![]() ![]() ![]() Accordingly, Siza’s account proceeds by pointing out that to “live a house” brings with it the added effort of cleaning up and restoring some part of the constructed realm. Siza’s diagnosis of a house’s constant need for care lays bare the shadow side of “cozy” and “comfortable.” Though the dream of an ideal house might remain, the ease of use and the wellbeing expected rely on a plethora of things-ordinary objects, technical apparatuses, architectural constructions, and so forth-that ultimately break down and need attention. And no doubt the gutter is full of leaves, its brackets loose and rotten. The roof leaks the neighbor’s pipes have burst a rooftile has fallen off and the waterproofing has come loose. The idea I have of a house is that of a complicated machine, in which something breaks down every day: a lamp, a faucet, a drain, a lock, a hinge, a socket and then the heater, the stove, the refrigerator, the television, or the video player and after that, the washing machine, the fuses, the curtain springs, or the security bolts of the doors. Siza opens his essay with a laundry list of sorts, depicting the house as a veritable “inhabited machine,” yet one made of parts that need tending. Beyond the dream of a house of one’s own, Siza’s text elevates the ups and downs of maintenance to a truly noble responsibility, whereby the inhabitants become its “guardians” and, by extension, guardians of that little part of the world. It is one thing to imagine a house you want to live in and have it designed according to your every wish, but it is another thing altogether to “live a house” in its fullest sense, to accept all the wear and tear of day-to-day use that makes a building what it is and will become over time. Photographs by Roberto Collovà of the house in Porto where Álvaro Siza spent some time recovering from his accident in 1994. Ultimately, whatever is there will have to be fixed. 2 Despite all design intentions, nothing ever goes as planned. Siza suggests that the labor of upkeep, though rarely addressed in architectural discourse, amounts to a heroics of another kind. In so doing, he downplayed the heroism typically attributed to design-for which he is renowned-by focusing instead on the daily care and effort required to keep a house running (or any building, for that matter). In his short account “ Viver uma casa” (“Living a House”), Siza underscored the everyday toils of maintaining the most intimate spaces of architecture, much like one would service a complex and delicate piece of machinery. ![]() Thinking about all that happens with a building once it is constructed and inhabited, Siza started writing about the ongoing give-and-take relationship between inhabitant and house. Sure, it was cozy and well-crafted, but it had issues, something always needed tending. He began to draw a parallel between his own fragile condition and that of the house itself. The house had everything needed to make his stay as comfortable as possible, yet something preoccupied him during his convalescence. In the spring of 1994, Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza spent some time recovering from a minor accident at the home of friends in Porto. “When you’ve finished washing and dressing each morning, you must tend your planet. It’s just a question of discipline,” the Little Prince told me later on. ![]()
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