The National Pavilion of Portugal does not have a permanent home in Venice: usually one or another palazzo “in the city” is chosen for it. Many other countries do this as well, which do not have their own building in the Giardini Garden and do not want to rent a corner in the Arsenal. At the same time, the participants of the Biennale prefer not to climb to the Giudecca Island: although it is easy to get there by water tram-vaporetto, it is impossible to get there on foot, and this becomes a considerable obstacle for many visitors, already tired of the volume and variety of the exposition. Nevertheless, the Portuguese curators chose to settle there, and for such a step they had serious reasons.
Their exposition is deployed on the first floor of an unfinished residential building designed by Alvaro Siza; nearby is the residential building of the same author, which was inhabited in 2008. Work on the building used for the exhibition stopped in 2010 when the developer went bankrupt. Siza's buildings are part of the Campo di Marte complex, conceived back in 1983 as a social housing complex, which began to be implemented only at the beginning of the 21st century. The competition held 30 years ago ended with the victory of Siza, and according to its master plan, individual buildings were designed by other participants - Aldo Rossi, Carlo Aimonino (their buildings were completed in 2004) and Rafael Moneo (his building was never erected).
In 2015, the Portuguese informed the Venetian authorities about their intention to show in an unfinished house an exhibition on social projects of Alvaro Siza, and then the unexpected happened: the Venetian housing construction department, the customer of the 1980s competition (then called IACP, now ATER) was inspired by this idea and pledged to not only to complete the building of Siza, but also to build the Moneo building next to it, as well as to break the originally conceived garden between them.
This alone should have made the Portuguese pavilion the "star" of the 2016 Biennale: what could be more responsive to the activist, social orientation of this international exhibition led by Alejandro Aravena? Not only the architecture shown serves the society, but the exposition itself helps to improve people's lives - but no, the jury did not even award the Portuguese with an incentive prize, which fits into the usual scheme: the "urban" pavilions do not receive awards (most likely, this is another reason, why more and more participants prefer even a small room in the Arsenal to a comfortable room somewhere else).
However, the Portuguese pavilion, even without this amazing contact with life, deserves the attention of the public, and, possibly, an award: the content side of its exposition is beyond praise. The exhibition is titled Neighborhood: Where Alvaro Meets Aldo. Neighborhood means both the “quarter”, and the “neighborhood” itself, the “community”, that is, people living in social housing complexes built by Siza - those for whom he worked and works. The aforementioned Aldo - Aldo Rossi, whom Siza met more than once, including on Campo di Marta - already in the form of a neighborhood of buildings. But the most important thing is the exchange of ideas between them, first of all - the influence of Rossi's book "City Architecture" on Sizu. This work, fundamental for European architecture in the second half of the 20th century, turns 50 this year, and the jubilee has become an additional reason for the curators to include the name of Rossi in the title of the exhibition and devote a whole section to his contacts with Siza (“Architecture of the City” was first published in Russian last year; you can read more about her and her half-century fate in
reviews by Anna Vyazemtseva on Archi.ru).
In his book, Rossi called for a return from the rigid schemes of modernism to the traditions of the historic city; if for him it was the path to postmodernism, then Siza was able to combine his ideas with the modernist paradigm. Partly by the will of circumstances, partly in accordance with his convictions, since the 1970s, he actively used participatory design, and when this was not possible, he carefully studied the context of the future construction - especially residential - in all its aspects. Therefore, the exhibition shows him not so much as one of the most sophisticated architects of our days, but practically as an activist who is not afraid to discuss and even argue with future “users” of his buildings about what the project should be - but also sensitively listening even to their unspoken needs. This is exactly what - those interested in people - he appears in four documentaries, which form the basis of the exposition. Their plot is simple: at the beginning of 2016, Siza visits four of her social complexes - Bairu da Bousa in Porto (started in the 1970s and completed in the 2000s), Schilderswijk in The Hague (1984-1993), Schlesisches Tor in Berlin (1980s) and the aforementioned Campo di Marte on the Venetian island of Giudecca (project base - 1980s, implementation - 2000s). He discusses with his partners working on these projects their history and current state, and also visits the residents - both those who have lived there since the delivery of the house, and those who have recently settled. He listens to the expected compliments and words of gratitude, frowns at the "improvement" of their apartments initiated by the tenants, discusses problems of concern to him and his interlocutors - gentrification and ghettoization, immigration, "tourism".
