NIEMEYERS OASIS

THE SITE IN THE CITYTHE SITE IN THE DISTRICTTHE SITE FROM ABOVE

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FREEDOM / CONSTRAINTABSTRACTION / FIGURATIONTRANSPARENCY / OPACITYSURFACE / VOLUMEEXTROVERSION / INTROVERSIONEXUBERANCE / RESTRAINTEXPOSURE / CONCEALMENTFLOATING / GROUNDEDGEOMETRY / TOPOLOGYARCHITECTURE / NATURELIQUID / SOLID

ATRIUM OF THE HOUSE OF THE SILVER WEDDING, POMPEIIHENRI LABROUSTE- POMPEIAN FRESCO DRAWING

SEBASTIANO SERLIO- HTEL DE FERRAREFONTAINEBLEAU , c. 1540

FAZENDA COLUMBANDSO GONALO, c. 1740

RIO: MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND PUBLIC HEALTH 1936-1945BRAZILIAN PAVILION AT THE NEW YORK'S WORLD FAIR 1938-1939OURO PRETO GRAND HOTEL 1940-1944PAMPULHA: DANCE HALL, YACHT CLUB, CASINO, CHAPEL1941-1945NOVA FRIBURGO PARK HOTEL 1944-1945

FAZENDA COLUBANDSO GONALO , c.1740

GRANDJEAN DE MONTIGNY- PALACE & PARK FOR JRME BONAPARTE KASSEL ,1810

BRAZILIAN PAVILION AT THE NEW YORK'S WORLD FAIR 1938-1939

LUCIO COSTA & OSCAR NIEMEYER-BRAZILIAN PAVILION AT THE NEW YORK'S WORLD FAIR PLANS, 1939

STREET AND AVENUE VIEW

STREAM AND GARDEN VIEW

IONIAN AND DORIC

COSTA, NIEMEYER, REIDY, MOREIRA, LEO, VASCONCELLOS-MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND PUBLIC HEALTHRIO DE JANEIRO, 1936-1945

MIES VAN DER ROHE- FARNSWORTH HOUSEPLANO, 1946-1951

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT-FALLINGWATERBEAR RUN,1935-1937

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EDOUARD MANET- LE DJEUNER SUR L'HERBE, 1863

PIERRE KOENIG- STAHL HOUSELOS ANGELES 1960

NIEMEYER- HOUSE AT CANOAS ROAD RIO 1953KOENIG- STAHL HOUSELOS ANGELES 1960

OSCAR NIEMEYER & ROBERTO BURLE MARX-TREMAINE HOUSEMONTECITO, 1948

OSCAR NIEMEYER & ROBERTO BURLE MARX-TREMAINE HOUSEMONTECITO, 1948

OSCAR NIEMEYER-NIEMEYER APARTMENT BUILDINGBELO HORIZONTE, 1954-1960

OSCAR NIEMEYER-EIFFEL APARTMENT BUILDINGSO PAULO, 1953-1960

THE IDEA OF A TOWNON ADAMS HOUSE ON PARADISETHE DANCING COLUMN

parlar figuratoNIEMEYERS OASIS

THE IDEA OF A TOWNON ADAMS HOUSE ON PARADISETHE DANCING COLUMN

parlar figurato

NIEMEYERS OASIS

*"On Adam's House in Paradise" ends by remarking thatthe return to origins is a constant of human development. It also implies that this is particularly justified in times of crisis. One looks back in order to correct course and go ahead. Then the idea of the primitive hut becomes promise as well as memory, a guide to the future as well asa token from the past, a paradigm capable of orienting the reform ofcorrupt custom and practice.(fig. 1)

*Professor Rykwert's bookwas published in 1972, and I read it in 1977, whenthe modern architecture born in the interwar period seemed to have gone astray. Return to origins for a Brazilianarchitect at that point meant two things, reexamining the texts and works of European modern masters like Corbusier and Mies, as well as the texts and works of our own masters like Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer. Among Niemeyer's milestones one can count his own house of 1953 at Canoas Road, in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, a sort of modern pavilion that manyconsideredin its timea token of corrupt custom and practice.Its program was quite conventional. The site was not: a steep forested downhill slope with a magnificent view of the ocean below and a large granite outcropping. (fig. 2)

*First seen from above, the villa sits white amidst the greenery, falling ground stretching between it and the Canoas Road. Shaped as a free-outline L, a reinforced concrete roof slab floats over a paved platform. A tear-shaped pool perforates the platform's uncovered expanse, the sunken water surface looking like a counterpart of the roof slab's arm. The horizontality of both slab and platform defies the plasticity of the landscape; their sinuous edges soften the tension between natural context and man-made object. (fig. 3)

*A curved ramp ties the road to the platform. Vegetation frames the view, focused on the protruding rock between the pool and the border of the roof slab's stem. Rock and pool meet like mountain and sea in the city. (fig. 4)

