Álvaro Siza Vieira is the greatest living Portuguese architect - perhaps the finest the country has ever produced - whose works over the years have proven to be amongst the most coherent and complete of all architectural works this century. This coherence is not based on stylistic repetition: it lies in the progressive evolution of the act of designing and, as such, Siza’s work is immediately recognisable wherever it be found.

The architect has frequently been linked to Minimalism, as if he were in fact a Minimalist architect. If the subliminal structure of his work is in keeping with a particular movement, however, then I believe that movement to be Expressionism: expressionist roots are revealed at a deeper level in the formal structures of all his works: more immediately patent in the forms of the Boa Nova Tea House, more elaborate and subterranean in the Setubal College or the Santiago Museum, expressionist reflection is perhaps a common thread that runs throughout his work.