Porto Poetic - Triennale di Milano

(...) Horizontal volumes from which, with a big effort,

you can spot a detail.

From those volumes, complex protuberances are emerging:

chimneys made bigger by the smoke,

poles, vertical partitions,

tiny units and with different heights which cut out

the lines of the roofs.

Attics, shirts hanging on ropes to get dry,

inclined roofs, cruxes, lights, palms (...) 

This is the city. There are no walls to contain it. 

But electrical cables, and the railway over granitic cubes

are connecting houses and spaces.

Just like a Pointillist painting.

Living in the beauty is necessary.

Recognizing it, not to get lost.

And yet, it remains there

- for the eyes that can see it.

Alvaro Siza on Gabriele Basilico's photograpy

I was in Portugal three times, with only a mission: to search for the Poetry of the so-called School of Porto. Fernando Tavora, Alvaro Siza, Eduardo Souto de Moura are the greatest names of this School, which has no classrooms, but a unique big University: Portugal. If anything, Light, Sky, Nature, Shadows and the City are the Professors. 

There is no need to add drama: what I am saying is just what you can see by visiting the exposition at the Triennale di Milano. "Porto Poetic" is the best place (out of Portugal) to get the idea of what I am talking about.

Apart from the great photos by famous photographers (Basilico among many others, like Chiaramonte, Mimmo Jodice) you'll be able to see technical drawing, video-interviews and wonderful wooden maquettes to explore the projects.

The School of Porto is a great example of care: for the city, for the building itself, for the people that will live in. This care is expressed also in the maniacal attention paid to the details. Even the furniture is been studied with elegance and designed to be integrated with the spaces.

Alvaro Siza always designed wonderful pieces of furniture, playing with elegance (yes, he can).
Clean lines, strong pace, a defined rhythm in every part of the designed body. But you'll remain surprised by the big gap between Siza's sketches (very dramatic and rich of overlapped traces) and his technical drawings. 

Eduardo Souto de Moura's sketches are more geometric and clear, apparently more faithful to the final result. Francesco Dal Co, during the launch of the exhibit, said that this is due because of a different point of view on the world, by the two architects.

Yet, despite the differences in the works (and sketches) of the two architects -which are good friends and worked a lot together- you can always see the Poetry of Porto, emerging.

The School of Porto, with no Manifesto nor dogmas, has always been able to decline different ideas in different ways, on a common ground: the sincerity. This term -sincerity- has been really critical in all the European theory of architecture, so far. We are obsessed with history, truth, purity and sincerity (of architecture). 

The biggest lesson of the School of Porto, by the way, is just this: there are no lectures to attend. Just open your eyes, hears and heart to the city. Sincerity, so intended, is ethically beautiful.
If you want to find the Beauty, just look at the city around you. Listen to it. See it.

Living in the beauty is necessary.

Recognizing it, not to get lost.

And yet, it remains there

- for the eyes that can see it.