Church of Sao Francisco, Pampulha: Oscar Niemeyer 1943 The first post for a long time- after a long trip to Brazil and an even longer period before that, busy with researching and completing a new book- more later !
Oscar Niemeyer had the longest career of any modern architect, starting to build in his native Brazil in the 1930s and still at work internationally at the time of his death in 2012. Best known, perhaps, for his work in the new city of Brasilia which was the big idea of President Kubitschek, the Congress, Law Courts, Cathedral and many more public buildings were built in the early 1960s. But perhaps his most original work was done earlier, also for Kubitschek who was then Belo Horizonte’s mayor, in the new garden suburb of Pampulha. A church, casino, dance pavilion and yacht club were completed in 1943, each representing an idea that would be followed through and extended in his later work.The much-published church of St Francisco is formed of undulating parabolic concrete shells, one end wall a pictorial tiled panel and open glazing at the other.
Casino, Pampulha, entrance hall: Oscar Niemeyer 1943
Casino, Pampulha: windows around stage area
The complex form of the Casino, later an art gallery, includes many of the formal devices such as ramps, piloti-defined volumes and spatial dynamics that were ultimately derived from Le Corbusier but which Niemeyer developed and made his own.
Casa do Baile, Pampulha, marquise: Oscar Niemeyer 1943
The small Casa do Baile or house of dance is, on the other hand, dominated by the form of a serpentine concrete slab or marquise, open on its lakeside site: a simple but spatially complex building that makes me consider it a tropical Barcelona Pavilion. Niemeyer’s work at Pampulha exhibits most clearly the role of architecture as an artistic practice, in clear contradiction to the moral and social imperatives of most of his contemporaries in modern architecture.