*No comment (fig. 5)*Irregularly disposed, slender steel columns painted black support the slab pulled back from its edges. They define a forecourt connected to a rear terrace through a passage between two frontal enclosures. One, to the left, originally painted red, is drum-like and opaque. The other, to the right, optically fused to the rock and pool, mixes straight panes and a curving extremity of glass. The ramp establishes the axis of arrival. The stem is the house proper, the arm is a porch, rock and pool together stand for an absent wing, and the passage is the entrance to the house featuring glazed floor-to-ceiling sliding doors. When they are open, the house becomes porous. Closed, their transparency preserves the elevational tripartition. (fig. 6)

*The overhanging protects the entrance. The column rising from the rock and the statue by the pool amplify the interplay between abstraction and figuration. (fig. 7)

*The opaque enclosure shields a conversation area. (fig.8)

*Opposite to it, two columns frame the view, the rock crops out, and two walls block the roof slab's development. To the left, the concave one befits a round dining table; normal to it, the straight one conceals the kitchen and the lavatory. To the right, the other column and the concave wall frame the spatial flow towards the rear; the rock becomes a parapet, signaling the lateral access to the servant spaces or to the stairs that lead to a lower level straight ahead. (fig. 9)

*Concealed so far, this is where the cell-like bedrooms are. Hole-like openings denote the traditional planning. The rear terrace above is a straight-edged balcony with a sea view, accessible through another porch along the dining nook and adjoining sliding door. (fig. 9)

*The succession of exposed and veiled columns discloses the independence of walls and supports that parades the free plan. Structurally independent, the open and compartmented levels attend to the diverse needs of the public and private quarters of the house. (fig. 11)

*The sketches record the birth of the parti: a prism between the rock and the sea, the visual and processional axis of the binuclear scheme, the joining of rock and pool, the porch as slab extension, the sequence of court, main building, rear terrace, untamed sea. (fig. 12)

*Niemeyer shapes a manifesto for duality. Its terms are not irreconcilable opposites, but extreme points of equal value within a range of possibilities. They can coexist, be graded by intermediary terms or be infected by each other's characteristics- architectural elements subject to biomorphic stylization, natural objects treated in an architectural way. (fig. 13)

This manifesto comes couched on a typological frame. Academically trained Niemeyer relates his villa to proper precedents. Its upper level might pass for a Surrealist dismembering of the Roman domus, with the pool as a latter-day impluvium partially surrounded by Pompeian-thin poles. (fig. 14)

**Or it might pass for a Serlio- designed French htel twisted by Modern compositional strategies and characterization tactics. (fig. 15) Coluband

*Many of those strategies and tactics were developed in the exemplary projects that Costa and/ or Niemeyer built from 1936 to 1945. (fig. 16)

*They defined Brazilian modern architecture as an Epicurean blend of both expansive and systematic nature, founded upon Luso-Mediterranean sensibility (fig. 17)*and Anglo-French precept (fig. 18), driven by the interest in emulating both classical diversity and vernacular simplicity. The skillful handling of straight and curvilinear geometries is part of the package. *In that respect, the key forerunner is the Brazilian Pavilion designed by Costa and Niemeyer in 1938. (fig. 19)

*The curve is the Brazilian Pavilion's leitmotif, suggested by the winding bordering street. The lacy parti allows both differentiation from and integration with the blocky French Pavilion next door. Aedicule along the blank side elevation of the French Pavilion turn the L-shaped scheme into an U-shaped composition, asymmetrically balancing the curvilinear wing. (fig. 20)

*A forecourt plays up the porous piano nobile; from the raised loggia the eye enjoys in sequence a garden courtyard, the stream bordering the plot, rolling potato fields. (fig. 21) Duality prevails, startlingly manifest in, one, the shift from blind, horizontally stratified street and avenue elevations to transparent, monumental garden faades displaying a modern colossal order, an apt evocation of the Crystal Palace;

*two, the alliance of the sinuous street wing with a straight block facing the avenue; third, the superposition of a formal upper level and a loosely arranged lower floor, whose peripheral columns are alternately exposed or hidden by curving screens, the first instance of a frank disclosure of the free-plan mechanism. (fig. 22)

*In Costa's words, Ionic grace replaces Doric severity, columns display an hourglass instead of a circular section. (fig. 23)

*No comment 24*Quite appropriately, theatricality rules: order and circumstance are given equal weight. (fig. 25)

*Niemeyer rejects extreme typological formulations. His villa is not the compact-cubic building set off from nature with clearly defined, homogeneous smooth surfaces, like the Farnsworth House. Mies designs his retreat as "almost nothing", a high-tech version of Semper's wooden hut. It is as horizontal and abstract as its marshy setting. Yet, like a moored ship, it does not belong specifically to it. Architecture's contact with nature is minimal, their estrangement obvious. (fig. 26),

