Two from the First Team

In its headlong rush to house an exploding population, Brazil has too often cluttered its cities with shoddy, inelegant apartments and office buildings. But when it comes to edifices that reflect its national pride or civic responsibility, the nation takes full advantage of a generation of architects who have made its public buildings the envy of the world. Two of them are responsible for two of Brazil's latest monuments.

Oscar Niemeyer, 59, internationally famous as the principal architect of the new capital of Brasilia, has lately added to its skyline a sparkling new foreign ministry (see color opposite) called Itamaraty, after the pink palace in Rio long used by that branch of government. Affonso Eduardo Reidy, a leading designer of public-housing projects when he died in 1964 at the age of 54, drafted his finest memorial with Rio's recently completed Museum of Modern Art (see overleaf).

Lavish Jewel Box. Both architects, together with Landscape Designer Roberto Burle Marx, who provided the luxuriant gardens of tropical greenery that ornament the two new buildings, have one thing in common: they all worked with Le Corbusier and Lucio Costa as part of a team when they designed Brazil's first modern building, the 1943 Ministry of Education. Despite a shared background and common problems--both designers in their new buildings create vast public areas, each strives to combine structural innovation with nobility of form--the two are also a study in contrasts.

Flamboyant Oscar Niemeyer believes in "an almost unlimited plastic freedom, a freedom that provides scope for moods of ecstasy, reverie and poetry." In the past he has indulged his liberty to the point of license with Brasilia's crown-of-thorns cathedral and the cup-and-saucer-shaped congress buildings. For the official functions wing of Itamaraty, however, he chose a relatively somber and restrained cube. The three-story wing, used for banquets and receptions, in effect acts as a lavish jewel box, its graceful concrete arches and shimmering reflecting pool becoming a frame and a mirror for the nighttime promenade of sparkling bait gowns, epaulets, and other elements of pomp and circumstance within.

Reidy, on the other hand, evolved his new museum's powerful, utilitarian silhouette largely to complement what he considered "one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world," including Rio's famed Guanabara Bay and domed Sugarloaf. The massive external columns that rise outward from the building on either side are linked together across the top by a huge beam from which the roof and third floor are suspended. As a result, the whole giant building hangs in almost palpable tension, and the 426-ft.-long second-story gallery is unobstructed by structural columns, flooded with natural (but indirect) light, commanding a spectacular view across the bay.

Stymied in Suing. Excellence in architecture is no guarantee of automatic public support. Reidy's Museum of Modern Art was financed largely by private contributions, but so slowly did the funds accumulate in inflation-ridden Brazil that the $10 million museum has taken nine years to build. The final $740,000 came in only early this year, in the form of rental paid by the International Monetary Fund, which wanted to use the building in September for its annual meeting. At present the museum is attracting visitors with its first exhibition, the works of German-Brazilian Expressionist Lasar Segall (1890-1957), and its administrative wing houses one of Rio's best (and most expensive) bar-restaurants.

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