Our story starts in 1936 in Brazil, where the Education minister Gustavo Capanema seeks to establish himself and the new progressive administration with a modernist skyscraper, of a scale the world had not seen before. Plans were drawn up for a building that would physically house Rio’s ministry of health and education, and symbolically cement the ideals of the nation. Capanema was looking to send a message that Brazil was not just moving in harmony with the modern world but also capable of leading it. He compiled what to him must have been a sterling team of five emerging Brazilian architects, headed by the promising Lucio Costa. Costa had even insisted on hiring the internationally acclaimed Le Corbusier as a consultant. Oscar Niemeyer, however, had not been one of those five brilliant men. He was only 29 years old and he had convinced Costa to allow him onto the project only through a combination of sheer gall and the fact he had promised to work for no payment. And yet when Le Corbusier flew in on a Graf Zeppelin to meet the team, Niemeyer was among the party to meet him. When Le Corbusier produced two sketches which failed to encapsulate the vision Capanema held for the new Brazil, it was Niemeyer who took over. The building that we now know as Capanema Palace opened in 1943 to international acclaim, making Nimeyer barely 36 years old when he was unveiled to the world as an architectural icon.
This incredible 168-page monograph by Matthieu Salvaing allows us to borrow from the late Niemeyer’s vision, rather than turning the eye inward onto the man himself. Although there are some autobiographical passages where he writes beautifully of his artistic process (including the confession that his designs are always sketched with an accompanying written composition), Niemeyer is never more poetic than when his designs speak for him. Then, as many of his most celebrated structural masterpieces are reproduced to a dazzling gigantic scale, we are able to look deep into the sensous structures of his design and pick him out clearly. For instance, if we look at his early work such as the 1943 Capanema Palace, we notice the nod to Corbusian principles such as pilotis, open plans and long horizontal sliding windows, enhanced with brise-soleil. But even then his departure into what would become his signature style is burgeoning: the high-rise building with its row of curved volumes, giving a wave effect. Niemayar would become infamous for exhausting his engineers and pushing the aesthetic possibilities of re-inforced concrete to construct his beloved curves. As he said himself:
"I am not attracted to straight angles or to the straight line, hard and inflexible, created by man. I am attracted to free-flowing sensual curves. The curves that I find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuousness of its rivers, in the waves of the ocean, and on the body of the beloved woman.”
He found inspiration from natural life and in that way, confounded the world’s concept of an urban landscape by daring to soften it, dulating the pulse of the city into an elegant liquid form. This was the case at the 1939 New York World fair, where Nimeyer and Lucio Costa worked together again to head up the design for the Brazilian Pavilion. It was an avant-garde display, where Costa saw their vision as embodying grace in structure, light and spatially fluid in contrast to the mainstream contemporary architects at the fair. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia gave Costa and Niemeyer the highest award and in exchange, the keys to New York City. Soon enough, world leaders and esteemed patrons were asking Niemayar to sculpt his dreams, and then he would offer them the keys. A sequence of events would set this into motion: in 1940 he first met Juscelino Kubitschek, then Mayor of Belo Horizonte, who wanted him to design a new suburb north of Pampulha. This would be the Pampulha architectural complex which would put him on the map, featuring the internationally acclaimed St. Francis of Assisi church. In sixteen years, when Kubitschek was now the President of Brazil, Niemayer was given a carte-blanche to design Brasilia’s civic buildings: what we would become the residence of the president, the Alvorida Palace, with its moat and modest gatehouse. The National Congress of Brazil, the Palacio de Pantalto, the Cathedral of Brasilia. The dream of Brasilia was realized in 41 months, and in as much time, Niemayar had truly taken up residence with the heroes of Modernism: Miles van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, Alvar Aalto, and of course, Le Corbusier.
Buildings such as the Nietóri Art Museum and the Oscar Niemeyer museum itself show that there is something to the late icon’s maxim that form should follow beauty rather than function: coming upon them even today, they are a surprise. They jolt you out of your everyday existence and into wonder. Where did this come from? How is it sturdy when it looks so light it could sweep the floor? In fact, with both the art museums in Brazil, a common observation is that their beauty supersedes their function, as more people stand in line to see these works of architecture than those who venture inside to see the works of art. It is a testament to his legacy of genius that we still have so many questions. How did he do it?
By Hadeel Eltayeb
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Originally published here