Architecture, of course, plays an important role in these films, but people occupy no less place, and this is another undoubted advantage of the Portuguese exposition: despite the declared humanistic orientation of the Aravena Biennale, most of the participants present the buildings to the audience, but not those for whom they were created. … At most, unskilled builders are mentioned (in most cases, future "consumers" of the architect's labor) who can implement certain projects without the help of hired labor. Of course, not only Portuguese, but also Germans, Poles, Brazilians, Austrians show specific people behind the abstract concept of “society”, talk about them and give them a floor, but still this is noticeably lacking at the Biennale. Because of this "desolation", you begin to perceive differently, in theory, the spirit-lifting photograph put on the poster of the Biennale: there archaeologist Maria Reiche peers from a portable staircase into the vastness of the Peruvian Nazca desert, where there is no man, no building, not even a tree to the horizon. Aravena used this Bruce Chatwin photograph as a metaphor for finding new perspectives and using original and at the same time appropriate, tactful methods (Reiche used a ladder to study the famous Nazca Lines, drawings and patterns that were not visible from the ground, but only from a height), but the use of archeology as a symbol for modern architecture oriented towards the actual needs of a person is somewhat surprising: an archaeologist carefully studies the traces of past generations, but they will never need anything, this - with all the researcher's love for the past and the undoubted great importance of his work - is dead matter.
Returning to the Portuguese exposition, it is necessary to say a few words about those residential complexes that have become its subject. Bayro da Bousa was conceived right after the 1974 Portuguese revolution that ended the Salazar regime. Then the new, democratic government encouraged the creation of associations of residents who needed new housing instead of a slum (this remains in the center of Porto to this day, but only those who wish live there). And Siza recalls that every evening he met with 300 of his "customers", discussed the project with them, argued, learned from them - just as they learned from him. A few years later, such a scheme was considered by the authorities too loose, the construction of the second stage was frozen, and the residential complex remained unfinished until the end of the 20th century. New tenants moved into the building of the 2000s, already much wealthier than the original ones, and some of the apartments were sold out for rent. This situation worries both the architect and people living in the house since the 1970s. In such "old" families, Shizu is greeted like a relative - with tenderness, but without reverence. The new tenants, some of whom are architects who wished to live in a house designed by the great master, are happy, but also embarrassed by the visit of the master. Siza recalls that the first phase of the project did not involve any garages - it was not that time and the wrong tenants, but for the second parking spaces were already needed. At the same time, the courtyard with the galleries facing it was and remains the "arena" for playing football, as the architect intended: parents can watch their children right from the doors of their apartments.
The complex in the Schlesisches Tor district, better known from the graffiti on the facade as Bonjour tristesse ("Hello, sadness"), was built in the then West Berlin as part of the next International Building Exhibition (IBA), and among its "cheap" projects, those who assumed - unlike the "top-notch" - participation in the design of the residents, which Shizu, he admits, attracted. It was his first foreign object and the third Berlin competition, the local architects did not like his version, and the developer rather altered it to make it cheaper. However, even in this form, Bonjour tristesse delights residents with the convenience of the layout and the amount of daylight that penetrates the interior. At the time of construction, the Berlin Wall lay nearby, and the area was mostly populated by Turkish immigrants. Now the area has become much more fashionable and prosperous, the house was bought by an Austrian realtor, the rent is growing from year to year, which affects the composition of the inhabitants - although some of the original ones have remained to this day. Siza also built a leisure center for the elderly and a kindergarten in the courtyard of the house: the availability of infrastructure also attracts new tenants to the house, although the name of the author of the project also plays a role - architects, who are fans of his work, also live in Schlesischestor.
In The Hague, Siza also worked with a multicultural environment: at the time of the completion of Schilderswijk, there were only three Dutch-born families, now there is only one elderly photographer who calls ethnic diversity one of the attractive features of this residential complex. The project also provoked opposition from local architects at one time: Siza studied local traditions and used in the project the "Hague portico", a kind of arch - porch - entrance group, where individual apartments face. Despite the convenience of this scheme, which is noted by the residents, the city architects found it too traditional and therefore “reactionary”. And, of course, brick was used as a material. In the interior, Siza has provided a sliding partition, which allows, if desired, to divide the apartment, for example, into male and female halves - which turned out to be very popular for families from Islamic countries.
The Venetian complex on Campo di Marta is the youngest of all, so it is the hardest to tell about it. Its history is the history of the island of Giudecca, perfectly visible from the "Big Venice", which forms part of its well-known landscape, but at the same time alienated, with a poorer population, in the 19th century - by industrial enterprises, and by the end of the 20th century, after their closure, in decline. Then it was decided to replace his dilapidated housing with a new, high-quality one. In preparing his project, Siza studied the catalog of traditional buildings on the island in Egle Trinkanato's "Little Venice" and used the galleries and porticos, courtyards, loggias and balconies described there. Against the backdrop of "touristization" and population decline on the main island, Giudecca, "Little Venice", remains a truly residential - and lively - territory of the city. Siza's response to this situation was an attempt to build her project into this life, giving her new spaces for development: it is not easy to find a more enviable goal for an architect.
