along the outer walls. In addition to the final wooden models, working versions made of paper can also be seen, allowing visitors to perceive the evolution of the project and Moura’s search for the appropriate form. After several decades, Moura had the opportunity to reconstruct his own works (reducing programs, expanding or changing layouts).

On the ground floor of the adjacent building, there is a dedicated room with six projects in progress that we can expect in the coming years, as well as inspirational items (posters, paintings, books, and music surrounding Moura while working in his studio). A total of 120 drawings, 80 sketches, 70 notebooks, 70 models, 27 large-format photographs, and 50 small images are on display.

As part of the exhibition, a two-day conference is planned for the end of April, featuring speakers such as Jean Nouvel, Campo Baeza, Jonathan Sergison, and Francisco Mangado. You can view Moura's extensive work at the Portuguese Casa da Arquitectura until mid-October.

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