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MANILA, Philippines - Who is the prize-winning Portuguese architect who is considered the greatest living architect of his country?
He was born in Matosinhos, a small coastal town by Porto on June 25, 1933, and graduated architecture from the former School of Fine Arts of the University of Porto.
His talent was such that he built his first work — four houses in Matosinhos — even before ending his studies, and immediately opened his private practice in Porto.
Among his earliest works was a public pool complex he created in the 1960s for Leca da Palmeira, a fishing town and summer resort north of Porto. In 1977, following the revolution in Portugal, the city government of Evora commissioned him to plan a housing project in the rural outskirts of the town.
It was to be one of several that he would do for SAAL (Servicio de Apolo Ambulatario Local), the national housing association, consisting of 1,200 low-cost housing units, some one-story and some two-story row houses, all with courtyards. He was also a member of the team, which reconstructed Chiado, the historic center of Lisbon destroyed by a fire in 1988.
Most of his best-known works are located in his hometown of Porto: The Boa Nova Tea House (1963), the Faculty of Architecture, and the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art (1997). Since the mid ‘70s, he has been involved in numerous designs for public housing, public pools, and universities. More recent works include an architecture museum on Hombroich Island, as well as the rehabilitation of monuments and architectonic heritage of Cidade Velha or the Old Village in Santiago, an island of Cape Verde.
His works are said to be among the most coherent and complete of all architectural works in this century. Frequently linked to minimalism, his works are immediately recognizable wherever these can be found.
For his work, he has been conferred with honoris causa doctor title by numerous universities around the world. In 1987, the Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Spanish architect Jose Rafael Moneo organized the first show of his work in the United States.
In 1992, he was awarded the renowned Pritzker Prize for the renovation project that he coordinated in the Chiado area of Lisbon, a historic commercial sector that was all but completely destroyed by fire in 1988.
He was won other prestigious prizes like the Golden Medal of the Superior Council of Architecture of the College of Architects in Madrid in 1988; the Mies van der Rohe Award for European Architecture; the Prince of Wales Prize in Urban Design from Harvard University; the Alvar Aalto Medal; and Portugal’s National Prize of Architecture in 1993.
His Ibere Camargo Foundation in Porto Alegre, his first project built in Brazilian territory, was honored by the Venice Architecture Binenale with the Golden Lion Award in 2002. In 2007, the Brazilian Government awarded him the Cultural Merti Order Medal.
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Last week’s question: Who is this German visual artist who created the stained glass window at the Cologne Cathedral?
Answer: Gerhard Richter
Winner: Jon-Jon Dalusong of Bacoor, Cavite
