Álvaro Siza: Private Houses 1954–2004 (Skira editore, 2004) is an extraordinary, rarely available book that presents Siza’s designs for single-family houses. The book has been compiled by Alessandra Cianchetta and Enrico Molteni. Besides presentations of individual houses, the book also contains Siza’s essay Living a House, a conversation between the authors and Siza, and an essay by Enrico Molteni. There is also a graphic compilation and a comparison chart of the formal and situational similarities and differences of the houses.
The subject of this book is the single-family house in the work of Álvaro Siza. This is a well-defined and very significant theme within the context of Siza’s production, although it has never before been presented and studied in a systematic manner. The interest of this volume, then, is rooted in the clarity of the selection, limited only to single-family houses, in an attempt to fill what appears to us to be a gap.
The houses shown here were designed and built over a period of time of fifty years, beginning with the four houses in Matonsinhos and up to the present day, with the house in Majorca currently under construction. Such an array of houses constitutes, for a single architect, an authentic field of research, where continuità allows a specific reflection and at the same time a more general one on the theme itself and on architecture.
For their rigorous and loving determination, for the tireless and patient research, Siza’s houses offer us an exemplary lesson of intellectual greatness.
– Alessandra Cianchetta and Enrico Molteni, Álvaro Siza: Private Houses 1954–2004 (Skira editore, 2004), text on the front cover flap
The text is in English. The book is lavishly illustrated with photographs, Siza’s sketches, and architectural drawings.
Our copy in stock is in good condition. The pages are clean, no markings. The binding is fine. The dust jacket has some slight toning on the edges and the spine.
