Casa de Chá da Boa Nova - Porto, Portugal
N 41° 12.165 W 008° 42.881
29T E 523922 N 4561303
This restaurant was finished in the year Siza turned thirty. Boldly positioned on the rocks that form the coast of Matosinhos, on the outskirts of Porto, this beautifully detailed masterpiece offers beautiful meals as well.
Waymark Code: WMCWHP
Location: Porto, Portugal
Date Posted: 10/19/2011
Views: 9
The Boa Nova Tea House was designed following a competition held in 1956 by the city council and won by Portuguese architect Fernando Tavora. After choosing a site on the cliffs of the Matosinhos seashore, Tavora turned the project over to his collaborator, Alvaro Siza. One of Siza's first built projects, it is significant that the restaurant is not far from the town of Matosinhos where the architect grew up, and set in a landscape that he was intimately familiar with. It was still possible in Portugal of the 1960s to make architecture by working in close contact with the site, and this work, much like the Leça Swimming Pools of 1966, is about 'building the landscape' of this marginal zone on the Atlantic - through a careful analysis of the weather and tides, existing plant life and rock formations, and the relationship to the avenue and city behind.
Removed from the main road by some 300 meters, and forming a butterfly in plan, the two primary spaces of the tea house are opened gently around the sea cove, the entire building following the natural topography of the site.
Architect: Álvaro Siza Vieira
Prize received: Pritzker Architecture Prize
In what year: 1992
Website about the Architect: [Web Link]
Website about the building: [Web Link]
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