page_title: Oscar Niemeyer
section_title: Pampulha Project
hierarchical_section_title: Oscar Niemeyer / Biography / Pampulha Project
caption_attribution_description: Português: Igreja de São Francisco de Assis em Belo Horizonte - MG.
context_page_description: Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho, known as Oscar Niemeyer, was a Brazilian architect considered to be one of the key figures in the development of modern architecture. Niemeyer was best known for his design of civic buildings for Brasília, a planned city that became Brazil's capital in 1960, as well as his collaboration with other architects on the headquarters of the United Nations in New York. His exploration of the aesthetic possibilities of reinforced concrete was highly influential in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
  Both lauded and criticized for being a "sculptor of monuments", Niemeyer was hailed as a great artist and one of the greatest architects of his generation by his supporters. He said his architecture was strongly influenced by Le Corbusier, but in an interview, assured that this "didn't prevent [his] architecture from going in a different direction". Niemeyer was most famous for his use of abstract forms and curves and wrote in his memoirs:
  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.
context_section_description: In 1940, at 33, Niemeyer met Juscelino Kubitschek, who was at the time the mayor of Belo Horizonte, capital of the state of Minas Gerais. Kubitschek, together with the state's governor Benedito Valadares, wanted to develop a new suburb to the north of the city called Pampulha and commissioned Niemeyer to design a series of buildings which would become known as the "Pampulha architectural complex". The complex included a casino, a restaurant/dance hall, a yacht club, a golf club and a church, all of which would be distributed around a new artificial lake. A weekend retreat for the mayor was built near the lake.
  The buildings were completed in 1943 and received international acclaim following the 1943 'Brazil Builds' exhibition, at the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Most of the buildings show Niemeyer's particular approach to the Corbusian language. In the casino, with its relatively rigid main façade, Niemeyer departed from Corbusian principles and designed curved volumes outside the confinement of a rational grid. He also expanded upon Corbusier's idea of a promenade architecturale with his designs for floating catwalk-like ramps which unfold open vistas to the occupants.
  The small restaurant (Casa do Baile), which is perhaps the least bourgeois of the complex, is built on its own artificial island and comprises an approximately circular block from which a free-form marquee follows the contour of the island. Although free form had been used even in Corbusier's and Mies's architecture, its application on an outdoors marquee was Niemeyer's innovation. This application of free-form, together with the butterfly roof used at the Yacht Club and Kubitschek's house became extremely fashionable from then on.
  The Saint Francis of Assisi church is considered the masterpiece of the complex. When it was built, reinforced concrete was used in traditional ways, such as in pillar, beam and slab structures. Auguste Perret, in Casablanca and Robert Maillart in Zurich had experimented with the plastic freedom of concrete, taking advantage of the parabolic arch's geometry to build extremely thin shells. Niemeyer's decision to use such an economical approach, based on the inherent plasticity allowed by reinforced concrete was revolutionary. According to Joaquim Cardoso, the unification of wall and roof into a single element was revolutionary for fusing vertical and horizontal elements. The church's exuberance added to the integration between architecture and art. The church is covered by Azulejos by Portinari and tile murals by Paulo Werneck. It led to the church being seen as baroque. Though some European purists condemned its formalism, the fact that the form's idea was directly linked to a logical, structural reason placed the building in the 20th century, while refusing to break completely from the past.
  Due to its importance in the history of architecture, the church was the first listed modern building in Brazil. This fact did not influence the conservative church authorities of Minas Gerais, who refused to consecrate it until 1959, in part because of its unorthodox form and in part because of Portinari's altar mural, which depicts Saint Francis as the savior of the ill, the poor and, most importantly, the sinner.
  Niemeyer stated that Pampulha offered him the opportunity to 'challenge the monotony of contemporary architecture, the wave of misinterpreted functionalism that hindered it and the dogmas of form and function that had emerged, counteracting the plastic freedom that reinforced concrete introduced. I was attracted by the curve – the liberated, sensual curve suggested by the possibilities of new technology yet so often recalled in venerable old baroque churches. [...] I deliberately disregarded the right angle and rationalist architecture designed with ruler and square to boldly enter the world of curves and straight lines offered by reinforced concrete. [...] This deliberate protest arose from the environment in which I lived, with its white beaches, its huge mountains, its old baroque churches and the beautiful suntanne
caption: São Francisco de Assis Church, Belo Horizonte City, Minas Gerais, Brazil
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