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Video: TalkBack: Álvaro Siza Vieira

The RIBA gold medal, established in 1848 and awarded that year to Charles Cockerel, the designer of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, is widely regarded as the highest honour bestowed by British architecture.

In 2009, the RIBA gold medal has been won by an architect who may not have built anything in Britain save for the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in 2005, but who has built up a considerable following over his lifetime. Álvaro Siza Vieira, resident of Porto, Portugal, is being fêted this year for over 40 years' work. His international recognition, beginning with his swimming pools, followed by a range of university buildings, galleries and his many housing projects, has cast him as a complete architect who defies categorisation. As well as his striking designs, he is also being honoured for his immense contribution to architecture through dialogue and teaching.

Widely known for his pragmatic approach to architecture, Vieira has been classed as a modernist, an expressionist, and even a postmodernist, but regards such classifications as superficial, and prefers all of his work to be judged on its own merits.

In this excerpt from an exclusive interview with Álvaro Siza Vieira, he discusses the impact of recent Portuguese history on his work, and how after the 1974 revolution he was able to work and obtain recognition internationally as well as in his home country.