Interview with Eduardo Souto de Moura

Good day, once again thank you for taking the time to answer our questions. Let’s return to the very beginning of your career. Everyone surely knows your teacher Fernando Távora and subsequently collaborator Álvaro Siza, but in what environment did you grow up or what was the impulse that made you decide to study architecture?
It was never the case that I wanted to be an architect my whole life. It was more about a confluence of circumstances. I probably decided under the influence of my older brother, who was drawing and wanted to study art. I grew up in a doctoral family that was quite conservative and traditional. Fortunately, our older sister had already chosen medicine. As a result, we could choose according to our wishes, and I simply thought why not try it. Subsequently, I met two professors Távora and Siza, who became my masters and role models, but I didn’t stop with them because my other great role model was Mies van der Rohe.

You probably did not encounter Carlos Ramos during your studies at the Porto school and the graduation in the Carlos Ramos pavilion from Álvaro Siza was on the contrary early. The person who probably influenced you the most at the university was Fernando Távora and his course 'general theory of organization of space', which still represents a fundamental pillar of the education of Portuguese architects. How do you recall this introduction to architecture?
Távora was my professor in the first year at the school, but then came the Carnation Revolution, and everything was a bit different afterward. Távora influenced me the most with his cultivation. He was able to convey to us the importance of general culture and cultivation in architecture. He was also an art collector and had an interest in poetry, and he knew the work of Fernando Pessoa well. He could connect architecture with a whole range of topics and led us to the conclusion that architecture is life. Subsequently, I met Siza, from whom I took away rigor, discipline, and an endless obsessive effort to do things well.

Although you previously taught at the Porto School of Architecture, you are skeptical about the school's ability to prepare students for reality, which is why you also spent five years working in Siza's architectural studio. Can we say that this practice was your best school?
For me, yes, but I cannot say that it generally applies to others. At that time, the school did not have sufficient academic background. An important experience for me was also the avant-garde. Another was the opportunity to work directly with people on the construction of a house. Only when you work directly with people on the house do you understand everything that is needed. This discipline of daily work on the construction site was not given to me by the school, but by Siza.

Before graduation and the establishment of your own practice, you participated in a conceptual competition for a house for K.F.Schinkel in Japan. How can this unexpected maneuver from an architect with strong local roots be understood?
Very easily. At that time I was working with Siza, and his model was Alvar Aalto from Finland. The age difference between us is twenty years. Thanks to him, we understood the importance of a regional architect in a small country like Finland.
I think Siza had a very smart idea at this moment, that we as Portuguese are also on the periphery and can have something in common with him. And so he developed his own language without having to study Alvar Aalto in depth. Due to the similarities, certain analogies could also arise.
When I started as an architect, it was necessary to clarify many things. After many years of fascism, there was an effort to rebuild the country. The architecture of fascism had similarities to modernism. It also possessed the manipulative similarity of neoclassicism. I could not use a similar language as they did in the reconstruction of the country. I thought to myself that if I wanted to contribute to the renewal of the country, then my architecture had to be simple, effective, industrial, in short, such that a lot of houses could be built from it. And such architecture I found in Mies van der Rohe, which was a fresh breath in the atmosphere of postmodernism. When I studied Mies, I also discovered Schinkel and subsequently the competition 'House for Schinkel', organized by Stirling, and so I decided to participate. I remember that it was a neoclassical ruin that looked like an abandoned building.

In the last two weeks, I had the opportunity to view two Schinkel buildings, which must appeal to every contemporary architect with their timelessness. You consider the modernist movement a continuation of classicism, so Schinkel probably still speaks to this day. What does the term timelessness mean to you?
Timeless is that which is classic, can be used always and in any time. That which you know from antiquity or the classic column can be used today as well. With two columns and an architrave, you can do anything. I believe that the history of art is the history of the classical, because everything else is in some way a rejection of what is classical. It is not at all a coincidence that when Le Corbusier designed his houses, he proceeded through Renaissance palaces. The AEG Factory by Peter Behrens is essentially a modern interpretation of the Greek temple. We can say that all modern architecture is classical or neoclassical.

