The Serralves Foundation yesterday inaugurated the West Building of the Museum of Contemporary Art, in Porto, which will increase the institution's exhibition area by more than 40%, two years after the opening of the public tender
Speaking to journalists on Tuesday, at the presentation of the so-called Ala Álvaro Siza, the president of the Serralves Foundation, Ana Pinho, highlighted that the new building is a milestone in the history of the institution, which will allow a 44% increase in exhibition area of the museum, representing an investment of 10 million euros, financed by around four million from community funds.
According to Ana Pinho, the new wing responds to two of the foundation's needs: "The building has three floors, two dedicated to exhibitions, one to the Serralves contemporary art collection, which will thus be permanently displayed in a dynamic way, and one dedicated to area of Architecture, which is also a fundamental axis of the Serralves Foundation"
The building will only host exhibitions in 2024, opening with one dedicated to pieces from the Serralves Foundation's permanent collection, and another relating to the architecture of Álvaro Siza.
As for Álvaro Siza, speaking to journalists on Tuesday, this was a project that "went very well" thanks to "a rare thing, the continuity of the relationship between an architect and a developer", something that "not even it happened with the Popes".
The architect, who in collaboration with the Serralves Foundation designed the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in 1999, the Casa do Cinema Manoel de Oliveira in 2019 and, in 2021, the construction of the Casa dos Jardineiros and the restoration of the Casa de Serralves, recognized some difficulties, but they ended up proving to be a help throughout the process.
"The main constraints [were] the location in an area of the [Serralves] Park classified as protected plant species, access from the current reception [...] and alternative access from the garden", he listed.