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There was a time when the architect’s remit could encompass just about everything in a project large and small – from a door handle to the site plan and everything in-between. The time in question might be a distant past before the concept of a professional designer ever arose; when great buildings such as cathedrals took centuries to complete, or when vernacular architecture was the accumulation of local wisdom rather than the implementation of universal principles. Alternatively, the time might be high modernism, when twentieth-century designers sought to exercise complete control over a project by orchestrating a consistency between all the parts that make up a whole.
With the creation of new furniture pieces unveiled during Milan Design Week 2024, we can understand Álvaro Siza’s practice through the lens of this long tradition. The Portuguese master architect, winner of the Pritzker Prize in 1992, worked with Italian family businesses Bottega Ghianda and Promemoria to craft three objects for Milan: the Desencontro table, Pausa armchair and Capri chaise longue. Drawing on their woodworking and high-end furniture heritage, the pieces form part of the Meraviglioso & Meravigliosa (or Marvellous) collection.
When I asked Siza about the connections between architecture on one hand and furniture on the other, he replied: “The two productions – architecture and furniture – are closely related.”
Siza continued: “Furniture occupies space, and the space concept is dependent on that also. Objects and furniture are deeply related to industries and handcraft work that produce both.
“The dialogue is then fundamental.”
Less about control then, this understanding focuses instead on the innate connections between different scales of design – their inseparability, in fact. The Expo ‘98 Portuguese National Pavilion, designed with fellow Portuguese architect, Eduardo Souto de Moura, and renowned engineer, Cecil Balmond, is an outstanding example of Siza’s work at one end of the design spectrum. Spanning 70 by 50 metres to frame the River Tagus in Lisbon, the architecture is structurally renowned for its impossibly thin, gracefully curving concrete canopy that sits suspended between heftier porticoes.
The pavilion’s apparent simplicity belies its hefty materiality and engineering complexity. It’s the kind of tension between modest unadornment and profound clarity that defines much of Siza’s work, and one can follow a line from that curving concrete roofline all the way to today’s Desencontro, which means ‘mismatch’ in English. The table’s asymmetrical legs achieve, at their own scale, a relatable, refined simplicity.
Meanwhile, the Capri chaise longue pairs two curved, press-bent sheets of birch plywood and is available in polished strawberry burgundy and dark blue seafoam. The Pausa armchair has an air of modularity about it, with a foot stool that fits perfectly into its cubic form. In both cases, it’s the attention to human detail through form and joints that define the piece, rather than any kind of superfluous or gimmicky decoration.
Bottega Ghianda founder, Romeo Sozzi, says that he “felt the urgent need to meet [Siza].” He explains the origins of the collaboration further: “I asked for a meeting in his headquarters in Porto. He immediately agreed and we found each other bonded by a strong understanding. A communion of thoughts and souls was born immediately, out of respect for wood, first and foremost, and the essence of things.”
So, spare a thought for suspended concrete canopies and other grand architectural statements next time you settle down in your favourite armchair. You might just stumble across a trail of refined simplicity.
