Mario Ridolfi, Álvaro Siza: Screenplays for the Craftsman

“Távora often spoke of Albini and Gardella I was struck by Ridolfi’s work and his drawings […] so precise, so different from those of Le Corbusier”. In a 2019 interview, Álvaro Siza recalls his formative years talking about one of the most important architects of the twentieth century in Italy: Mario Ridolfi, disseminated in Portugal by Fernando Távora and the magazines that circulated within the School of Fine Arts in Porto in the 1950s. Ridolfi came to Siza through Gregotti (“Casabella-Continuità” no. 210 later paraphrased by Carlos S. Duarte in “Arquitectura” no. 57/58) and the lens of Távora intent on seeking a third way between modernity and tradition. Biographically distant by almost thirty years, Ridolfi is an indirect master of Siza who is trained in his architecture already inscribed in the Tavorian vision. Brought together by their work in the provinces (Matosinhos and Terni), Siza and Ridolfi can be assimilated for their “drawing-thinking” between spatial intuition and constructive moment. It is precisely on the theme of construction that “Lotus” No. 37 calls into question Ridolfi and Siza; masters of the art of the hand linked by certain design assonances.