Neighbourhood

The official Portuguese representation at the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale chose as its central theme Álvaro Siza’s remarkable work in the field of social housing, covering his projects undertaken in different contexts: Campo di Marte (Venice); Schlesisches Tor (Berlin); Schilderswijk West (The Hague); and Bairro da Bouça (Porto). In all of these projects, he demonstrated his experience in terms of social participation, reflecting a democratic understanding of the city, citizenship and the collective memory, which also brought him closer to the thinking of his contemporary Aldo Rossi.
Álvaro Siza’s projects have created genuine “neighbourhoods”, a central theme on the current European political agenda, in defence of a more inclusive and multicultural society. The exhibition also documents the architect’s return visits to the four neighbourhoods in 2016, where he was confronted with such phenomena as immigration, ghettoisation, touristification and the gentrification of cities.