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In his early projects, Álvaro Siza’s admiration for the geometric diagrams of the Mannerist period is clear: the curves and counter-curves, continuous niches and bulges, the range of nuance, variety, and ambiguity.
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Mannerist artists rejected the harmony and ideal proportions of the Renaissance in favor of irrational settings, artificial colors, unclear subject matters, and elongated forms. During the Mannerist period, architects deliberately played with the symmetry, order, and hierarchy typically found in classical architecture. Where the High Renaissance emphasized proportion, balance, and the “right kind” of beauty, Mannerism subverted those qualities and visual motifs by exaggerating them – often resulting in compositions decidedly wrong, asymmetrical, or proudly excessive. It favored complexity, compositional tension, and instability over balance and clarity. Mannerist architecture was characterized by visual tricks, mistakes, and unexpected elements that challenged Renaissance norms.
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Jumping forward to the mid-1970s, Álvaro Siza designed several houses marked by great geometric violence. He used a variety of strategies to “attack” the integrity of each project: consecutive operations of distortion, fragmentation, and displacement. His buildings possess several schemes of overlapping order. Siza did not necessarily obey dogmas of formal restraint and aesthetic rigidity; instead, he allowed accidents to happen, forms to deform, and axes to shift and fade.
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One could say that these projects are a bit vulgar, with their forced complexities and almost perverse mannerisms. They retain their youthful power to appear ugly, frivolous, and a bit pretentious. Siza was both wrong and absolutely right. His curves, folds, and swoops are effectively Mannerist devices used to animate and dramatize surfaces and spaces. In Siza’s projects we find that while the form as a whole contains a fragmentary nature, it does not dissolve into random disconnectedness. Instead, it reveals a fascination with modes of connection that both separate and unite. Each plan shows a delicate balance between surprising compositions and a clear, formal logic. Each project is a carefully assembled composition of eccentric angles and shapes – a building that is both destroyed and complete. What shaped his projects in the 1970s was the collision of basic and axial elements of architecture with the wider world, whether in the form of existing buildings, the site, the program, or the client. The order is manifestly there, but it is interrupted by the meticulous fragments of disorder.
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