Desire Paths
Giovanna Borasi interviews Álvaro Siza on his approach to community engagement in Évora
The following text is an excerpt from a conversation held in September 2026 in Porto, published in the forthcoming book accompanying our exhibition, The fortune of the city is that it has never been perfect, which runs in our Main Galleries from 21 May 2026 to 10 January 2027.
- Giovanna Borasi
- We want to know how you work with the city, how you think about urban issues, how you create new neighbourhoods in relation to historic cities. There’s a lot to learn from your approach today. I think about the huge project in the city of Montra near the São Lourenço River as an example, and how the city didn’t plan at all ahead, so real estate developers just grabbed pieces of land. There’s no infrastructure, no commerce, no schools, because the city didn’t plan for them. There was no discussion about how urban planning and architectural development are linked.
Our idea, over the next few days, is to have a conversation with you about your ideas on the urban—how certain ideas and forms were chosen for key projects and why. - Álvaro Siza
- For which project? Quinta da Malagueira, for example?
- GB
- Yes, we can start there. It was the only planning project at such a large and total scale in Portugal in the mid-1970s, and it included both social housing and urban development. It was a unique plan for a completely new town. By constructing so much housing in Évora, did the government intend to move people from Lisbon and other more populated regions to the country’s interior?
Giovanni Chiaramonte, View of the Quinta da Malagueira during construction, Évora, Portugal, 1985. Chromogenic colour print. PH2016:0100:050, CCA. Gift of the artist © The Heirs of Giovanni Chiaramonte
- AS
- The Malagueira project was designed in the aftermath of the participatory housing program, SAAL [Serviço de Apoio Ambulatório Local]. The mayor came to Porto to invite me to work on the Malagueira project, which everyone in Lisbon wanted to do.
Following the typical SAAL format, the project scope included debates with the local population; their voice shaped the project’s development. In my opinion, there’s something unique about the Algarve, because it had a self-developed construction culture. This didn’t happen in the north of Portugal, because the men there refused to build independently, saying: “No, we’d be double exploited. We already work elsewhere.” But, in the Algarve, the poorest families were often part of fishing communities. Since fishermen faced periods when they couldn’t fish, that’s when they worked on building their houses. This independent approach was very much in the style of Nuno Portas, who was Secretary of State for Housing and Urbanism and created the SAAL, but it didn’t catch on outside of the Algarve. Here, however, the residents formed a mini-construction business as part of the cooperative.
During the first public debates with residents—meetings with over two hundred people—they expressed a very strong reaction to the fact that the houses would have patios facing the street. I explained that the patio, especially those that also featured a pergola, would make a good microclimate for this type of house, because we were working with very little money and could not spend on insulation—it wasn’t compulsory then. And there was also no money to do a double wall. There wasn’t even money to do it in brick. Everything was built with cement blocks.
Giovanni Chiaramonte, View of the Quinta da Malagueira during construction, Évora, Portugal, 1985. Chromogenic colour print. PH2016:0100:028, CCA. Gift of the artist © The Heirs of Giovanni Chiaramonte
- AS
- A construction boom followed the 25 April Revolution; a lot of this work was illegal, which exhausted the brick supply. Our choice to build terraces, which was also very controversial, also arose because no bricks or roof tiles were available. And then, the patio also recalls the Alentejan tradition. So, I really defended that decision.
The majority didn’t want a patio. I accepted their opinion, and I worked on the idea of a house with a patio at the back. What’s interesting is that, when the meeting was over, several residents came to tell me that, in the end they liked the patio idea, because it reminded them of their grandmothers’ houses. There was a vote, then and there, for those who wanted the patio facing the front.
The reason for this divided opinion had to do with the fact that people who lived in the countryside had this memory and habit of patios, while the more urban residents didn’t like that solution. At that time, many people from the city, including from Lisbon, had already moved to Évora. And it’s interesting to see how, later, some who chose the patio at the back changed their minds and ended up wanting the patio at the front. There were even some who had renovated, because they realized that the neighbours who had a patio at the front had better living conditions inside their homes. Some installed the pergola-type structures on their patios, as the project had originally proposed, to protect against the sun’s direct light. But others put in marble paving, instead of the cobbled paving designed to allow the grass grow at the entryway.
Their choice of marble was funny, because the local building materials in Évora are granite and marble. It’s one of the few places in the Alentejo where both materials are available, because the Alentejo is all marble. When I initially suggested designing the kitchens in marble, there was a marked reaction. The residents wanted kitchens in stainless steel because they thought that marble symbolized poverty. Marble was very cheap in the regions, so kitchens in the poorest houses were made of marble. At that point, I explained to them that marble was a much better material for kitchens, but they wouldn’t accept my proposal, so the kitchens in the first lot of houses are made of the cheapest stainless steel, because there wasn’t money for good, high-end material.
