The power of imagination: Alvaro Siza’s Leça Swimming Pool

Whoever looks at architecture as a simple enthusiast notices many things that could escape a more technical eye, but it is equally true that the technical and structural aspects that make a building or an architecture what it is escape the eye of the neophyte.

Experienced architects know that a building is not just made up of numbers, physical forces at play and materials. Behind every realization there is more. It can be a vision, a dream, in short: there is the imagination.

Alvaro Siza (June 25, 1933) must have a lot. This becomes evident when looking at the Leça Swimming Pool. Only a fervent mind could imagine a place that was a true meeting point between man and the ocean.

© Giovanni Zanzi/Fundación DOCOMOMO Ibérico

This landscape project, by the sea, is characterized by an intelligent layout in plan: the concrete wall that separates the seafront promenade in Matosinhos (where the architect was born) from the rocky coastline is folded in and opened out to create access points and accommodate the various services and support facilities for a series of swimming pools and seawater bathing areas.

From the city side, the project disappears due to the different heights of the promenade and the bathing area, which is sunken to a lower level to avoid obstructing views. The topographical nature of the design and the fact that it shies away from projecting a recognizable or iconic image is one of the values of this project, which subjects the architecture to the logics of the rocky coastal landscape, making it the center of attention.

Since its completion in 1966, the Leça Swimming Pool complex has been an internationally recognized building. Still almost half a century later, it has gracefully retained its architectural integrity and remained a popular retreat. The Leça Swimming Pools is one of Siza’s greatest early works, and an example of his careful reconciliation between nature and his design.

© Giovanni Zanzi/Fundación DOCOMOMO Ibérico

Subject to the weather and to strong storms, the architecture is inseparable from the rock and blends into it: the concrete walls, exposed to the continuous erosion of the waves and the wind, have taken on a patina and texture that connects them inextricably to the place. It is a rough architecture, whose function is to shelter and protect the different elements of the program and circulation areas that descend from the promenade toward the swimming pools and the sea, all set in amid the walls. A series of flat roofs, merely resting on the walls, are situated only where the program requires more protection.

Visitors to the Leça Swimming Pools enter down a smooth concrete ramp parallel to the road. As they walk towards the corridors to shower stalls and changing rooms, the rough concrete walls begin to obscure the views of both the traffic behind and the ocean ahead. With no views, the ocean beyond becomes audible and the transition between roadway and ocean is captured in a sensory experience within the building.

© Giovanni Zanzi/Fundación DOCOMOMO Ibérico

Those who arrive there are forced to take a path that proceeds further and further downwards. In doing so, the visitor completely loses sight of the horizon. It is as if for a moment it were somewhere else, neither in a human nor in a natural place. The first contact with nature returns when, at the end of long corridors, the Atlantic sky can be glimpsed, but in any case, the waters remain hidden until the last moment.

A subtle play on the senses, this element seems to slice the landscape in two, leaving only sky visible above and the sea audible beyond. The composition of these elements as building proper is understood only from the perspective of the swimming pools, since from the road they appear as an abstract figure, a series of carvings into the landscape.

Many of the materials of the swimming complex had already been used by Siza at Boa Nova and in other early projects, but here they achieve an unusual level of homogeneity: the rough concrete, of a slightly cooler hue than the rock formations, smooth and washable concrete panels for the pavement, Riga wood carpentry, and green copper roofs, which seen from the coastal avenue attain a color similar to the pools.

© Giovanni Zanzi/Fundación DOCOMOMO Ibérico

Did you enjoy Alvaro Siza’s power of imagination? If yes share this article and read our Blog. Follow us on our Social Medias to get more from the InnovaConcrete Project!