ÁLVARO SIZA VIEIRA: THINKING THROUGH DRAWING

May 2025 - June 2025

Aura Space,

Braga, PT

*Curated by Lucija Šutej with drawings’ selection with Alvaro Siza. 

All images copyright and courtesy @Álvaro Siza Vieira

Thinking Through Drawing brings together Álvaro Siza Vieira’s recent sketches, drawings, and research—spanning architectural plans from Braga to Croatia, design studies, and figurative explorations. In times dominated by digital interfaces, this exhibition invites us to reconsider the irreplaceable thought process, ideas and intimacy of the hand-drawn line that emerge. 

Rather than presenting a traditional curatorial text, through the following interview we center the architect’s own voice. Through a series of dialogues, Siza reflects on how drawing as an action functions as —a space where intuition, memory, knowledge and precision collide. Here, drawings are not preparation or study work but acts of thinking in its raw form made visible. We invite you to the architect’s process as it unfolds, —and to consider what might be lost if we abandon analog ways of seeing.

LUCIJA ŠUTEJ: You have said drawing is where ‘discipline and intuition meet.’ 

ALVARO SIZA VIEIRA: From these elements emerges the challenging thought that leaps to the image of what we are creating, and how it relates to this sea of information: the client’s personality, the program, and the site. Only then comes the concept. The hardest part is the blank page.

My approach is fairly general, I think. I begin with the first possible response to these elements—an initial reaction, even with limited information. Clarity comes gradually, through dialogue—when it is possible. Dialogue is essential. As things become sharper and deeper, we refine the idea more precisely. But at the start, it is always simply a response to those first three contact points. Mainly at the beginning of a project is your reaction. It is not enough. 

The beginning is crucial -we propose a space, a volume, and its relationship to its surroundings, based on the little—but sufficient—information we have. Sometimes the immediate context matters; other times, something more distant influences the design. In New York, for example, the cityscape is always shifting. Buildings rise like plants in a forest. Fixating only on the neighbor is pointless—unlike in a historic city, where the rhythm of architecture (Renaissance, Baroque, etc.) is everything. It is interesting to consider the height of adjacent buildings and their materials… they create contrast or harmony. It depends on the nature of the problem and how the problem itself evolves. New insights emerge, and we grow more aware of needs. We begin with possibilities and are concurrently critiquing our ideas, talking with the client, and listening to the feedback. Through this process, we might arrive at something entirely different- a product of variations, experimentation, and dialogue. 

It is important to remember- you work for everybody. The work should be useful and good - important for everyone in the town, not only for the owner. So there must be a convergence of understanding of the milieu when you are working - what tendencies are implicit in that work? So the more you have different reactions, the more you can get a complete answer to the problem. Here the sketch is so important. We cannot wait for an image—the sketch comes in seconds, it is very quick. It is a useful tool for how we work (the studio) and sometimes we make drawings of landscapes that we fix much more solidly than if we make a photo. 

Naturally, a photograph is very quick but only through sketch can you make an effort to understand and react. A sketch is an effort - of fixing and seeking. It's a rich experience of learning.  

LŠ: You mentioned drawing as self-criticism. Were there early mentors who taught you this?

ASV: For me, it began with an uncle. At five or six years old, he put me on his lap to draw. At the start, he gave me poor quality paper and then gradually better paper; same with crayons, first worse quality, then better ones. He was a terrible draftsman himself—his horse looked like another animal! (laugh) But he was a great pedagogue- because he influenced me to never lose interest in drawing.

Later, in architecture school, I wanted to study sculpture. But my family refused—they thought sculptors were bohemians who earned nothing. So, I chose architecture, where I had excellent professors during a moment of educational reorganization. They believed in and were very supportive of my intervention and wish for modernity. I always liked architecture, and it did not change.

LŠ: Having worked around the globe, have you noticed different cultures' approaches to understanding architectural drawing and sketching?

ASV: The base is the same, but it is interesting how history and landscape change things. The basis of evolution in art in general comes from this relationship. Today, with the advancement of informatics many schools have a tendency to forget drawing because of computers. This is a mistake and much will be lost. The hand’s relation to the mind is where creation begins.

LŠ: How do you think the hand reveals what the mind can’t see?

ASV: Knowledge—sometimes we make things and we don't know why. It's a failure of rational work.  The freedom of the hand makes possible memories and readings. It excavates in our minds learning and a capacity to discover a deeper meaning—it is a base of creation. It’s not about seeking— it’s about discovering, something appears without being forced. So it's a mistake to forget drawing as an old thing. 

LŠ: Through your work as an educator and your architectural practice, you witnessed technologies that opened the architectural field to new possibilities. Which technologies changed practice most profoundly in terms of drawing?

ASV: The movement toward digital tools…in one way is necessary, in another way something was lost - that movement between instinct and consciousness. Now there is this deposit of hope in artificial intelligence surpassing human instinct.

LŠ: Are these technologies flattening architects' handwriting?

ASV: Technology has always been architecture's partner. There's an evolution in knowledge, capacities, and tools - but this isn't new. The opposition between technology and art is false. They're complimentary if we maintain that balance.

 LŠ: Do you often revisit old sketches?

ASV: Only when asked to choose for exhibitions. 

Álvaro Joaquim Melo Siza Vieira was born in Matosinhos (near Porto), in 1933. From 1949-55 he studied at the School of Architecture, University of Porto. He taught at the School of Architecture (ESBAP) from l966-69 and was appointed Professor of “Construction” in 1976; he taught at the School of Architecture of Porto. 

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, AIA/American Institute of Architects, Académie d’Architecture de France and European Academy of Sciences and Arts and American Academy of Arts and Letters; Honorary Professor of Southeast University China and China Academy of Art and honorary partner of the Academy of Schools of Architecture and the urbanism of the Portuguese language.