Giovanni Chiaramonte, View of the Quinta da Malagueira during construction, Évora, Portugal, 1985. Chromogenic colour print. PH2016:0100:045, CCA. Gift of the artist © The Heirs of Giovanni Chiaramonte
- GB
- Your proposal for Malagueira also put forward another interesting plan to connect the city to the Santa Maria neighbourhood, which was considered an illegal settlement at the time.
- AS
- Connecting the Santa Maria neighbourhood plot to Évora was important, because the area wasn’t empty. It was a street surrounded by houses, all considered illegal constructions built by rural workers. A council-made road cut through this area where a swimming pool had been built, and a lovely country estate called Malagueirinha was nearby. And there was a connecting road to Lisbon. So, there, officials closed their eyes to the illegal settlement because it couldn’t be seen from the road, given that its buildings were only one-storey high. The neighbourhood only had three or four shops, a tiny post office, a café, and a grocery shop, but it was completely inhabited. Some of these residents worked in Évora.
And so, when we were doing the sketches for Malagueira, above all, for the part connected to the square where there was already a secondary school, I looked at existing footpaths to determine pedestrian routes; I consolidated the desire paths that people had spontaneously created. People make better routes than urban planners when it comes to pedestrian paths, because their design is dictated by the body. Almost all the roads I made beyond those spontaneous ones went badly, and I eventually had to change them because the topography was difficult—there’s no topography more difficult to design for than one with a slight curvature.
Álvaro Siza, Sketch of east-west connection to Plano da Malagueira, Évora, Portugal, 1977. ARCH293065.004.009, AP178.S2, Alvaro Siza fonds, CCA. Gift of Alvaro Siza
Álvaro Siza, Plan for westward expansion of Plano da Malagueira, Évora, Portugal, 1977. ARCH293065.004.008, AP178.S2, Alvaro Siza fonds, CCA. Gift of Alvaro Siza
- GB
- Once the houses were built, did the illegal settlement continue to exist?
- AS
- I very much supported it because I could see how important it was to have people in that area, and for those residents to remain there. Of course, other people commented on whether they should be displaced and so on. Another interesting conversation that came out of these discussions concerned the Romani people. Why was there a Romani camp there? When the work started in that area, the Council removed all the Romani who camped there. They used to cross a nearby bridle path, which is where we chose to construct a dam.
The only facility I managed to build in this area was a small auditorium, because it was very cheap. Its opening coincided with a moment when the social work students, who had struck up a relationship with the Romani people, were working in a nearby school. The mayor was at the opening, as well as two or three people from the Council, and they asked me to join. Nobody joined from the local community, but the Romani had been invited to perform. They started playing, singing, and dancing, and suddenly the residents started to appear. The auditorium filled up, with everybody singing and dancing. These communities interacted for a while, but when the young social workers left the neighbourhood, that contact died, and social marginalization increased among the residents. In that sense, the Council made a mistake in displacing and concentrating the Romani people in a single area, which made them easier targets for discrimination.
Giovanni Chiaramonte, View of the aqueduct, Évora, Portugal, 1985. Chromogenic colour print. PH2016:0100:002, CCA. Gift of the artist © The Heirs of Giovanni Chiaramonte
- GB
- You mentioned that you imagined the main street as being reserved for pedestrians, but the street is quite wide—6-metres wide. When you first designed this thoroughfare, did you consider the possibility that, in the future, people would mostly move around by car?
- AS
- No! I made it 6-metres wide specifically for pedestrians. That was spontaneous decision, and the council did nothing to stop it. I got a lot of flak for it, and many people said, “Now little children are going to die,” but there wasn’t a single accident. That possibility didn’t even cross my mind! I was really thinking about pedestrians, and only later did I include spaces for the first parking spaces. Parking lots were expensive, so that plan died quickly. The residents made a pact that is respected even today: the car must stay parked in front of its owner’s house, and no one else can park there. There’s no formal rule, no policing, but everyone respects it. And because of that, there was never an accident on these streets, because the drivers are careful, seeing as they don’t want to bash up their cars. They go slowly and so on, and it’s incredibly safe.
The residents did request garages, which I designed to fit a car and a sink, but these were mostly added because a lot of people wanted to keep their pigs there. When they killed them, they hung and cooked them in the garage, which is why they asked for a chimney in the garage.
Giovanni Chiaramonte, View of the Quinta da Malagueira during construction, Évora, Portugal, 1985. Chromogenic colour print. PH2016:0100:026, CCA. Gift of the artist © The Heirs of Giovanni Chiaramonte
- GB
- In a way, the garage was an extension of the house.
- AS
- It’s like what happened with the Bouça housing estate. Nobody ever dreamed that its residents would one day have their own cars—this was unthinkable. Ten years after the revolution, maybe, the people on the estate started owning their own cars. From an economic perspective, the revolution, despite everything, led to the improvement of living conditions, in certain ways, at least in terms of health and education. Portugal had a 75% illiteracy rate before the revolution, I believe. Today, there’s practically no illiteracy. The birth and child mortality rates were incredibly high, and today it’s under control. There’s still a lot that’s a terrible mess in the country, but there was a tremendous improvement post-revolution.
