We hated Bauhaus,” Niemeyer recalls. “It was a bad time in architecture. They just didn’t have any talent. All they had were rules. Even for knives and forks they created rules. Picasso would never have accepted rules. The house is like a ma-chine? No! The mechanical is ugly. The rule is the worst thing. You just want to break it.” And so he did. This was the heroic period, until the generals took over in 1964, when he became a household name in Brazil, up there with Pelé. From his pen poured astonishing factories, schools, houses, offices, capital cities – Brasilia, “far too quickly made”, he regrets. A World Heritage Site it may be, but its concrete is shabby, its monuments scabbed with favelas, its idealism soured – Utopia gone bad.

bbc slide show


- bill 12-17-2007 5:33 pm [add a comment]