Oscar Niemeyer: Mighty Waves

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A guide to where to find Niemeyer's best work in Brasil

Words: Gabriel Silvestre
Image: Andreas Euringer
featured on JungleDrums issue 54 February 2008

São Paulo city centre, a quarter past six in the afternoon. The traffic, as ever, is slowly crawling along as Valéria, with a dejected look on her face, makes a right turn in her red Golf onto Avenida Ipiranga. Things don’t look too good: there are cars amassed as far as the eye can see along the infinite stretch towards Avenida Consolação. As if in search of some release, she looks upwards and what she sees brings a slight smile to her lips. “I never get tired of looking at the Copan”, reveals the accountant. “It looks like a flag blowing in the wind, it gives me a sense of relief amongst all the sky-scrapers”.

São Paulo

The Copan building was one of Oscar Niemeyer’s first major projects, and quickly became a landmark in São Paulo. The same can be said for the other curvaceous buildings erected by the architect in other major cities across Brasil. His Modernist traits have given a distinct identity to the country’s urban landscape and are a point of reference for the locals. The urbanisation of São Paulo was unplanned, and the result today is a tangle of streets squeezed between sober concrete
blocks. The Copan, despite its giant proportions, stands out in the disorderly landscape because of its softness.

The building is also famous for its diversity. It’s home to executives, humble workers, artists, prostitutes and students – a hallmark of the artist’s communist ideals. In all there are 1,160 apartments, spread over 32 floors, with around five thousand inhabitants. It’s a colossus, and has
featured in the Guiness Book of World Records. It also includes 70 shops, restaurants and even a church. A contrast to this burgeoning population can be found at Ibirapuera Park, the city’s
main park and leisure space. The architectural design was left to Niemeyer in 1951 and resulted in the creation of the Museum of Modern Art, the “Oca” cultural centre and the Biennale Pavilion. The latest edition to the park was the Ibirapuera Auditorium, inaugurated in 2005, 50 years after it was first designed. Yet another example of Niemeyer’s originality, the venue draws attention because of the “tongue” that lolls out of its entrance and the flexibility that the triangular space offers. Backstage, a big door can be opened up to allow open-air shows to take place.

If Ibirapuera has a special place in the hearts of Paulistanos everywhere, Oscar Niemeyer’s other major urban intervention, the Latin American Memorial, is more controversial. Created with the aim of strengthening relations between Latin American countries through its collection of artwork and
cultural events, the venue has failed to attract the crowds it was meant to. The outdoors square, which was built for traditional festivals and performances, is 12 thousand m², and capable of holding
30 thousand people, which for local Consuelo Sanegre is “heart-breaking; an enormous concrete desert”. Niemeyer’s response to his critics is brusque: “If people want trees then they should
go to the Botanic Gardens. At the Memorial there’s only architecture”.

Oscar Niemeyer: Mighty Waves

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