*On the other hand, it is not the open, extended building that tries to emulate or fuse with its surroundings through its irregularity, asymmetry, rich texture and contrasts of color and light and dark, like Wright's Fallingwater, an elaborate tree-cabin that extends its natural setting, left almost undisturbed. Masonry masses mirror the trees; balconies echo the rocks over which they float. Nature is literally architecture's foundation. (fig. 27)*Niemeyer's villa looks as tied to its site as Fallingwater, relaxed, expansive, airy and sensual while the Farnsworth House is taut, self-contained, monumental, cerebral, impersonal, generic, a framed glass cabin barely touching ground. Yet the villa does not share Wright's concern with spreading masses and appears as another case of two parallel plates, a grounded "almost nothing". (fig. 28) *Indeed, Niemeyer's petrified canopy and hidden grotto cannot be considered apart from the platform that binds them, the reinforced concrete version of Semper's mound. This man-made clearing rests comfortably over the terrain, embraces the existing rock, and totally transforms the site. Architecture and nature are as sharply separated as in Mies's house, even if sympathetic border accommodation is provided. The immediate interior-exterior interaction happens on ground limited and shaped by man. Niemeyer may design from nature, but he would agree with Hannah Arendt: as part of the human world created to defy mortality, architecture cannot help being an act of violence against nature. (fig. 29)

*Now, that sharp separation can be taken as estrangement, imbued with all the melancholy that accompanies uprooting and disorientation, the original condition of Europeans, Africans and Asians in America. It can also be taken as a power statement, imbued with all the arrogance that an occasion of conquest requires, plus the fascination and fear that feed that arrogance. Niemeyer reminds us that the Good Mother can also be the enemy. And if a wholly benign nature is a chimera, a wholly benign man-made nature is a chimera too, for the creation of an imperfect being can only aspire to perfection. Architecture may be meaningful artifice but it will never be paradise, tropical or otherwise. (fig. 30)*By the way, Niemeyer's unconventional mix of forecourt and bathing pool caters to a mix of dressed and naked bodies that many would find abrupt and therefore indecorous. (fig. 31)

**In this aspect, Pierre Koenig's one-story Case Study 22 of 1960 appears as a mechanized, abridged version of the house at Canoas Road. (fig. 32)

*In this aspect, Pierre Koenig's one-story Case Study 22 of 1960 appears as a mechanized, abridged version of the house at Canoas Road. (fig. 33)

*Niemeyer's Tremaine House was designed in 1948. (fig. 34)

*Maybe there was a Rio - California Epicurean axis that did not class pleasure and play as dirty words. (fig. 35)*Contemporary criticisms of Niemeyer's villa were harsh or condescending. Walter Gropius, for instance, said that the Brazilian architect was a bird-of-paradise, bright but irrelevant, and complained that the house was beautiful but not multipliable: a remark that only makes sense within the context of a certain idea of steel-based mass-production and a related preference for Doric severity. Niemeyer was not pleased but shrugged his shoulders and went on to design an apartment building (1954-60) in Praa da Liberdade, Belo Horizonte, that is, Freedom Square, Beautiful Horizon. (fig. 36)

And Eiffel. (fig. 37) **Cheap pun aside, in this particular case, return to origins confirmed to me how prejudiced were those cries of crisis and corruption, how shallow and narrow was the accepted wisdom on modern architecture, how fearful of debate and diversity, how irrational its denunciation of irrationalism in the name of Stoic purity. Never mind that as early as 1936 Costa was logically presenting modern architecture as an inclusive proposition, capable of becoming crystal or flower-like, as well as crystal and flower-like. Never mind that even in its early days modern architecture was a texture of many styles, as John Summerson observed in 1941. There are eyes that refuse to see, minds that refuse to comprehend. (fig. 38) *Professor Rykwert has no responsibility whatsoever for my understanding of the house at Canoas Road and may even disagree. But I hope he takes kindly to it, he who showed me that, whether ideal or real, the primitive hut assumed a diversity of guises, from Vitruvius to Corbusier, and none can be legitimately assigned a higher rank. For the modern architecture that Niemeyer endorsed and enriched was one that embraced polyphony without ceasing to define itself as extraordinary construction and meaningful artifice; (fig. 39)*one that recognized the futility of attempts to establish a single absolute source of disciplinary authority, aware that neither program, function, technology, materials, climate, history or context would do the job alone; one that was concerned with evolution rather than revolution, its involvement with the "zeitgeist" being more a pretext to rediscover the timeless inside the new. If we care to pay attention, we will find that its remains still speak, figurato, for sure. They cannot teach us. But we may learn from them with a little help from those who know best, professor Rykwert second to none. Long live professor, and thank you all for the attention. (fig 40)