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situated on the banks of an artificial lake, is made up of four separate buildings: a chapel, a casino, a club and a dance hall. Starting with a set of Corbusian elements – brise-soleil, free plans and butterfly roofs – Niemeyer subverted European rationalism, bestowing grace and lightness to the rigid concrete architecture. The chapel, for example, is formed by a series of concrete shells (Fig. 3); the dance hall, in turn, possesses a sinuous roof slab. In Pampulha, Niemeyer let his own personality flow – lightweight, uncompromised and creative – which, in certain instances, takes on the stereotype of the nation itself: sensual, smart and cheerful. The power of Pampulha’s design increases when we remember that Europe didn’t see images of the complex until after World War II. During the next seven decades, Niemeyer developed his work; he gave rise to sculptural structures using reinforced concrete to push the boundaries of fluidity in regards to reinforced concrete. Moreover, Pampulha marked the beginning of Niemeyer’s collaboration with Joaquim Cardozo – one of the leading structural engineers in Brazil, who was also renowned in the country as a great poet (his poems, translated by Elisabeth Bishop, were published in The New Yorker). Together they created the works – for example, the Canoas House (Fig. 14) – that made Niemeyer famous. To illuminate the difference in reasoning between European rationalism and Niemeyer, who was of German ancestry, it is important to remember a comment Walter Gropius made when he visited the Canoas House. Situated in the mountains of Rio de Janeiro, the house was designed to be the architect’s home. Upon looking at the thin sinuous slab that covers a glazed pavilion embedded within the surrounding trees, the creator of the Bauhaus told his Brazilian colleague that although the house was beautiful, it was not multipliable. Niemeyer, at every opportunity, mocked the German’s analysis: “I made a home for myself, fit for my family, adapted to the terrain, which opens up to the forest and filters the sunlight of Rio de Janeiro, and Gropius would have liked for it to be multipliable. He could not leave without uttering nonsense.”
In addition to calculating the structural concrete for Pampulha and the Canoas House, Cardozo worked with Niemeyer on numerous projects, such as the buildings in Brasilia. He was his main collaborator, the man in charge of erecting the most important sculptural buildings imagined by Niemeyer – who was accused by many, not just Gropius, of not making a rational use of concrete. The relationship between architect and engineer, though often difficult, was one of mutual respect. Such as with a mother who pampers her beloved child, Cardozo satisfied all of Niemeyer’s whims. The architect refused to take “no” for an answer, and Cardozo would find a way to respond to each new challenge. After the death of the poet-engineer – who spent the last years of his life ostracised after being held accountable for the deaths of 64 labourers caused by the collapse of a structure for a gymnasium designed by Niemeyer – Brazil’s leading architect worked with other professionals, such as Bruno Contarini (responsible for the structure of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Niterói) and José Carlos Sussekind, who played an integral role in the final phase of his career. Paulista Brutalism Another important character who blossomed with the design of the ministry building was Reidy, the first to utilise exposed reinforced concrete in Brazil. In the main pavilion of the Museum of Modern Art (MAM) in Rio de Janeiro, calculated by engineer Arthur Jerman, who was part of Emílio Baumgart’s firm, Reidy created an ingenious sequence of structural V-shaped supports (Figs. 6, 7). While the inside arm of the “V” functions as a brace to support the first floor, the outside arm serves as a support for the roof, which, in turn, supports the mezzanine via cables. Reidy was influenced by Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in Marseille, but his brutalist architecture was also inspired by Niemeyer’s sculptural forms. Conversely, the exposed concrete of the MAM influenced a Brazilian architectural trend different from Niemeyer’s: the works created by São Paulo architects from the late 1950s that were baptised by local critics as “Paulista”
(which means: hailing from São Paulo) Brutalism or Paulista School, as opposed to the “Carioca” (hailing from Rio) School (Lucio Costa, Niemeyer and Reidy himself). In opposition to Niemeyer, who did not connect his architecture with the country’s social problems, the architects associated with the Paulista School had left-wing political leanings (and perhaps this is why they were influenced by Reidy’s brutalism; he was a civil servant and was well acquainted with social issues). Despite the political differences between the group from São Paulo and Niemeyer, it is undeniable that the tectonic splendour of his works has influenced the Paulistas. For this reason, many of its protagonists see their movement as a continuation or evolution of his work rather than in opposition to it. At any rate, the architects from São Paulo continued with the idea that promotes the structure as a major theme in Brazilian architectural production. However, instead of Niemeyer’s plasticity, the Paulistas developed a brutalism of their own, based on the agglutination of seemingly contrary architectural trends: from Mies van der Rohe, they inherited structural clarity, with few support points; from Le Corbusier, the poetry of exposed concrete; and from Frank Lloyd Wright, the introverted spatiality and the honest use of materials. In this context, it is crucial to describe another way of understanding the dichotomy between these movements – the two most important architectural trends in the twentieth century in Brazil. There is a fundamental difference in the origins of the architecture faculties of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo: while the instruction of architecture in Rio emerged from a course on Fine Arts, in São Paulo it was assembled as an extension of the engineering schools. This succinctly explains the free and artistic tone of the Cariocas, as opposed to a more Cartesian and rational attitude of the Paulistas. Vilanova Artigas, the intellectual leader of the Paulista School, was an engineer-architect, with a degree from the Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo (USP). One of his most important projects is precisely the FAU/USP, the main building of the faculty of architecture at the USP (Figs. 15, 16). It features all the ele-
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