OSCAR NIEMEYER | classics and unseen
OSCAR NIEMEYER: CLASSICS AND UNSEEN LAURO CAVALCANTI
Oscar Niemeyer’s complex and extensive oeuvre is open to multiple interpretations and points of view. Nevertheless, some of its characteristics stand out as essential. The first facet to be underscored is how he foresaw, yet in the early 1940s, the exhaustion of the strict use of rationalism. The second important point is the freedom with which he sought alternatives for this impasse that were consistent with both constructive advances and the principles of the new modernist aesthetics.
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Niemeyer proposed an absolute fusion between structure and architecture. Once the former was executed, the latter was ready.
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In a true Brazilian style, Niemeyer sought inspiration in apparently contradictory sources, such as some works by the young Mies van der Rohe and others by Le Corbusier. The “Miesian” glass curves protecting the internal stairway and the ebony marble partition in the dining room of the Tugendhat House (1928–1930), and the sinuosity of the Friedrichstrasse Skyscraper’s floors (1921–1922) are combined, without conflicts, in the pure and autonomous volumes of Niemeyer’s Swiss Pavilion (1932). By mastering the structural possibilities of the reinforced concrete technology – the only one possible at that time in his country of origin – Niemeyer created a revolution of forms that was simultaneously regional and international. In order to do so, he proposed an absolute fusion between structure and architecture. Once the former was executed, the latter was ready. This path led him to a refinement and synthesis of his constructions’ elements, which directly impacted the reception of his work, whose forms were readily recognized by everyone, not only specialists. He also produced a paradox, since the concise form is often so 14