He graduated in architecture in 1955, at the former School of Fine Arts from the University of Porto, the current FAUP – Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto. He completed his first built work (four houses in Matosinhos) even before ending his studies in 1954, the same year that he first opened his private practice in Porto. Siza Vieira taught at the school from 1966 to 1969, returning in 1976. In addition to his teaching there, he has been a visiting professor at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University; the University of Pennsylvania; Los Andes University of Bogota; and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.
He graduated in architecture in 1955, at the former School of Fine Arts from the University of Porto, the current FAUP – Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto. He completed his first built work (four houses in Matosinhos) even before ending his studies in 1954, the same year that he first opened his private practice in Porto. Siza Vieira taught at the school from 1966 to 1969, returning in 1976. In addition to his teaching there, he has been a visiting professor at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University; the University of Pennsylvania; Los Andes University of Bogota; and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.
Along with Fernando Távora, he is one of the references of the Porto School of Architecture where both were teachers. Both architects worked together between 1955 and 1958. Another architect he has collaborated with is Eduardo Souto de Moura, e.g. on Portugal’s flagship pavilions at Expo ’98 in Lisbon and Expo 2000 in Hannover, as well as on the Serpentine Pavillon 2005. Siza’s work is often described as “poetic modernism”; he himself has contributed to publications on Luis Barragán.
Among Siza’s earliest works to gain public attention was a public pool complex he created in the 1960s for Leça da Palmeira, a fishing town and summer resort north of Porto. Completed in 1966, both of the two swimming pools (one for children, the other for adults) as well as the building with changing rooms and a cafe are set into the natural rock formation on the site with unobstructed views of the sea. In 1977, following the revolution in Portugal, the city government of Évora commissioned Siza to plan a housing project in the rural outskirts of the town. It was to be one of several that he would do for SAAL (Servicio de Apoio Ambulatorio Local), the national housing association, consisting of 1,200 low-cost, housing units, some one-story and some two-story row houses, all with courtyards. He was also a member of the team which reconstructed Chiado, the historic center of Lisbon destroyed by a fire in 1988.
Most of his best known works are located in his hometown Porto: the Boa Nova Tea House (1963), the Faculty of Architecture (1987–93), and the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art (1997). Since the mid-1970s, Siza has been involved in numerous designs for public housing, public pools, and universities. Between 1995 and 2009, Siza has been working on an architecture museum on Hombroich island, completed in collaboration with Rudolf Finsterwalder. Most recently, he started coordinating the rehabilitation of the monuments and architectonic heritage of Cidade Velha (Old Village) in Santiago, an island of Cape Verde.
In 2002, Siza was invited to serve as the first Mentor in Visual Arts in the inaugural cycle of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, an international philanthropic programme that pairs masters in their disciplines with emerging talents for a year of one-to-one creative exchange. Out of a very gifted field of candidates, Siza chose young Jordanian architect Sahel Al-Hiyari as his protégé. Other visual arts mentors for the initiative include David Hockney (2004), John Baldessari (2006), Rebecca Horn (2008), Anish Kapoor (2010) and William Kentridge (2012).
Selected projects
1958-1963: Boa Nova restaurant in Matosinhos
1958-1965: Quinta de Conceição swimming-pool
1962: Miranda Santos House
1964: Beires House (“The Bomb House”), Póvoa de Varzim
1966: Leça da Palmeira swimming-pool
1981-1985: Avelino Duarte House Ovar.
1987-1993: Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto
1988: Rebuilding plans of the Chiado neighbourhood after a fire, Lisbon.
1995: Library of the University of Aveiro.
1997: Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art
1998: Architectural Practice, Porto
1998: Pavilion of Portugal in Expo’98, Lisbon
1999: Residential tower, Maastricht.
2002: Southern Municipal District Center, Rosario, Argentina (first work by Siza in South America)
2005: Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2005
2008: Iberê Camargo Foundation, Porto Alegre, Brazil.
2009: New Orleans tower, Rotterdam, Netherlands.