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The Alhambra in southern Spain is one of the great sites in this world. A fortified complex of Moorish and Renaissance palaces and gardens which date from the 13th through 16th centuries, the UNESCO World Heritage Site is celebrated for its stunning architecture, rich history, and unforgettable setting overlooking the Andalusian city of Granada and its surrounding hilly countryside. The Alhambra is the site from where Moorish Spain was ruled, and where Columbus received royal endorsement of his expedition from Ferdinand and Isabella following the Christian Reconquista. The inspiration for countless stories since being rediscovered by Romantics in the 18th century, the Alhambra today remains a magnet for travellers and is now one of Spain's most visited destinations.
While tourism has become essential to the economy of Granada and provides the funds necessary to maintain the Alhambra and Generalife gardens, the number of daily visitors has become a challenge for the facilities at the site. Looking to better accommodate travellers while taking some pressure off the site itself, a new visitors centre is planned to be built just outside the walls of the complex. Pritzker Award-winning architect Álvaro Siza won the commission to create the new building, and an exhibition detailing his sensitive design is now set to open at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto.
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The first room is dominated by a massive scale model, showing the Alhambra in all its gated, palatial splendour. Detailed and exact, the model shows a palimpsest of history unfold across the dramatic topography of Andalusia. It shows the rich variety of ornate architecture, from the Alcazaba Fortress to the Palaces of the Nasrid emirs and the Mannerist style of the Carlos V Palace. It shows the hills and fortifications too; it shows even the footpaths that now shuttle some 8,500 daily tourists. Yet, in a new exhibit that focuses on the Portuguese architect's work, what it doesn't show is Álvaro Siza's new visitor's centre. That comes later. Here, we can get to know Siza's architecture in another way, curator António Choupina explains. In witnessing the context so meticulously laid out, we see nothing of Siza's building, though we see plenty of his architectural sensibility.
Working in collaboration with architect Juan Domingo Santos, the Portuguese Pritzker Prize recipient won an international competition to design a visitor's centre for the Granada landmark. Declared the winner in 2011, Siza was tasked with designing a facility that would help optimize visitor flow while providing new administrative offices for the Patronato of the Alhambra and Generalife. In facilitating a more even distribution of visitors, the new facility is also meant to help improve conversation efforts, reducing strain on historic areas.
Previewing the Aga Khan Museum's new exhibit, Choupina tours us through rooms of drawings, artifacts, and 3D models, giving us an in-depth look into the architect's thought process. Himself a former student of Siza, Choupina has brought the travelling exhibit to museums throughout the world. Opening in Toronto on July 23rd, the exhibit offers chronological and thematic insight into Siza's deceptively simple design.
"Siza didn't want to impose something new, or to compete with the Alhambra," Choupina explains, "which set his design apart from the competition's other entries." Situated on a hill overlooking the fortress, the new visitors's centre will replace a 1980s built complex dominated by surface-level parking. Siza and Santos' design moves the parking—and much of the programming—underground, with an elegantly subdued structure emerging above.
Characterized by its simple but exactingly precise geometry, Siza's process responds to the topography of the site and the architectural richness of the palatial complex below. The massing and configuration of Siza's design—which will be clad in a custom-fabricated concrete that reflects the Alhambra's tonal palette—make for a subtle presence. Steadfastedly avoiding pastiche, the modernist form takes its cues from both the landscape and the centuries of architectural heritage around it.
Featuring 33 artifacts from the Alhambra Collection, including glass fragments and carved plaster Mocárabe panels, the exhibit also highlights the Alhambra's historical complexity. While the Iberian Peninsula's last Muslin dynasty—the Nasrids (r. 1238-1492) were instrumental in transforming what was then a humble 9th century fortress into a majestic seat of power, centuries of subsequent Christian rule worked to remove much of the architectural and cultural influence.
The Church of Saint Mary was built on the site of the mosque (Mezquita), replacing one mythologized narrative of Iberian history with another. "It was an act of erasure," Choupina tells us, "and many people still don't know much about the history of the Nasrids." For Siza, however, the Alhambra's many architectural styles all serve as sources of inspiration, with subtle patterns, motifs, and typologies incorporated the design.
Beyond acknowledging the site's subaltern histories through patterns and subtle stylistic elements, Choupina explains that Siza's nuanced exploration of light and materiality makes the building into a sort of architectural palimpsest. As light travels through the levels of the building, it permeates each space with a unique, changing ambiance. A single source of light—or, in historical terms, a single chronology—is split into multiplicities. There's a protean quality to the spaces, which are meant to evolve with the daily passage of clouds and sun.
With much of the facility located underground, the structure's permeability also allows the natural light to stretch into the lower levels. Illustrating the effect, Choupina moves a flashlight above one of the exhibit's models. It works; the light becomes almost a material element.
Alongside the artifacts from the Alhambra Collection, 23 sketches and 6 models are provided by Berlin's Aedes Architecture Forum. Complemented by a number of video interviews, the sketches display the many stages of Siza's creative process. "He sketches very, very fast," Choupino explains, with many of the drawings coming out as quickly as new thoughts.
One of the drawings was actually "mistakenly signed by Siza," the curator adds. "When Juan [Domingo Santos] saw it, he said, that's my drawing!" Choupino explains that the erased signature speaks to symbiotic working relationship between Siza and Santos. Another drawing, "and this one is one of my favourites," came shortly after Siza broke his dominant hand. Through Siza's shaky left-handed poetics, the geometric design takes on a "softer, more topographic quality, trying to find its truest proportion."
The models, drawings, and artifacts all contribute to a contextually rich understanding of Siza's work. There isn't a nod to modern methodology until the end of the exhibit, where a short series of renderings stands out from the drawings and models. Somehow, little of Siza's "poetic modernism" is translated into the computer-generated images. But then, as Choupino confides, "Siza hates renderings."
The Aga Khan's Museum's Álvaro Siza: Gateway to the Alhambra opens on July 23rd. With an uncommon degree of detail devoted to a single design, the intelligently curated exhibit shines a light through the maze of Siza's architectural thought process.
Although Choupina's exhibit highlights what he describes as somewhat "shy" and as "unimposing" design for a 5,700 m² facility that's located mostly underground, a tour through the space hints at the tremendous architectural sensitivity and attention to detail required to create something that seems so simple.
