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Siza Vieira will give a different meaning to New York City

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Siza Vieira could not have anticipated the invitation to design the 120 metres high tower, 80 luxury housing in around 16 thousand square metres in the city of New York, at the age of 85.

Siza Vieira is the architect that imagines things that aren't there until they are. The Portuguese architect from Porto and Pritzker Prize (1992) confided this when in New York, during a conversation with the American critic Paul Goldberger at the Lobby of the David Rubenstein in the Lincoln Center, on Wednesday evening, New York time zone (Thursday early hours in Porto).

"For any architect, the chances of designing something in Manhattan are really slim. At my age, I thought that nobody was going to invite me", Siza Vieira stated. And the fact is that the renowned architect from Porto, alumnus of the School of Fine Arts of Porto, is in charge of building the luxury residential tower, on number 611 of 56th Street and the 11th Avenue.

This project was announced four years ago, as a tender of the Sumaida+Khurana and LENY companies.

The proximity to existing buildings was something that preoccupied Siza Vieira from the start, but after drafting the first design, the architect realised that was not the only obstacle to his work. However, "we have a fantastic engineer working with us in the project", Siza added.

Álvaro Siza also said that New York has the peculiarity of buildings suddenly appearing, regardless of the existing ones". He also said that construction, in New York, "is very different from building to building, without a common design to align them and with no particular attention to neighbouring infrastructures, unlike many old cities in Europe".

During this conversation with Paul Goldberger, the main focus was on Siza's career, from his passion for sculpture, his studies on architecture, his first projects, and the "paranoia" to specialise in Social housing, as Siza Vieira mentioned.

The architect from Porto also stated his faith in the "continuity of architecture" and that the rhythm of transformation in this field changes with generations, "because young architects can now easily travel, move around, study in different countries, communicate through the Internet", which he was not able to do, as a young student.