SIZA TALKS 2023
Conversations and Exchanges
The conferences will be in English, with simultaneous translation into Portuguese.
Access (1 day): 5€, 50% discount to Serralves Friends, students and seniors.
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Every city is my city, to which I always return.
Everything is different then, because I understand that it's different. My eyes open to my city, I am once again a wondering stranger, capable of seeing: of doing.
Álvaro Siza (1995)
As part of its continued commitment to architecture, this year the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art will be hosting the fifth edition of "The Álvaro Siza Talks", an event that brings together architects, scholars and students for the discussion of issues relevant to contemporary architecture while celebrating the spirit of Álvaro Siza's work. Each edition of the Talks is centred around a different topic that aims at fostering discussion and debate in connection to themes and values expressed in Siza's architecture.
It could be said that architecture is the result of a series of successive transplants and grafts that foster a specific form of conversation between different cultures and places. The theme chosen for this year's edition of the Talks, "Conversations and Exchanges", seeks to propose a reflection on how much travel, periods of study abroad and working in countries and cultures different from their places of origin, has transformed and enriched the practice of architecture through different forms of exchange.
This exchange has always occurred, but it has undoubtedly spread and accelerated in recent decades. Because of this unprecedented process of diffusion and acceleration, perhaps not enough attention has been paid to this issue. Highlighting the value of this exchange – and of the different forms of crossbreeding that result from it – in the training and work of contemporary architects would be one of the aims of this event.
The architects participating in this year's edition of the Talks represent, in different ways, all possible forms of these exchanges, whether through their training, their work or their teaching, they have often crossed the physical and conceptual boundaries of the vast territory of architecture.
The opening lecture will be delivered by Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara (Grafton Architecs, Dublin), and speakers include Stéphanie Bru (BRUTHER, Paris), Emanuel Christ (Christ & Gantenbein, Basel), Ahmadreza Schricker (ASA North, New York), João Pedro Serôdio (Serôdio Furtado, Porto) and Francesca Torzo (Genoa).
In addition to Álvaro Siza, the Scientific Committee of “The Álvaro Siza Talks” is composed of Eduardo Souto de Moura, Farrokh Derakhshani (Director of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture), Philippe Vergne (Director of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art) and Carles Muro (coordinator of The Álvaro Siza Talks).
"The Álvaro Siza Talks" are organized by the Serralves Foundation in collaboration with the Aga Khan Award for Architecture.
Speakers
Yvonne Farrell, Shelley McNamara (Grafton Architects, Dublin)
Stéphanie Bru (BRUTHER, Paris)
Emanuel Christ (Christ & Gantenbein, Basel)
Ahmadreza Schricker (ASA North, New York)
João Pedro Serôdio (Serôdio, Furtado, Porto)
Francesca Torzo (Genoa)
CHANGES to the PROGRAMME due to unforeseen circumstances:
Wednesday, November 08
19:00 Welcome
19:30 Opening lecture: Yvonne Farrell, Shelley McNamara (Grafton Architects)
Thursday, November 09
18:30 Francesca Torzo
19:30 João Pedro Serôdio
Friday, November 10
18:30 Ahmadreza Schricker
19:30 Emanuel Christ
Mecenas das Siza Talks
Related
Yvonne Farrell
(Tullamore, 1951)
Shelley McNamara
(Lisdoonvarna, 1952)
Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara co-founded Grafton Architects in 1978, having graduated from University College Dublin in 1974. They are Fellows of the RIAI, International Honorary Fellows of the RIBA and elected members of Aosdána, the eminent Irish Art organisation. Teaching at the School of Architecture at University College Dublin from 1976 to 2002, they were appointed Adjunct Professors at UCD in 2015. They held the Kenzo Tange Chair at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2010 and the Louis Kahn chair at Yale in the Autumn of 2011. Currently, they are Professors at the Accademia di Archittettura, Mendrisio, Switzerland.
Grafton Architects won the World Building of the Year Award in 2008 for their Bocconi University building in Milan. The practice won the inaugural RIBA International Prize in 2016 for their Universidad de Ingeniería y Tecnología building in Lima, Peru. Yvonne Farrell and Shellley McNamara were the curators of the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2018. They received the Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture from the University of Virginia in 2017 and were awarded the Royal Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2020.