President of the Republic requests private support for House of Architecture

O President of the Republic, António José Seguro, appealed in Matosinhos to the social responsibility of wealth as a means of promoting and helping architecture.

António José Seguro spoke during the donation ceremony of the collection of the architect Eduardo Souto de Moura to Casa da Arquitectura, which he met before, on a visit to the facilities located in Matosinhos.

“ It is essential that the cooperation of private entities in such a project be seen as a duty, a moral obligation, an imperative of our life in society. This support from the private made it possible, in the past, for the arts to develop and for authors and creators to have the opportunity, with independence and freedom, to obtain recognition, means of subsistence and time, a precious good for artists and for all of us”, the President of the Republic recalled.

Noting that “it was possible, with this support, to create museums, libraries, schools and foundations”, thus translating “in the return to the community of a good that became public and made more remarkable and worthy of example the name of its entrepreneurs”, the head of state said he believed that “this new directive cycle of the House of Architecture in Matosinhos can mirror this practice”.

About the maintenance needs of Souto Moura’s collection, Seguro said it is “a project that requires new patrons, who will certainly join to fulfill this cycle.”.

The Casa da Arquitectura formalized today the donation of the collection of Eduardo Souto de Moura, a documentary set that covers more than four decades of the architect's activity and gathers documentation related to more than 900 projects, which then integrates definitively the collection of the Casa da Arquitectura, reads in the statement.

Today's formalized donation ensures the permanent stay in the Casa da Arquitetura of Eduardo Souto de Moura's collection, Pritzker Prize 2011, which was deposited in the institution since 2019 and which covers the period between 1980 and 2026 and gathers documentation related to more than 900 projects, of different types, including construction and construction work, adds.

The documentation includes about 8,500 designed pieces, 22,000 analog photographic pieces, 650 textual documentation processes, 975 models and 188 notebooks, as well as hundreds of magazines, panels with drawings compositions, the Original Internship Report and original photographs used in exhibitions over more than two decades.

The set allows to follow different moments of the work process of Souto de Moura, from the schissos and initial drawings to the technical drawings, through photographic documentation and other materials associated with the various phases of the projects.