No place is deserted. Álvaro Siza: Ocean Swimming Pool

This exhibition illustrates the multiple lives of one of the most emblematic works of 20th century architecture, bringing together drawings, photographs, videos, models and objects – many of them unpublished – that allow us to reconstitute a critical narrative of the design process, construction and rehabilitation of this building designed by Siza Vieira and classified as a National Monument in 2011.

Contrary to what one might think, the Leça da Palmeira pool complex, designed and built between 1960 and 2021, was not conceived as a single project, but as a result of consecutive orders and revisions that dictated the gradual growth of the pool complex, from the construction of a tide pool to its recent renovation and extension to the north.

No place is deserted starts from the famous aphorism formulated by Siza Vieira regarding the multiplicity of references – natural, topographic, built, immaterial – that the architect finds in the place and that serve as a creative catalyst for the project.