Álvaro Siza

Undisputed master of contemporary architecture, Álvaro Siza has already received all the most important awards – the Pritzker among them, in the year 1992 –, but he was probably especially happy to receive from his Iberian colleagues the National Architecture Award, given by the Spanish Ministry of Public Works and that comes with a prize of 60,000 euros. With this distinction the jury has wanted to acknowledge the importance or Siza’s work in general in the world of architecture through the example of masterworks like the Swimming Pools in Leça de Palmeira, the Malagueira neighborhood in Évora, the Porto School of Architecture, or the Portuguese Pavilion at the Lisbon Expo. The prize also recognizes Siza’s close influence on several generations of Spanish architects, as well as the importance of the works that the master, born in 1933 and based in Porto, has completed in our country, from the Meteorology Center of the Olympic Villa in Barcelona to the Zaida Building in Granada, via the social housing in Cádiz, the Rectory Building in the University of Alicante or the Galician Center for Contemporary Art (CGAC) in Santiago de Compostela.