Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura has won the Pritzker Prize. Souto de Moura is not known for any particular blockbuster work, but for a long series of houses and small public buildings, mostly in Portugal. Above are two images of the Casa das Histórias, a small museum near Lisbon (slide show here). I find this exterior interesting, but the interior seems to be very plain and stark.
These house look like copybook modernism to me.
This is the municipal stadium in Braga, which looks pretty nice as stadiums go.
This is an interesting project, the conversion of a Cistercian convent into a modern hotel, and seems sensitively handled. I like to see prominent architects work on this kind of reconstruction, rather than insisting on their own vision from start to finish. We ought to be taking more of the world as we find it, rather than trying to remake it all the time.
This tower is pretty ho-hum, too, although I have seen much worse.Overall I see the mastery of the modernist form that I suppose the Pritzker committee wanted to honor, but nothing that moves me very much.
Attention to construction detail, formal sensitivity and respect for the environment and local materials, the translation of the great masters, the importance of sound and smell in architecture. Understand the environment and the views as much as the budget.
ReplyDeleteThe humor, insight, power, and some thing that you do not see a screen full of pixels makes the work of Souto Moura one of the most brilliant examples of practice today.
I recommend you to travel, and give you some air.