The talk will be held in English.

Nude life drawing was a part of several architecture schools’ curriculum, particularly those whose inception was rooted in the fine arts. Álvaro Siza often calls upon this tradition as a moment of release from the pressures and enigmas of architecture, while simultaneously using it as a source of inspiration, in the case of Picasso’s Pregnant Woman.

Siza’s Gallery for Two Picassos, now reinvented as an Art Pavilion in South Korea, was originally conceived for the 1992 European Capital of Culture, as part of an exhibition curated by architect Martha Thorne, former executive director of the Pritzker Prize and current senior advisor to the Obel Award. Drawing on her experience at The Art Institute of Chicago, as well as on her interest in landscape design, this conversation will focus on the new Álvaro Siza Wing’s architecture and future content as a pedagogic tool – one museum, two buildings.

Also joining the debate is architect João Luís Carrilho da Graça, winner of the 2008 Pessoa Prize, among other awards and commendations. Like Fernando Pessoa’s heteronyms, architecture relies on a kind of multiplication of the ‘self’ to reach the ‘other’. Siza and Carrilho da Graça are no strangers to this ambivalent connection across different timelines, spaces that expand and contract, hovering above adjusted topographies, from Serralves to the Flor da Rosa Monastery or the archaeological museum at São Jorge’s Castle.

Unlike Le Corbusier, for whom drawing naked was a literal and regular occurrence, one strips bare the architectural thinking and process in a talk moderated by architect António Choupina. The Naked Architecture programming will continue to take place in the Álvaro Siza Wing throughout January of 2024, until the opening of the Collection Exhibitions.