Alvaro Siza
China’s top furniture brand CAMERICH invited world-renowned architect Alvaro Siza to create the Siza Pavilion for CAMERICH, which officially made its debut at the 44th China International Furniture Fair (CIFF 2019) on September 8, in Shanghai. Alvaro Siza, laureate of the 1992 Pritzker Architecture Prize and Portugal’s national treasure architect, has been regarded as one of the most important contemporary architects. He is known for his sculptural architecture of “poetic modernism”.
The entire pavilion appears as a perfect fusion of Siza’s typical sequences of spaces and lighting. The design fragmented by geometry creates an intimate space and a vision that breaks through boundaries. In terms of the materials for the pavilion facade, Siza has experimented with new ideas. The outer skin of the pavilion is fully covered with mineral wool and aluminum foils, giving an unexpected blurry-mirroring appearance wrapped in silver soft-cushion. The inner white wall contrasts with the psychedelic reflections on the outside, conveying a sense of serenity.
No decoration on the walls, and right amount of blank space, are the perfect embodiment of the minimalist style. Small courtyard-inversions in the pavilion’s architecture evoke the influences of Chinese building culture, which may be the result of Siza’s creation of a number of projects throughout China in recent years. The seven entrances divide the courtyard into several different spaces, allowing an even more transparent view.
Overlooking the 715-square-meter Siza Pavilion for CAMERICH, you will easily find it has the similar shape of an anteater, an elephant, or a lazy cat that stretches its claws and wiggles its tail in the sunshine outside Siza’s office. For this design, Siza has drawn a total of eight sketches. The first sketch was inspired by a visit to the Horseshoe Housing Estate (Hufeisensiedlung) in Berlin, then he created the second sketch with the inspiration from Picasso’s personification style… Finally, after six months of hard work, he finalized the design.
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