Oscar Niemeyer - The 1940s and 1950s

The 1940s and 1950s

With the success of Pampulha and the Brazil Builds exhibition, Niemeyer's fame was thrusted to an international level. His architecture of the period further developed the brazilian style that the Saint Fracis of Assissi Church and, to a lesser extent (due to its primary corbusian language), had pioneered. Works of this period shows the traditional modernist projectual method in which form follows function, but Niemeyer's (and in fact, other prominent Brazilian architects) handling of scale, proportion and program allowed him to resolve several complex problemas with simple and inteligent plans . Stamo Papadaki in his monography on Niemeyer would also mention the spacial freedom which was characteristic of his simple and transparent architecture. The headquarters of the Banco Boavista, inaugurated in 1948 show such an approach . Dealing with a typical urban site, Niemeyer adopted creative solutions to enliven the otherwise monolithic high rise, thus challenging the predominant solidity which was the norm for bank buildings . The glazed south façade (with least insolation) reflects the 19th century Candelária Church, showing Niemeyer's sensitivity to the surroundings and older architecture. In São Paulo such austere designs to high rises within urban grids can also be seen in the Edifício Montreal (1951-1954), Edifício Triângulo (1955), and the Edifício Sede do Banco Mineiro da Produção, exemplifying how Niemeyer prioritized urban unity for such program.

In 1947, at 40, Niemeyer returned to New York to integrate the international team working on the design for the United Nations headquarters. Niemeyer's scheme 32 was approved by the Board of Design, but he eventually gave in to pressure by Le Corbusier, and together they submitted project 23/32 (developed with Bodiansky and Weissmann), which combined elements from Niemeyer's and Le Corbusier's schemes. Despite Le Corbusier’s insistence to remain involved, the conceptual design for the United Nations Headquarters (scheme 23/32), approved by the Board, was carried forward by the Director of Planning, Wallace Harrison, and Max Abramovitz, then a partnership. This stay in the United States also produced the project for the Burton G. Tremaine house, one of his boldest residential designs. Amidst exuberant gardens by Burle Marx, it featured an extremely opened plan designed for a total living experience next to the pacific ocean .

Niemeyer produced very few designs for the United States given that his afiliation to the Communist Party usually prevented him from obtaining a visa. This happened in 1946 when he was invited to teach at Yale University. However, due to his political views, his visa was denied. In 1953, at 46, Niemeyer was selected for the position of dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, but his political views were again a problematic issue.

In 1950 the first book about his work was published in the USA by Stamo Papadaki. It was the first systematic study of his work, which significantly contributed to the promotion of his work abroad. It would be followed in 1954 by Oscar Niemeyer: Works in Progress, by the same author. By this time, Niemeyer was already self-confident and following his own path in the international architectural scenario. Since 1948 Niemeyer had departed from the parabolic arches he had design in Pampulha and went on to further explore his standard material, the concrete.

Niemeyer's formal creativity has been compared to that of sculptors. This prolific impulse found grounds onto which to develop on 1950s, a time of intensive construction in Brazil and when Niemeyer received inumerous comissions. Yves Bruand stressed that since his project for a theatre next to the Ministry of Education and Healthbuilding, in 1948, it was in the structures that Niemeyer saw ground onto which he could develop his vocabulary. In 1950 he was asked to design São Paulo's Ibirapuera Park for the celebrations of the city's 400th anniversary. The plan, which consisted of several porticoed pavilions related together via a gigantic free form marquee, had to be simplified due to cost. The resulting buildings were less interesting individualy, which meant that the volumetric dispositions became the dominant aesthetic experience, to be unraveled as one meanders under the marquee. For these buidlings Niemeyer developed the V shaped pilotis, which went to become extremely fashionable at the time. A variation on the same theme was the W shaped piloti which supports the Governador Juscelino Kubitschek housing complex (1951), two large building containing around 1,000 apartments. Its design was based on Niemeyer's scheme for the Quitandinha apartment hotel in Petrópolis designed one year earlier and never realised. At 33 stories high and over 400 meters long, it would contain 5,700 living unites together with comunal services such as shops, schools etc, being Niemeyer's version of Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation .

A similar program was realized in the centre of São Paulo, the Copan apartment building (1953–66). This famous landmark represents a microcosmos of the diverse population of the city. Its horizontality, which is emphasized by the concrete brise-soleil, together with the fact that it was a residential building was an interesting approach to popular housing at the time, given that in the 1950s the suburbanization process had begun and the city centres were being occupied primarily by business and corporations, usualy occupying vertical "masculine" buildings, as oposed to Niemeyer's "feminine" approach. In 1954 Niemeyer also designed the Niemeyer apartment building at the Praça da Liberdade, Belo Horizonte. The building's completely free forma layout is reminiscent of Mies van der Rohe's 1922 glass skyscraper,, although with a much more material feel than the airy German one. At the same plaza Niemeyer built a library (Biblioteca Pública Estadual), also in 1954.

During the period Niemeyer build several residences. Among them are a weekend house for his father, in Mendes (1949), which was built from a chicken coop, the Prudente de Morais Neto house, in Rio (1943-49), which was based on Niemeyer's original design for Kubitschek's house in Pampulha, a house for Gustavo Capanema (1947) (the minister who comissioned the Ministry of Education and Health building), the Leonel Miranda house (1952), featuring two spiral ramps which provide access to the buterfly-roofed first floor, lifted up on oblique piloti. These houses featured the same inclined façade used in the Tremaine design, which allowed good natural lighting. In 1954 he built the famous Cavanelas house, with its tent-like metalic roof which, with the help of Burle Marx's gardens, is perfectly adapted to the mountainous site . However, his residential (and free-form architecture) masterpiece is considered to be the 1953 Canoas House Niemeyer built for himself. The house is located at a sloped terrain overlooking the ocen from far, and it is developed in two floors, the first of which is a transparent and flowing space under a free form roof, suported on thin metalic columns. The private living quarters is located on the floor below, which is much more traditionaly divided. The design takes advantage of the uneven terrain so that the house seems not to disturb the landscape. Althoguh the house is extremely well settled in its environment, it did not escape from criticism. Niemeyer recalls that Walter Gropius, who was visiting the country as a jury in the second Biennial exhibition in São Paulo, argued that the house could not be mass produced, to which Niemeyer responded that the house was design for himself and at that particular site, not a general flat one. For Henry-Russell Hitchcock, the house at Canoas was Niemeyer's most extreme statement of his lyricism, puting forward rythm and dance as the ultimate transgression of utility. However, Niemeyer must have realised that such organic architecture was indeed very specific and dependent on particular talents and an almost crafted quality in order to be successful.