Architecture as a Possible City. Affinities, Exchanges and Collaborations Between Álvaro Siza and Vittorio Gregotti

The essay discusses the affinities, exchanges and collaborations between Álvaro Siza (b. 1933) and Vittorio Gregotti (1927–2020) from the late 1960s to the present. Although they belonged to different geographical and cultural contexts, Siza and Gregotti developed an intense friendship and collaboration over the decades, based on a similar interpretation of the architectural phenomenon centred on the problematic relationship with the place, the tension towards the construction of the city, and the emphasis devoted to the design method rather than the development of a personal style. The text discusses the ways in which they met, Gregotti’s early reception of Siza’s architecture, the cultural and design pressures that fostered their mutual understanding, and finally analyses a little-known project - the residential neighbourhood in the Teatinos area in Malaga (1992) – which, despite never being realised, was the first and only occasion in which Gregotti and Siza shared a professional commission on a significant scale and complexity.