Miracle. With this word, Oscar Niemeyer was defined by Lucio Costa in the seminal article Muita construção, alguma arquitetura e um milagre [Much Construction, Some Architecture, and a Miracle], from 1951. The bond between Niemeyer and Italy began when the Rio-born architect was 60 years old, having already designed the palaces of his country's new capital, participated in the design of the UN headquarters, and carried out dozens of projects in Europe, North America, Africa, and the Middle East.
Oscar Niemeyer's relationship with the Italian Peninsula started with the enchantment of the owner of the Mondadori publishing house upon visiting the Itamaraty Palace in Brasília. Such was his awe that he decided to commission a project with the same columns and arches for the headquarters of his company: the modern master created a similar structure, but on the outskirts of Milan, the spacing between pillars is not equidistant, creating a rhythmic variation. The Palazzo Mondadori was inaugurated in 1975 and led on to a sequence of architectural projects by Oscar Niemeyer in Italy. Three more buildings were constructed: the headquarters of the Fata and Cartiere Burgo companies, near Turin, and the Ravello Auditorium, on the Amalfi Coast, opened when the Brazilian architect was 102 years old.
This inventory-exhibition also presents projects that never left the page. In 1985, Niemeyer visited Venice and conceived an alternative version for the Ponte dell’Accademia: his architectural design was both respectful of the context and, simultaneously, a healthy provocation to incite change in the city of countless canals and more than 1600 years of existence. For Padua, the architect designed an auditorium for 2,000 people, the roof of which would take the form of an open-air amphitheater for 3,000 spectators. In Vicenza, he planned a theater that emerged from the center of a sunken square. Oscar Niemeyer even conceived a World Trade Center in Milan, a miniature version of the Copan building for the Este citadel, a campus for design in the automobile industry and a major stadium in Turin.
Here at Zalszupin House, the decision was made not to exhibit scale models of architectural projects: rather than reduced-scale models, a large collection of furniture designed by the architect has been presented. The Marquesa bench, the Rio rocking chair, and the Alta and Baixa armchairs demonstrate the deep dialogue between the forms Niemeyer invented across all of the areas of design he engaged in throughout his life.
Created with the support of the Oscar Niemeyer Foundation and based on research conducted in libraries and historical archives in Brazil and Italy, this survey of thirteen projects by the Brazilian architect– four constructed and nine unbuilt – in the Italian Peninsula affirms the global reach that his work acquired. One dimension of the “miracle” identified by Lucio Costa lies in Oscar Niemeyer's ability to subvert the flow of colonialism in the 20th century.
Francesco Perrotta-Bosch
curator