Towards the Evident
Daniela Sá
Álvaro Siza, Sketchbook 168
February, 1984
© CCA Álvaro Siza fonds
.... ..[Texto original em Inglês]....
“For Siza, inventing is not an effort upon an idea, it is a particular attention.”
When Arnold Schoenberg critiqued the work of Adolf Loos, he remarked that the possibility of invention, “was in the modes of intuition”, adding, “and this is the most noble origin of a work of art.” Banishing the idea of invention from that of novelty by forms appears to be as essential to Schoenberg in the early twentieth century as it is to Álvaro Siza, a century later.
If there is one idea that permeates the entire text of Imagining the Evident it is that invention does not lie in the effort geared towards new forms. Siza underlines that “to begin with the obsession of originality is an unrefined and rudimentary process” and therefore, the actual notion of “banality” is used “not to say uninteresting, without quality, but in the sense of availability in continuity”. By removing invention from the purely formal domain, all superficial vanguardism is surpassed and the value of certain forms taken as an essential affiliation of the architectural commitment.
In Siza, the modes of intuition, of which novelty may be expected, appear to be related to obsession, and of this his drawings are highly expressive. For Siza, inventing is not an effort upon an idea, it is a particular attention. This prolonged and obsessive attention is what permits entry into the essence of an idea, again and again, in one context after the other, until that which is novel bursts forth, through small deviations, unveilings that are only possible with this attention to the real. The novelty appears to be already there, but knowing how to see is fundamental. Invention, per se, is not something that can be evoked; only fostered, provoked and unleashed so that it becomes visible. It is a matter of waiting, with attention. Novelty, thus, springs forth from the confrontation with the real, becoming evident therein, as an idea clear to the eye.
This attention, which is a form of desire, of wishing for something so persistently until it becomes an evidence, is what steers the drawing, an essential part of Siza’s thought process. The drawing is not, therefore, an illustration of an idea, but a thinking tool, an intuitional device.
In one of the most stimulating passages on the force of intuition, J. W. Goethe writes to his friend Schiller: “Early this morning, I made my way to the public gardens with the firm and tranquil purpose of pursuing my poetic dreams, but before I had realised, another phantom, that had been furtively following me around that time, caught me. With such a variety of new formations, the old habit came back to me of seeing whether I could discover the original plant [Ürpflanze] among so many. Because there has to be such a plant!”. The intuition that furtively caught Goethe touches on a central issue that is crucially linked to the problem of invention: the relationship between idea and thing, between visible and invisible, imagination and the evident. His friend replies: “But this is not an experience, it’s an idea!”. Goethe insists: “I take delight in seeing ideas with my own eyes.”
The nature of Goethe’s intuition, which unites idea and thing on the same plane, and which Schiller found naturally odd, is exactly what we see in this text – the imagination in search of the evident. Goethe’s intuition is the same as that of Siza’s master, Fernando Távora, when he specifies the site for the construction of the Boa Nova Tea House – “The building should be here!” – or of the presence, noted by someone, of the aqueduct of Evora in the Malagueira project, of the Cabo Espichel Sanctuary in the School of Setubal project. When Siza describes the project of a chair as “a progressive reduction of the essence and gradual proximity to the substance” it is this encounter we refer to, the encounter between idea and thing, of imagining the evident. Captured in the descriptions of his projects, this encounter is always powerful, always of continuous novelty, in praise of attention, of the unforeseeable that lies in the search for the evident.
Álvaro Siza, Studies for the celebrant chair
Church in Marco de Canaveses, 1990-1997
Álvaro Siza, “The chair”
[Silkscreen + Book] Imagining the Evident / Álvaro Siza – Limited Edition
Book + Silkscreen Álvaro Siza, 2021
Signed and Numbered by the Author
Limited Edition of 50
Celebrating the English edition of “Imagining the Evident” a silkscreen is launched of a drawing specially selected by Álvaro Siza to accompany this book.