Oscar Niemeyer - The Pampulha Project

The Pampulha Project

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 also 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 started to depart from the Corbusian principles and designed curved volumes outside the confinement of a rational grid.. He also further develops Corbusier's idea of a promenade architecturale with his designs for the floating catwalk-like ramps which unfold the open vistas to the players.

The small restaurant (Casa do Baile), which is perhaps the least bourgeois building of the complex, is built on its own artificial island and comprises an approximately circular block from which a free-form marquee unravels, following 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 a new invention by Niemeyer. It blurries the inside-outside hierarchy at a previously unrealised level, though the theme was already beeing explored by most modernist architects. This application of free-form, together with the butterfly roof used at the Yacth Club and Kubitschek's house became extremely fashionable from then on.

The Saint Francis of Assissi church, however, is considered the masterpiece of the complex. When it was built reinforced concrete was being used in traditional ways, such as in pilar, beam and slab structures. Perret, in Casablanca and Maillart in Zurich had experimented the plastic freedom of concrete, taking advantage of the parabolic arch's geometry to build extremely thin shells. Niemeyer's shocking dicision to utilize such an economic approach to construction, based on the inherent plasticity allowed by reinforced concrete to produce an aesthetic and spacial experiece was revolutonary. According to Cardoso, the unification of wall and roof into a single element marked a new anti-vertical monumentality. The formal exuberance of this church added to the strong integration between architecture and art (the church is coverd by Azulejos by Portinari and tile murals by Paulo Werneck) led to the church being read as baroque. Though some more redical European purists condemned its formalism, the fact that the form's idea was directly linked to a logical structural reason meant that the building belonged to the 20th century, while refusing to break completely from the past as it was the tendency at the time.

Due to its importance in the history of Brazilian and World 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 the church until 1959, in part because of its unorthodox form, in part because of the altar mural painted by Portinari. The mural depicts Saint Francis of Assisi as the savior of the ill, the poor and, most importantly, the sinner.

Pampulha, says Niemeyer, 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 suntanned women.'

The experience also marked the first colaborations between Niemeyer and Roberto Burle Marx, considered the most important modern landscape architect. They would be partners in many projects in the next 10 years, a colaboration that would yield the best results in their carrers.