The Belly of An Architect, a sex scandal in Lisbon, stop, stop...Taveira & Architects on the run.

Beside 'The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover' (1989), the drama film 'The Belly of An architect' (1987) by the charismatic British director, screenwriter and artist Peter Greenaway is one of my favorite films. This film tells about the American architect Stourley Kracklite who gets an assignment in Rome, to set up an exhibition about the architecture of the 18th-century French architect Étienne-Louis Boullée. However, the story is mainly about his wedding crisis with his wife who is expecting a child he has made as they pass the Italian border by train and about their sexual escapades and realtions. Sex & de City, with an architect in the main role.

Tomás Taveira

Another architects in a main role is Tomás Taveira in the Portuguese TVI series 'The Architect'. The séries is based on the startling sex scandal from 1989 in which Tomás Taveira, the architect of the famous iconic shopping and office center 'Torra Das Amoreiras' in Lissabon, played the leading role. When this Postmodernist shopping center was opened for the first time in 1985, the kitschy design stood out in the Pombaline shopping streets surrounded by social housing towers and traditional houses covered with azulejos (tiles). Especially the secretly recorded VHS cassettes that were offered for sale at the 'Semana Ilustrada' magazine with the sexual excesses of star architect Tomás Taveira with ladies from the Portuguese High Society and with his architectural students, form the basis of this exciting new series, that is not only expecting by the Architects Community. The newspaper head 'The Sex Escapades of Tomás Taveira' in the magazine in 1989 grew into one of the most controversial Gossip Sex scandals in Portugal. For this Media occupied architect, this unfortunately meant the end of his long-term marriage to Amarílis Taveira and the start of his withdrawal from public life that he cherished so much.

Project Edificio D. Carlos (1981) by architect Taveira discovered during one of our night tours through Lisbon

I became familiar with Taveira's work in 1986 when I went on a language course in Lisbon, to learn Portuguese at the 'Instituto de Línguas' before starting to work as an architect for the Christian Council in Mozambique. Taveira's postmodernist shopping centre 'Torra das Amoreiras' from 1985 immediately caught my eye because of its colourful design with a reference to the then fashionable Memphis style. Especially in that setting with Pombaline shopping streets, social housing towers and houses covered with azulejos (tiles).

The 'Instituto de Línguas' in Bairro Alto where I had to learn Portuguese in two months with four hours of private lessons a day was run entirely by a women's collective. The bond between the students and the teachers was already very close and it became even closer when we went out in the evenings to the restaurants or the Fado cafés in the neighborhood to celebrate a birthday or a farewell. In the end, almost all of us had something with one of the teachers, but never with our own teacher.

At the weekend we went to the ‘African discotheque’ with our teachers. When we were driving through Lisbon at night in Aidinha’s Toyota Carola, I immediately recognized the projects of architect Taveira because of the striking appearances. From the back seat of the car I shouted enthusiast: ‘Stop, Stop … Taveira’. After a few times the ladies also got it. When they thought they had recognized a Taveira project, almost everyone shouted at the same time: ‘Stop, Stop … Taveira’.

Shoppingcenter 'Torra Das Amoreiras' in Lisbon

Tomás Taveira was known for his big ego about his profession and far beyond. Despite all the consequences, the Sex scandal had made little impression on him, like he headmitted in an interview from 2018; "I don't want to say too much about it, it's not relevant to me as a man of culture, as a professor and as a well -known personality. It is just like you claim that Charles Aznavour had something with Amália Rodrigues". In the interview he still felt himself as an 'blank slate'' and was honored that his signature was regularly asked. The sex affair did mean that he stayed away from Portugal for about 15 years and had to work in countries such as Dubai, Russia, and Kazakhstan. A few years ago, the architecture celebrity - already at a certain age - was still busy with a new design assignment for a football stadium in Uzbekistan.

Da Balaia Hotel in Albufeira

That big ego not only emerged during his wild escapades with the female crème de la crème from the Lisbon  society, but according to a former student also during his lectures at the Architecture department of the university of Lisbon. During one of his lectures, he said that the design of the famous hotel 'Da Balaia' in Albufeira (Algarve) was not of the well-known modernist architect Francisco da Conceição Silva, but of his hand, when he worked as a young designer for his desk . Now it is a coincidence that architect Francisco da Conceição Silva, just like Tomás Taveira was forced to flee Portugal, even if it was for a completely different reason than for an ordinary sex scandal.

Projects / designs of Francisco da Conceição Silva

It was a bomb attack that was committed just after the carnation revolution in 1974 at the house of Francisco da Conceição Silva in Lisbon. Probably because he was a member of one of the most powerful families in Portugal. His architectural firm, with more than 150 people, was one of the largest in the country and had important and powerful customers with political influence. Such as Antóio Valades Fernandes, the owner of the well -known construction company Engil, Fadozangers Amalia Rodrigues and the State Secretary for Industry and successor to Dictator Salazar: Marcello Caetano. His business involvement in the 'Troía Tourist Complex', of which he was also part of the executive construction company in addition to his role as an architect, will have contributed to the fact that he - certainly with the upcoming left-wing political power - was considered as a 'capitalist' architect .

Francisco da Conceição Silva & his projects in Brazil

The circumstances of the bomb attack will always remain unsolved, but it was a reason for Francisco da Conceição Silva to flee to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. After a difficult start and with the necessary personal sacrifices, he succeeds in working as an architect and project developer with collective housing programs. The successful follow-up with single-family homes for the bourgeoisie leads to a new architectural language, which contains a mix of modern and traditional building with local materials that results in a tropical living experience. Unfortunately, Francisco da Conceição Silva gets into trouble some times later, partly due to the scam practices of his accountant, and shortly before his 60th birthday he dies from a heart attack in 1982.