One of the greats

摘要

There's a lovely text in this book in which Souto de Moura extols the virtues of Bic biros. Transparent, universal, cheap, lacking any hint of self-consciousness, and a way of avoiding the temptation that a pencil might give for complex and subtle shading, the Portuguese architect regards it as the perfect tool for designing on napkins, matchboxes, notebooks, or whatever comes to hand. There is a delightful lack of pretentiousness in it, and the pure, beautiful buildings in this book are deceptively simple and unpre- tentious, yet the authors insist on using the kind of spurious architectural phraseology that reeks of Pseuds' Corner. When Souto de Moura himself speaks, however, clarity reappears, and the texts include a very useful three-way discussion between him and his teachers Fernando Tavora and Alvaro Siza - a kind of Holy Trinity of Portuguese Modernism, possibly unequalled elsewhere. But it is the wonderful photographs and drawings which make this the must-have book on the architect's architect.