Eduardo Souto Moura

 

Eduardo Elísio Machado Souto de Moura was born in Porto, on July 25, 1952.

He attended the Architecture course at the Porto Superior School of Fine Arts and at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto. During his student career he collaborated in the atelier of Álvaro Siza Vieira between 1974 and 1979.

In 1980, the year he completed his degree, he received his first prize, awarded by the Fundação Engenheiro António de Almeida, and began his activity as an architect as a liberal professional.
In 1981 he was appointed as an assistant to the Architecture course at FAUP, where he taught until 1990 and to which he later returned in 2003.

As major references in his work, in addition to Siza Vieira (1933 -), the architects Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) and Aldo Rossi (1931-1997), the Californian experiences of the 50s and 60s (Craig Ellwood, Pierre Köning and the “case study houses”), minimalist art (Donald Judd and Sol Lewitt). Souto de Moura was also influenced by Bernardo Soares, one of the heteronyms of the poet Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), by Roland Barthes (1915-1980), French thinker and writer, by the Catalan painter Antoni Tapiès (1923-) and by the German artist Beuys (1921-1986).

During the 1980s and 1990s, he was visiting professor at several European architecture schools and faculties: Paris-Belleville School of Architecture (1988), Harvard and Dublin Schools of Architecture (1989), ETH Zurich (between 1990 and 1991) and the Lausanne School of Architecture (Guest Professor in 1994).

The renowned figure of the so-called “Porto School of Architecture” has numerous works spread across the country and abroad. Among Souto de Moura’s projects, the Municipal Market and the Municipal Stadium of Braga (Estádio Axa); the Casa das Artes, the Casa do Cinema by Manoel de Oliveira and the Edifício Burgo, in Porto; the Ponte dell’Accademia, in Venice (Italy). Worthy of note are also the heritage interventions in the Convent of Santa Maria do Bouro, in Amares, in the Alfândega Nova building (currently the Museum of Transport and Communications/Congress and Exhibition Centre) and in the former Cadeia da Relação (converted into the Portuguese Photography Centre), in Porto, and the territorial interventions in the Marginal strip of Matosinhos, in the Porto Metro and in Praça do Município da Maia.

Co-authored project with Ângelo de Sousa entitled Cá fora. Restless architecture.During the last few years, Souto de Moura has also been working in the area of product design and, in 2008, together with the plastic artist Ângelo de Sousa, he participated in the XI. The first architect to receive the Pessoa award does not appreciate the relativism and disorder of today’s world. In his works, he seeks to create an exact landscape and respect the construction, structure, infrastructure and finishes of the original options. He liked to have designed the Parthenon – the greatest existing work of architecture, according to him – and the Barcelona Pavilion by Mies Van der Rohe, designed by the architect he most admires.

In 2011, Souto de Moura became the second Portuguese architect, after Siza Vieira (1992), to win the Pritzeker Architecture Prize, the most prestigious award in this area, awarded since 1979 by the American Hyatt Foundation to the greatest names in world architecture, such as Óscar Niemeyer (1988), Frank Gehry (1898), Norman Foster (1999) and Rem Koolhaas (2000).

Eduardo Souto de Moura lives in Porto with his family, in Praça de Liège, Foz do Douro, in a house with 3 rooms that he designed himself and where he lives next door to Siza Vieira. He works close to his home, in a building he shares with architects Siza Vieira and Rogério Cavaca.

In 2016 he was awarded by the X Ibero-American Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (BIAU), in Madrid, “for the important contribution of his teaching at universities in different countries”.