To the lecture of Eduardo Souto de Moura at the Bethlehem Chapel

Souto de Moura at the Bethlehem Chapel.

             On Filipojakub night, the Bethlehem Chapel became the setting for a lecture by another holder of the Pritzker Prize. Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura visited on Monday, April 30, 2012, at the invitation of the Jaroslav Fragner Gallery to present his current projects to the Czech audience and to conclude the exhibition 'Competitions 1979-2010'. The Faculty of Architecture of the CTU, the capital city of Prague, and the Foundation of Czech Architecture took patronage over the largest architectural event of this spring.

Souto de Moura is rightly considered a successor to his teachers Fernando Távora and Álvaro Siza. However, the greatest influence on the form of his projects came from the thinking of the German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, so it is no wonder that his steps before the Prague lecture led to the recently reconstructed Tugendhat Villa and then to lunch at the nearby (no less significant) Era Café with representatives of the Brno architectural scene.

Starting at six o'clock, hundreds of interested attendees began to gradually pick up their reserved tickets and headsets for translation from Portuguese. Moura’s patriotism towards his native language was already evident when American President Barack Obama, during last year's awarding of the Pritzker Prize, delivered Moura's entire thank-you speech in his mother tongue.

After the introductory speech by the Portuguese ambassador José Júlio Pereira Gomes, the mic was taken by Czech-Belgian architect Jiří Klokočka, who pointed out Moura's exhibition organized in West Flanders' Kortrijk and sparked the idea for this exhibition to be exhibited in Prague as well. In the Belgian Kortrijk, where Jiří Klokočka served for many years as the city architect, one can also find Moura's recently completed crematorium 'Uitzicht'.

Bolhão metro station in Porto.

Souto de Moura came to Prague to present recently completed buildings and current projects he is working on. He simply wanted to share with us the current joys and problems his office faces.

The first project was the recently completed Bolhão metro station, which is located in the center of Porto next to the chapel of Saint Catherine, but simultaneously opens up to a small square on a busy street in front of a department store. Moura's stop, with its white tiling, connects to the glazed tiles of the protected church. The subway project best illustrates the approach that is characteristic of Moura across many of his projects. Moura quickly realized that one person cannot handle 70 kilometers of metro, and he would not want to spend his whole life working on one building, so he divided the contracts for individual stations among friends based on a simple criterion: whether the architect had previously built something in that location and knew it well.

Cultural center of poet Miguel Torga.

In the wine village of São Martinho de Anta, the daughter of Portuguese poet Miguel Torga decided to build a cultural center named after her father. Due to a visit from the Portuguese Prime Minister, the project needed to be completed in a record time of one week, which Moura initially did not want to respond to, but eventually decided to take on the challenge. As with most of his works, this design remained maximally simple: it consists of just four walls, two entrances (service and guest) and large windows. He originally chose a company for the facade of his house that was unable to produce enough gray bricks, so he had to look around the nearby vineyards where he found old stone beams that he recycled for the vertical cladding of the cultural center. Moura's wife, who is also an architect, had previously designed a house for a writer, so he used a similar building program reduced by half. In a short period of time and on a low budget, however, a building rose with stone walls up to five meters high, which in their nobility can rival Zumthor’s baths.

The trio of apartment buildings La Pallaresa.

The trio of apartment buildings La Pallaresa in Santa Coloma de Gramenet in the suburbs of Barcelona primarily serves weaker social groups. The masses significantly exceeding the scale of their surroundings define the square compositionally. Moura's aversion to designing window openings manifested itself in the facade being composed of structural concrete blocks, which inadvertently created a thousand uniform windows for lighting apartments. During construction, however, a crisis occurred, the city hall halted the project, and the collaboration with the architect was terminated. Local architects then successfully completed all three buildings out of collegiality.

The 'City life' project in Milan revealed a world of architectural stars, where two diagonally positioned towers meant for regular people were supposed to arise among the dancing towers of Hadid and Libeskind, which the client eventually fully glazed against the architect's wishes.

The project in the Chinese city of Zhangzhou simply added another megalomaniac project to the local mosaic. Based on the urban design by Arata Isozaki, a metropolis for three million people is to be built in three years. On an oval plane, two bands of high-rise buildings are to be constructed around a water area. Each of the invited world architects was tasked with designing two skyscrapers for this project. The great Portuguese patriot had to study the local principles in this case, which he then interpreted in the form of an inverted cone and an octagonal pyramid. The elliptical footprint, which opens up into a circle, allows for the insertion of additional objects in the ground floor and creates the atmosphere of a pleasant square. The chosen form also ensures enough daylight inside the disposition. The color scheme appears warm, and the orange tint is close to bricks.

The family house in Spanish Llábia, where people travel from Barcelona for the weekend, has been divided into several masses due to windy weather. However, above the level of door and window openings, a thin line runs through, which again unites the entire contrived building.

Renovation of the market in Braga (1980).

The very first public realization by Moura was the renovation of the market in Braga, which he designed while still a student at the turn of the 70s and 80s. At a time when stone was still cheaper than concrete. The linear market serving the expanding southern part of the city eventually stopped serving its original purpose. For a time, it also functioned as a disco. Before the building completely closed, it became a ruin attracting the attention of drug addicts. The current mayor therefore approached Moura to see if he would like to resurrect his building and establish a dance school within it. Moura restored the granite wall running through the entire building, but due to citizen protests, the characteristic free-standing columns with exposed reinforcement instead of capitals had to be removed from the central courtyard.

The last presented project was a hydroelectric power plant set in beautiful nature under a dam. Similar to the soccer stadium in Braga, Moura also worked here with the rock massif, where he hid most of the technology to be able to plant trees on the slope. Although only two concrete cylinders peeked above the terrain, the idea of the hydroelectric power plant did not meet with a favorable response from ecologists.

The final questions came almost exclusively from Portuguese students and architects who expressed their views on the current dire situation. However, Souto de Moura did not want people to leave with bad feelings, so he indicated that in a crisis one can see an opportunity for change and something good, because after a period of abundance, we all need change.