ARCHITECTURE: Álvaro Siza Vieira _______________________________________________ ADDRESS: Quinta da Malagueira, Évora _______________________________________________ CITY: Évora ______________________________________________ DATE: 1977-1997 _______________________________________________ VISIT: Outside _______________________________________________ MORE DETAILS: Malagueira is a neighbourhood made up of one thousand two hundred houses and its conception is secured since 1977 by architect Álvaro Siza. A unique experience that has revealed to be a singular urban and architectural adventure. The plan was disciplined by intentions, which represented in many aspects experiments: one of them was the proposal of a grid of evolving houses with a minimalist design, repetitive (avoiding the monotony of diversity), geometric, back to back, but the main experiment was the proposal of an elevated exterior structure where all technical infra-structures are set and that becomes a conducting line that unites all the pieces of this large portion of the territory. That structuring function could have been trusted to the public space (streets, squares) without resorting to a questionable, symbolic and functionally efficient solution. This option can only be understood when we perceive Evora’s roman origins (of which the aqueduct constituted one of its main testimony’s) and the designer’s will to include the neighbourhood in the place’s history and geography. _______________________________________________
