From Porto to Leça
An Unexpected
Architectural Catwalk
By NELSON MOTA
Main photos by FERNANDO GUERRA
ERY FEW CITIES IN THE WORLD CAN
BOAST HAVING BUILDINGS DESIGNED
BY THREE PRITZKER PRICE WINNERS.
RIBEIRA - THE OLD TOWN OF
PORTO
The Ribeira district extends from Sao
Bento train station towards the river
PORTO IS ONE OF THEM.
Douro. In this charming setting you can
Alvaro Siza, Eduardo Souto de Moura and Rem Koolhaas
have all contributed buildings to Porto’s skyline, or perhaps more accurately, roofscape. Moreover the first two
are based in this city, which is, however, a peripheral city
still find traditional cafés and restaurants,
along some recently opened more
contemporary ones such as Rui Paula’s
DOP restaurant and the Carris Ribeira
Hotel in a medieval building.
in a country at the periphery of
the core of the world system.
Visiting Porto is thus an
experience where architectural contrasts emerge from
its winsome topography,
largely marked by its position
at the encounter of the Douru
river with the Atlantic ocean.
The streetscape of the narrow
and often sloping streets in
the medieval part of the city
dramatically contrasts with
the long Avenida da Boavista,
departing roughly from the
city’s geographical centre towards the ocean, which can
Some restoration is going on here and
be reached after 5 km ride on a straight descending
there, but there is a sense of shabby
line. This long street can be seen as Porto’s architectural
catwalk. At the edge of one of the streets, Koolhaas’ iconic
Casa da Música acts as the announcement of a succession
of architectural feats, for which it stands properly as the
avant-garde, in the original
sense of the word. Roughly
one kilometre ahead in the
authenticity - and elegance - in those
slightly crumbling old facades clad in
beautiful azulejos. Next to the Palacio
da Bolsa, Ferreira Borges Market has
been transformed into an exhibition
centre with a music venue - its
beautiful wrought iron structure given
a new life.
direction of the Atlantic,
one will discover Souto de
Moura’s Burgo complex, a
play of two parallelepipeds:
one lying horizontally and
the other standing vertically.
After Koolhaas’ polyhedric
exuberance, Souto de
Moura’s silent volumes
testify to the architects’
mastery of proportion and
materials, against a background of soulless neighbours.
Another kilometre further, a sign indicates the direction to
the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, four hundred
meters to the left of Avenida da Boavista.
The Serralves Museum, designed by Álvaro Siza throughout
the 1990s and inaugurated in 1999, eventually became
one of Portugal’s most respected cultural institutions. The
building is located in the north-western part of the Serralves
It is a neighbourhood with a real sense
of local life with little corner shops,
children playing in the streets and
students from Porto’s Escuela Superior
Artistica in the cafés around the
park, a former private estate owned by a wealthy bourgeois
square of Largo de San Domingos.
family.
With some new contemporary style
places, as well as authentic eateries
The location chosen by Siza for the Museum, results from the
architect’s attempt to create a symbiotic and interdependent
relationship between the new building, the park, and the
house. Using the site of the former vegetable garden, Siza
had thus created a volume that articulates the street with
the interior of the property, as if the building was part of a
promenade architecturalle, which offers its visitors stunning
views towards the park, framed according to a sequence of a
playful hide-and-seek games between the building, the visitor
and the landscape.
such as the ever popular Rei Dos
Galos De Amarante, you can find a
great mix of styles.
Restaurant DOP
Palacio das Artes
Largo de S. Domingos, 18
www.ruipaula.com
Restaurant Rei Dos Galos De
Amarante
Rua das taipas, 121
Tel: 22 2057297
Hotel Carris Porto Ribeira
Rua do Infante D. Henrique, 1
www.carrishoteles.com
Back to Avenida da Boavista and travelling another kilometre
westward, one can find Siza and Souto de Moura’s projects
for upscale housing complexes, built in the recent years, and
delivering these masters’ possible solutions for this specific
market. These buildings however, show a striking contrast
to the 1970s social housing scheme, the Bouça complex,
built while Siza was in his forties and Souto de Moura was
collaborating with his office, and which can be seen - now
in pristine condition - halfway through Rua da Boavista, the
street that follows Avenida da Boavista in the east direction.
PHOTOGRAPHS
Leça pool
Arriving at the end of the Avenida da Boavista, at the socalled Castelo do Queijo fortress, the discovery of some of
the most important early works designed by Siza means a
short trip north along the coast to Leça da Palmeira, in the
neighbouring municipality of Matosinhos. This was once
a seaside resort cherished by Porto’s British community,
the so-called “Port-wine aristocracy”. However, with the
construction of the Leixões harbour in the 1930s, it soon
started to decline due to the swift change of character of that
area, until then a peaceful and quiet small fisherman’s village.
In the 1950s, to overcome this drawback, the Municipality
decided to launch a series of new leisure and tourist facilities,
aimed at attracting new visitors to this former popular resort.
Siza would
eventually
contribute three
buildings to this
initiative. After
leaving the bridge
over the Leça
river, heading to Leça da Palmeira, one can find in sequence
the pool at Quinta da Conceição (a former private estate
converted into public park and designed by Siza’s master,
Fernando Távora), the oceanic pool at Leça da Palmeira,
and the Boa Nova tea house, next to Boa Nova’s lighthouse.
Designed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, these projects
testify to Siza’s masterly account on the negotiation between
nature and construction.
In the pool at Quinta da Conceição, whitewashed walls
define the background against which Siza creates a
succession of platforms that both follow and challenge the
rolling topography of the site. The contrast of the white walls
against the greenery at Quinta da Conceição is countered
by the conflation of the concrete walls with the shoreline
at Leça’s oceanic pool, designed some years later. Here,
Siza deliberately assumes an ambivalent position towards
the balance of power between architecture and nature. On
the one hand, this building is deferential to the pre-existing
features moulded by natural phenomena, and on the other
hand, it is sharply assumed against them.
Finally, at the end of this tour, one can find the Boa
Novarestau-rant and tea house, designed by Siza in the
late 1950s and inaugurated in 1963. Designed earlier than
the oceanic pool, this building shows also an architectural
approach seemingly different to the latter. In fact, both the
geometry, volumetric solution and the materials used in Boa
Nova reveal an architectural approach where the almost
obsessive exploration of the interplay between volumes
and materials contrast with the bare relationship between
concrete, copper and black painted wood at the oceanic pool.
However, the essential qualities of both projects are similar.
In the tea house and restaurant as in the oceanic pool, Siza
delivers a clear account on the architect’s role in the delicate
negotiation between the artificial and the natural.
Nelson Mota
Boa Nova tea house
Casa da Música
Gardens of Serralves Museum