ENTRY 03: MODERNISM IN THE MIRROR

“Yes, look in the mirror. What do you see? Is it a dream, or a nightmare? Are we being introduced against our will? Are they mirrors?” — Log Lady, Twin Peaks, Season 1: The One-Armed Man[ [

W04: 08.02.21

Otávio Leonídio, in much the same way he describes Siza doing, defies the expectation of the reader in the way that he chooses to use precedent in his analysis of Siza’s Ibere Camargo Foundation. Precedent is most often used, as Davidson identifies in her editorial, “…only in the idea of typologies, its active presence waxes and wanes, appearing most often as historical example”1, although she categorises Leonídio’s text in this I would be tempted to resist on such a straight-forward characterisation. Taken as such, precedent is often a historical or contemporary example used more a as a template, where commonalities are discussed (in reviews or critiques) or aspects imitated (in design). Rarely is precedent used for what something is not.

Leonídio subtly breaks from this by using Le Corbusier and Niemeyer to show how Siza is unlike them, even though he operates from the perception of them. In so-doing, Leonídio sets his arguments on Siza as a mirror-image to these icons of modernism, so a provocative reflection emerges: “Siza’s architecture operates with a vocabulary apparently identical to that used by modern masters…locating it within a tradition by which he may amplify aspects of discord and irrationality”2 and in so-doing “the broad and unrestricted visibility of transparent modernism is almost a provocation...”3 .

There is something about Leonídio’s review of The Foundation building that inand-of-itself reads as a dream through Siza’s project. Leonídio weaves three key arguments ion his text: Clarity, Perception, and Experience.

Once the modernist ‘promenade architecturale’ is established as the comparative framework, Leonídio continues on to give an in-depth analysis of Siza’s project. He walks us through different routes and the key spaces which they navigate and how- unlike the modernist precedent they are. Siza defies the user’s expectations of wellknown modernist logic motifs- a ramp as a way-finder or exhibitor of views and/or architectural object. As such, the unclear architecture becomes an architecture of sensation – of unease, as Leonídio puts it – reminiscent of Adolf Loos’ work.

“An affirmation of vision … is not enough to address this opaque and paradoxical architecture; one must bring imagination, reverie, and dreams.”4 In this mirror-world modernism, where things are not what they seem, one cannot trust what they see. The clarity of Le Corbusier and Niemeyer’s architectural forms and promenades – so tightly controlled by the Architect Director’s montage of forms in order to demand “inflexible knowledge”5 (in Siza’s own words) – demands unquestioning understanding of the architect’s intention. In this mirror-world modernism, the void is thick and material, as much a part of form as it is a part from form. This is the world of the known unknowables, where sensation of architecture is the one key, defining feature, and perception is to be left before entering the void.

“This is not to abandon the field of visibility, however, it is simply necessary to recalibrate vision so that it is no longer a device wholly at the service of knowledge but also becomes an instrument of the imagination – the same imagination required when one confronts Dada and Surrealist objects.”6

This architecture is expanded by the void of the architects which – through the formless – has a tangible effect on the experience of those walking the Siza promenade.

1 Cynthia Davidson, “Front Matter”, Log, no. 16 (2009) 2 Otávio Leonídio, “Álvaro Siza Vieira: Another Void”, Log, no. 16 (2009): 34. 3 Leonídio, “Álvaro Siza Vieira: Another Void”, 34. 4 Leonídio, “Álvaro Siza Vieira: Another Void”, 34. 5 Leonídio, “Álvaro Siza Vieira: Another Void”, 34. 6 Leonídio, “Álvaro Siza Vieira: Another Void”, 34.