ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses one of the reasons to commission Siza with the Malagueira project which was his previous successful experience in dealing with citizens' participatory processes in social housing design. On the other hand, it discusses the notion of critical architecture to assess the social engagement of Siza's architectural approach. Siza's design method relies on archaeology of the ordinary, which supports his metamorphosis of the everyday, and provides an apparatus to accommodate growth and change. Alvaro Siza was among the architects engaged in the SAAL (Servico de Apoio Ambulatorio Local) process and the projects he developed for it received international recognition in the professional media. In this context, at a time when Siza's projects for the SAAL Process were being built, Evora's municipality decided to invite Siza to develop a plan for a housing neighbourhood for 1,200 families, in the Malagueira estate. The compactness of each one contrasted with the scattered nature of their distribution on Evora's suburban landscape.
