Contemporary Portuguese Architecture

On the other side of the river, among the port wine warehouses of Gaia, we will be invited to savour the flavour of this unique beverage. And even after all this, we will still have time to see an example of work by the new generation of architects in Cristina Guedes and Francisco Vieira de Campos’s bar/esplanade Ar do Rio.

The morning of our second day is dedicated to the city’s major architectural icons: Rem Koolhaas’s Casa da Música and the Museu de Serralves by Siza Vieira, resplendent in a French-style landscape that also includes an Art Deco house. Our journey will be via metro, a recent work by Souta Moura that has radically changed the relationship between the city and its suburbs.

In the afternoon, we take the road that runs alongside the river in the direction of the sea, visiting the Parque da Cidade and the Frente Marítima of Sidónio Pardal and Sola Morales. We continue towards Matosinhos along Souto Moura’s seafront as far as Leça, where we find Siza Vieira’s 1966 Leça Swimming Pool, perfectly in harmony with its surrounding landscape and classified as a national monument. Finally, we arrive at Boa Nova Tea House (1958-63), built on the rocks above the sea and one of the first works of a very young Siza Vieira. Here, the sunset over the sea takes on a whole new dimension.

On the third day we leave Porto to head for Viana do Castelo, one of Portugal’s oldest towns and, today, an architectural Mecca thanks to Siza Vieira’s white concrete Biblioteca and the notable building in the Praça da Liberdade by father and son architects the Tavoras – all this, with the majestic Atlantic Ocean as backdrop. After taking a short trip through the historical centre of the town, we make our way to Braga and its must-see Estádio de Futebol (2004) by Souto Moura – carved out of a granite hillside. Our last stop of the day is at Marco de Canaveses where, in 1997, Siza Vieira began work on Santa Maria Church. Standing at the centre of a bold parish complex, this is an extraordinary example of contemporary ecclesiastical architecture, thanks to its pure, beautiful geometry.

The morning of our fourth day is dedicated to the campus at the University of Aveiro. Begun in the 1980s as part of an urban plan proposed by Nuno Portas, the site provides us with an extraordinary opportunity to review a range of projects by the cream of Portugal’s architects – including Siza Vieira’s Library and Water Tank; the Ceramics and Glass Engineering Department of Alcino Soutinho; Adalberto Dias’s Students’ Residence; Souto Moura’s Geosciences Department; the Chancellor’s Building by Gonçalo Byrne and Manuel Aires Mateus; João Luís Carrilho de Graça’s Footbridge over São Pedro Creek; and the Canteen by Manuel and Francisco Aires Mateus.

After visiting the nearby city of Ílhavo, to take in the Maritime Museum and Library by the ARX studio, the end of the afternoon finds us arriving in Lisbon to take our rooms at the only Art Deco hotel in the city, the work of modernist architect Cassiano Branco.

The fifth day begins, in Lisbon, with a walk to some of the charming gardens with a spectacular urban views (miradouros) and among the city’s ancient districts to get and ancient districts to get a perspective of the history and development of the capital. We visit the Baixa, constructed after the 1755 earthquake and a remarkable example of urban planning on a grand scale in the name of rational, utopian social ideals. From here we climb the hill to Chiado, the site of a more recent example of urban regeneration, this time the work of Siza Vieira after a damaging fire in 1988. Here we also visit the National Museum of Contemporary Art (The Museu do Chiado), enlarged and remodelled according to plans by Jean-Michel Wilmotte, before continuing to the notable Reitoria of the Universidade Nova by Aires Mateus.

The rest of the afternoon is dedicated to the Parque das Nações – 300 hectares of what was, until the 1998 Expo, decaying industrial land next to the river Tagus. Now revived and redeveloped, the area is home to important architectural works, including Oriente Station by Calatrava, Siza Vieira’s Portuguese Pavilion and Peter Chermayeff’s Oceanarium, alongside modern homes, offices, parks and public works of art. Among these, Trancão Park is a fine example of environmental regeneration through landscape architecture.