Regarding the reconstruction of the Cistercian monastery of Santa Maria Bouro in Geres, you mentioned that much more than the monastery, you were fascinated by its ruins. At the market hall in Braga, you even supported the creation of ruins yourself. What fascinates you about ruins?
Ruins are the last stage of every building. They represent a balanced state. When you design a good building, it will also be a good ruin.
In the case of the monastery, it is not a very intellectual matter, because my mother stayed there when she was ill, and my family comes from this region. Visiting the ruins of this monastery was part of our family trips. It is part of the memories of my childhood, as I remember it only as a ruin.
In the monastery, various styles overlapped, and during the reconstruction it was necessary to decide which one to choose. For example, the windows came from the 19th century because there were none before. From the monastery in Boura, I created a modern building using old stones. In making decisions, I chose the twentieth century, and all previous centuries support the current architectural language. I preserved the ruins and created something that comes from today’s time.
In this way, we can think for many years afterward. Things were done back then because they were needed and no one thought about it so much. Then comes historical distance for it to be possible to speak and assess what was done well and what was done poorly. Today I am certainly aware that the building could have become something picturesque and romantic, but still, I think I managed to make a modern building, but all this will show time.

Another interesting element of your work is the acknowledged, revealed construction. Modernists worked with the symbolism of a skeleton covered with skin. In your residential building Rua do Teatro or the football stadium in Braga, you relied solely on the skeleton, which became the main architectural expressive medium, thus confirming, like Mies van der Rohe, that pure construction can also be architecture.
I completely agree that pure and simple construction can be architecture. The skeleton of the building is one of the few transferable things; when you display it and make it visible, it can have a pedagogical effect so that people can understand how it works and what it is.

Many people perceive architecture as added value to a building. Architects then tend to embellish their designs and are afraid to remain with pure form and bare structure.
I believe that architecture should be adorned, but it should not be the architect who adorns it. It can be adorned with the surrounding garden. People then bring their things inside, curtains, carpets, paintings, but the foundation lies in what is simple and basic. Architecture is a theater. It represents a stage that should accept plays, scripts, and events. The architect should create the theater but should not write the scripts.

I must admit that I remember the football stadium in Braga much better than the historic center. In the figurative sense, you created a 'Bilbao effect' symbol for the city and the European Football Championship 2004. How do you view iconic buildings?
I do not know if it is really so. Braga is a baroque city with the famous church Igreja de Bom Jesus de Monte with its presented staircase. This motif will probably forever be on all information leaflets about Braga. The fact that Obama (while awarding the Pritzker Prize - note.) talked about the stadium in Braga does not mean it is the most famous building in the city.

One of your books is titled 'Stone Element'. The stone element of the wall dominates your early cultural buildings and family houses. This is intensified by the exposed rock walls. Is stone one of the means to honor continuity, the surrounding landscape, and to connect with your roots?
That book really exists, but I did not write it. It consists of black and white photographs of my buildings by Swiss Werner Blaser.
I originally started using stone without any romanticism because it was a cheap and accessible material. Then I began to discover the advantages of stone: it is easily workable, durable, thermally and acoustically insulating, and it is beautiful. People actually respond to it as an old substance. There are countless types of stone with a variety of colors and textures. It carries visual information, and that is all I want. Today, everything is so expensive that cladding stone is used; however, it loses all its character and respectability. When I cannot use stone with all the characteristics I have mentioned, I prefer to use other materials like concrete, which I have often been using lately.

Recently, you are getting commissions on an increasing scale (airports, train stations, hospitals). Can one avoid losing the human scale with such large masses and, in Távora’s words, becoming a spacecraft - a place where people no longer feel good?
People are small and large. I believe that the factor of humanity has nothing to do with dimensions or size, but it is about quality, not quantity. It is necessary to realize the scale in which we work. Scale is not a quantitative matter. Understanding that the difference between a child, a young boy, and an adult man is not just that they are different heights is crucial. In earlier years, people thought of the child as a smaller version of the adult, and they were raised as adults and wore scaled-down adult clothing. However, science then understood that there is something like child psychology, pediatrics, and each developmental stage has a different approach. A large house or a small object represents the same work, which requires a different approach, just as it is in the case of a human being.

The recently concluded exhibition at the Prague GJF is titled Competitions, but a large part of the exhibition space is occupied by sketches capturing not only the design itself but also the surrounding environment, atmosphere, and life. What position does sketching hold in your work?
Sketching is for me something like brushing my teeth. I have the urge when I sit and wait in a restaurant, for example. If I don’t have any paper on hand, I open a cigarette box so I can draw on the inside of the packaging. Sketching is an integral part of my everyday life.

Thank you very much for your time, kindness, and answers.