Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza picked up another significant honor yesterday: The Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects. That's on top of the Pritzker Prize he won in 1992 and a slew of other international awards he's landed during the course of a five-decade career. LA Times | Bustler
18 Comments
underrated? he frickin has a pritzker
viva Siza
The buildings are marginally overrated (making poetic spaces is easy if you don't have light switches), his sketches are underrated (especially the ones of horses... dude has a Quixote fixation), and the guy himself seems more or less rated correctly.
exactly what I was thinking, holz.box
perhaps he's the least-known starchitect... but under-rated he is not.
i was gonna say about the same.
under-rated, no.
under-hyped? yes. luckily, he's not all over every publication and his name's not on everyone's lips. that's good for him and his work.
he has nice conceptas, but his architecture is unhabitable, who wont to live in his buildings?
the real underrated architect is his pupil
SOUTO DE MOURA. HE really does nice, natural, integrated, harmonic architecture...
and who heard about ?????
Dude, he's in the fuckin' LA TIMES!
That's not underrated.
You guys are forgetting that we here on Archinect are the most elite consumers of architecture. Of course we've all heard of him.
We've all also heard of Souto de Moura, right?
The point is, most people haven't, and that includes young students. I didn't know about Siza until I was in grad school at age 24 (17 years ago). He was definitely under-known then! (Also: sexy. What is it about these older architects that they're so freakin' hot?!)
you are also forgetting that the "world" is very big and there are places where Siza is not "underrated" at all...
unless someone thinks that "the world" means "the USA"
Excellent point, Medit.
Poor Alexander - tries to drum up interest in a worthy topic and just sees us all nitpicking over the headline! ;-)
haha... well, I'm glad he's receiving this medal, after all... so, good news! :)
liberty bell -
the point is that you can't say an architect is "underrated" if they've won the PRITZKER, not to mention the RIBA Gold. Looking at your timeline, yes, he would have been widely unknown 17 years ago because he hadn't won the pritzker, and most of his work was in one part of the world. The same thing happened when Glenn Mercutt won the pritzker a few years ago - very few people outside of australia had ever heard of the guy. But that doesn't make an architect underrated... only unknown.
it's just hilarious that the writer of that article says "he's won the pritzker a RIBA gold, and a slew of other international awards... he's so underrated!" - it's like, man, what do you have to do to be NOT underrated? Isn't the pritzker the highest "rating" for an architect?!
It's not alex's fault... it's the LA Times' fault
ha! I'm so glad that I did keep the original LA Times headline -- I thought it was absolutely preposterous and, oh well, it might stir up some discussion... [evil laugh]
the first time I was introduced to siza's work, was ten years ago in college, because my roommate was obsessed with him. but that was in europe where he - naturally - had a good following.
thanks for the love, lb!
Álvaro who? Does he work for Gehry or something?
So he's won all these prizes but isn't widely known outside of the hardcore fans - does that make him a "critic's darling"? ;-)
phu,
he must have
kitty luzz him...
phuyaké and holz.box
I think that maybe Gehry worked for Siza so that he could learn something about architecture. Or maybe not. They are in fact close friends...
Seriously, please stop being so American Centered. There's a gigantic and much more interesting world outside USA. Siza's work is more complete and rich than Frank Gehry one and is unknown to many people because Siza's ºersonality is a low profile one, nor interested in "flashing highlights" or pop star culture.
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