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U.Porto Memory

University of Porto Famous Alumni

Eduardo Souto de Moura

Eduardo Souto de Moura 1952- Architect and university teacher

(...)"(...)Souto Moura refounded modern architecture in Portugal and now he is reinventing it, with the doubts and complexities that
life shows beyond "minimalism".
(José Figueira, 2004)

Eduardo Elísio Machado Souto de Moura was born in Porto on 25 July 1952.

He attended the Architecture course at the Porto School of Fine Arts and at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto. While he was a student, he worked at the workshop of Álvaro Siza Vieira between 1974 and 1979.
In 1980, when he completed the degree, he received his first prize, awarded by the Engenheiro António de Almeida Foundation, and began working as a liberal architect.
In 1981, he was appointed assistant of the Architecture course at FAUP, where he taught until 1990, and to which he would return in 2003.

Some of the key references in his work as, besides Siza Vieira (1933 -), architects Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) and Aldo Rossi (1931-1997), the Californian experiences of the 50s and 60s (Craig Ellwood, Pierre Köning and the "case study houses"), minimalist art (Donald Judd and Sol Lewitt). Souto de Moura was also influenced by Bernardo Soares, one of the heteronyms of the poet Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), by Roland Barthes (1915-1980), French thinker and writer, by the Catalan painter Antoni Tapiès (1923-) and by the German artist Beuys (1921-1986).

During the 80s and 90s of the 20th century, he was a guest teacher at several European faculties and schools of Architecture: Faculty of Architecture of Paris-Belleville (1988), schools of Architecture of Harvard and Dublin (1989), ETH of Zurich (between 1990 and 1991) and the School of Architecture of Lausanne (Guest Professor in 1994).

The renowned figure of the so-called "School of Architecture of Porto" has many works throughout the country and abroad. These are some examples of some projects of Souto de Moura: the municipal market and the municipal stadium of Braga (Axa Stadium); Casa das Artes, Casa do Cinema de Manoel de Oliveira and the Burgo Building, in Porto; dell' Accademia Bridge in Venice (Italy). The heritage interventions in the Santa Maria do Bouro Convent, in Amares, in the Alfândega Nova building (now Museum of transport and Communications /Congress and Exhibition Centre) and in the old Cadeia da Relação (converted into the Portuguese Centre of Photography), in Porto, and the interventions done along the seafront avenue in Matosinhos, in the Porto metro and in the Praça do Município in Maia are also worthy of note.

In the past few years, Souto de Moura has also worked in the field of product design, and in 2008, along with the plastic artist Ângelo de Sousa,he participated in the 11th International Architecture Biennial of Venice, representing Portugal, with a co-authored project entitled "Cá fora. Arquitectura desassossegada." The first architect to receive the Pessoa Award does not enjoy relativism and the disorder in the world today. In his works, he seeks to create an exact landscape and respect construction, structure, infrastructure and finishings of original options. He would like to have drawn the Parthenon - which, according to him, is the greatest existing architecture work, and the Pavilion of Barcelona, by Mies van der Rohe, designed by the architect he most admires.

In 2011, Souto de Moura became the second Portuguese architect, after Siza Vieira (1992), to receive the Pritzeker Architecture Prize, the most prestigious award in this area, awarded since 1979 by the American Hyatt Foundation to the greatest figures in world architecture, such as Óscar Niemeyer (1988), Frank Gehry (1898), Norman Foster (1999) and Rem Koolhaas (2000).

Eduardo Souto de Moura lives in Porto with his family, in Praça de Liège, Foz do Douro, in a 3-bedroom house designed by him. He is a neighbour of Siza Vieira. He works close to his house, in a building he shares with architects Siza Vieira and Rogério Cavaca.
(Universidade Digital / Gestão de Informação, 2011)