Before Enfilade MUAR, this traveling exhibition had time to visit different cities of the world, from Brussels to Tokyo. But it began its journey in May 2011 as an exhibition within the walls of the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto - almost synonymous with the school of Porto, which has embodied in the eyes of foreigners the Portuguese architecture of the last forty years. The opening of the exhibition coincided with the award of the Pritzker Prize to Eduard Sout de Moura, which marked the beginning of world fame for this outstanding architect - and, obviously, served as the reason for the transformation of this exhibition, clearly prepared for a professional audience, into a point of the general cultural program of Portuguese embassies around the world. …
The period of relative obscurity that preceded this long period was perhaps the key moment in Soutou de Moura's biography. According to the curator of the exhibition, Andre Campos, even relatively recently, even Portuguese students-architects were not very well aware of him: Alvaro Siza remained the personification of the “school of Porto” both domestically and abroad. Soutou de Moura began his career in his workshop, but even having opened his own at the age of 28, he remained in his inner circle: their offices are located in the same building, they sometimes do joint work or jointly participate in exhibitions and other collective projects. Siza, along with Aldo Rossi, influenced Souta at the beginning of his career, but then the young architect turned to the legacy of Giuseppe Terragny, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the late Le Corbusier, and therefore in his mature work he moved away from his patron - remaining, however, until recently in its shadow. It can even be assumed that, if it were not for the attention of Pritzker's jury, he would still not have been very well known outside the Iberian Peninsula: even despite the football stadium for the 2004 European Championship in Braga that attracted public attention.
In the introductory article to the catalog (unfortunately, its circulation was completely sold out even before the exhibition arrived in Moscow), the Spanish architect Alberto Campo-Baeza notes Soutu de Moura's real passion for competitions. From 1979 to 2010, he participated in 50, and already during the travel of the exhibition around the world, four more projects were added to it - in 2011. His works do not always take the first places, and even in case of victory, implementation is not guaranteed - especially in the current economic situation. But, despite this unpleasant "lottery" situation, he continues to send applications for contests: perhaps the reason for this is that very long "obscurity".
However, this is only part of the story. His credo of an architect is problem solving: the human emotions caused by his buildings are desirable to him, but he does not consider them as a task, and he does not consider a conversation about the meaning of forms worthy of attention at all. Therefore, contests for him are a testing ground for ideas, something like a riddle or puzzle, as well as an occasion for training skills. At the same time, the very situation of the competition - time constraints, lack of information, sometimes - the desire to draw attention to the project with a kind of "gesture" (although Soutou de Moura practically does not have this) - makes the project submitted to the jury conditional. Campo Baeza compared this work with a “dream”, and called the exhibition itself “a collection of dreams”: in these projects, the author's aspirations are perhaps most clearly manifested.
Perhaps, it is precisely because of these features of the material that the curators André Campos and Pedro Gedis de Oliveira presented it very succinctly. With the exception of a few projects equipped with layouts and various drawings, most of the works are given in the form of several sketches or renders with a short explanation: name, year, location. Neither the circumstances of the competition, including the name of the customer, nor the place occupied by Soutu de Moura there from the exposition cannot be recognized, you have to rely on your own memory: in Zurich, Rafael Moneo won, in Rome - Zaha Hadid, in Vienna - David Chipperfield … But here it doesn't matter: Out of context, it's easier to read the master's handwriting
