Malagueira: Events in the landscape. “what things say”

Abstract

In 1977 Malagueira at Évora began to be built. Drawings show that "plan" and "project" have unfixed borders and the events on the landscape connect and create a dialogue between the user and the place. The drawing, in its gradual approach to scale reveals a geometric abstraction that becomes architecture. Events are pieces of architecture that will be discovered by walking across the site. We find them near the elevated conduct thru small urban spaces (squares), or hidden benches under its arches. Also close to the water line, in bridges, different each time in solution, scale and geometry, in dialogue with nature. At other urban features like the amphitheater, the dike and benches above the park look at the water as the protagonist in different positions. They all provide character to Malagueira. It is in these discreet events, unnoticed places, small objects that “big projects” reach their fullest intensity. Inhabitants do not understand great performances, but they inhabit and live these events every day. Malagueira belongs to citizens, it provides opportunities for neighbors to interact and meet, walk around and feel they belong to the place. Álvaro Siza wants to leave a mark in the city, but as Roland Barthes “death of the author” explains it is the reader, in this case the user, that controls its reading on the city. This is done without intermediaries, and show its true "essence”, which was intuited in the aerial drawings. It is a participated project between Álvaro Siza and the user (inhabitant) where the former presents a feature that the latter will transform into a living part of the neighborhood. Our presentation will reveal the original fundamental drawings of these events, and Álvaro Siza´s personal explanations: birth, evolution, and final construction. We will show them for the first time they will allow us to read in Malagueira “what things say”.