Álvaro Siza

For this edition of the Japanese Praemium Imperiale, which tries to compensate for the lack of representation of music, fine arts and scenic arts in the Nobel prizes, the organizers moved to Munich to present the awards. Beside the American painter Robert Rauschenberg, the Russian composer Sofía Gubaidulina and the British film director Richard Attenborough, the nominations of the Israeli sculptor Dani Karavan and the Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza (1933) draw attention to the link between these two disciplines, and in turn their relationship with landscape. In the case of the master from Porto, the jury honoured his topographical sensitivity and the capacity of his buildings to merge into their settings: the open spaces are as important as the built areas, and the new always values the existing. Projects like the Boa Nova restaurant, the pools at Leça da Palmeira, the Quinta da Malagueira in Evora or the Galician Contemporary Art Center in Santiago, prompted Eduardo Souto de Moura, his compatriot and friend, to declare that Siza’s buildings possess the naturalness of a cat sleeping in the sun.