A white box traverses the Olinda sky.
Atop the hill, on the site chosen for the city's founding—offering views of the entire urban landscape and the sea—a seed of modern architecture in Brazil was planted in a vacant space between the Cathedral (Sé) and the Senate House (Casa de Câmara).
Originally built to house the first Mint of the Kingdom of Chile in the late 18th century, La Moneda Palace has served as the seat of the executive branch of the Republic of Chile since 1845. Today, it houses the offices of the President of the Republic, along with the Ministry of the Interior and Public Security, the General Secretariat of the Presidency (SEGPRES), and the General Secretariat of Government.
Thirty years after the first coin was minted in Chile featuring the image of King Ferdinand VI, colonial governor Agustín de Jáuregui commissioned the construction of a dedicated building for the Mint in 1780. During its first three decades, the Mint had been managed by the perpetual treasurer Francisco García Huidobro, who had purchased the Palacio Viejo (Old Palace)—now the southwestern corner of Huérfanos and Morandé streets—in the heart of Santiago's historic center. Following his death, minting operations were relocated to a former Jesuit college adjacent to the Church of the Company, where the former National Congress now stands.
Text description provided by the architects. Inaugurated in March 1979, this building is one of the main cultural venues in the municipality of Campos do Jordão. Since its opening, it has hosted the city's traditional Winter Festival.
The architectural concept is grounded in a robust structural system, featuring four perimeter columns that support a square, exposed concrete roof. The columns are braced by roof beams that form diagonal ribs, which also function as acoustic reflectors for the auditorium.
Its iconic existence was part of our collective memory of the city.
[I remember that as a child, riding in the car, looking at this building with its Coca-Cola sign was a sort of fascination. Beyond enjoying the eye-catching, circular red sign, it was the proportions and form of this peculiar building that welcomed you diagonally, like an embrace at the corner of this part of the city. Indeed, its scale was welcoming. Everything was lower in the Lima of yesteryear, and this was one of the tallest buildings. It could be glimpsed from afar, and for me personally, it was the sign that I was back home; since, despite being located in San Isidro, it crowned the border corner of Lince, my home. Thus, this building was always a threshold for me. I have no measure to define the size of this emotional urban void.]
The Paris Pavilion is a building located in the commune of Estación Central (Santiago, Chile) that represented Chile at the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris, held to commemorate the centennial of the French Revolution. The pavilion became an unprecedented opportunity to showcase Chile's intellectual, artistic, and developmental achievements to the world, just 70 years after the country's independence from the Spanish Empire. Recognized as a "valuable exemplar of metal architecture" in Chile, the Paris Pavilion was declared a National Historic Monument in 1986.
In 1887, during the administration of the newly inaugurated José Manuel Balmaceda (1886-1891), Chile was invited to participate in the Paris Universal Exposition. His Minister of Industry and Public Works, Pedro Montt, appointed a commission exclusively dedicated to the pavilion, while Chile's minister plenipotentiary to France, Carlos Antúnez, took charge of handling all details of the Chilean participation on-site.
The Tauro Cinema is a forgotten architectural gem in the historic center of Lima.
Built between 1957 and 1959, this work by Walter Weberhofer—a tireless modern architect of the 1950s and 60s—was conceived as a mixed-use complex of entertainment, commerce, and offices planned as part of a 10-story tower system. Of the original project, initially named "Cine Washington," only three commercial floors and their basement were built, along with the cinema complex. The cinema's facade faced a triangular plaza, giving the corner of Washington and Delgado streets a cinematic urban image that broke with the everyday.
Text description provided by the architects. Claudio Bernardes designed and built this house for his family. The project was shaped by the natural conditions of its island setting and Bernardes's passion for the location. The house was assembled from numbered timber components that were floated to Palmeiras Island in Angra dos Reis, towed by a trawler.
Bernardes envisioned the house as a vast open space, utilizing natural ventilation and daylight, where only the bedrooms could be closed off to encourage an understated, fluid lifestyle. Built upon a stone foundation, the home rises in two timber stories. A three-meter eave allows the expansive thatched roof to extend well beyond the building envelope, heightening the interior volume, expanding the indoor living areas, and providing protection from wind and rain.
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This article was originally published on July 20, 2018. To read about other iconic architecture projects, visit our AD Classics section.
Ibirapuera Park is a landmark in the city of São Paulo and a milestone of Brazilian modern architecture. Housing a cluster of five cultural buildings connected by a light, sinuous canopy, the project—designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer in harmony with the landscaping—reads like poetry floating over São Paulo's urban fabric.
Commissioned in 1951 by Governor Lucas Nogueira Garcez—who established a planning commission composed of public and private sector representatives for the celebrations of the IV Centennial of the City of São Paulo—the park was envisioned as a landmark for the capital, serving as a vital hub for culture and leisure. This idea, which had previously been championed by Ciccillo Matarazzo, paved the way for a proposal that combined a series of cultural and artistic buildings.
Located opposite what is now Parque O’Higgins, the complex designed by the firm Bresciani Valdés Castillo Huidobro (BVCH) in 1952 is one of the most important models of state-sponsored social housing in Chile. It successfully integrates into the urban fabric, responds appropriately to the varying scales of the project—both the block and the individual apartment—and, above all, results in a work that has been deeply understood and embraced by its residents.
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This article was originally published on February 1, 2018. To read about other iconic architectural projects, visit our Architecture Classics section.
With the exponential growth of São Paulo's population in the 1930s and the encouragement of the private construction market, several architects were invited to design buildings for diverse uses in the city center. Álvaro Vital Brasil and Adhemar Marinho were responsible for designing the Esther Building, an icon of the first phase of verticalization around Praça da República. [1]
In 1933, when the city surpassed the one-million-inhabitant mark, a considerable number of high-rise buildings began to be constructed. [2] As a result of urban demographic expansion and mass verticalization between the 1930s and 1940s, high rents and rising land values in the expanded downtown area triggered transformations in the residential and urban landscape. [3]
Located in the central Recoleta neighborhood of Buenos Aires, on a large plot of land free from the constraints of the traditional city grid—between Figueroa Alcorta Avenue and the railway tracks—and facing the National Library and the Faculty of Law, stands the ATC Argentina Televisora Color building (now Televisión Pública), designed by architects Flora Manteola, Javier Sánchez Gómez, Josefa Santos, Justo Jorge Solsona, Rafael Viñoly, Carlos Sallaberry, and Felipe Tarsitano.
With a built area of 35,000 square meters dominated by a public, sloping rooftop terrace—notwithstanding current access restrictions—and completed in 1978 for the World Cup during Argentina's military dictatorship, the building proposed a dialogue between technology and landscape, presenting a functional architecture capable of generating high-quality public space within the city.
Completed in 1962 by the architectural firm SEA (Schapira Eskenazi Arquitectos), the Montecarlo II building is part of a collective residential housing complex located on the block bounded by San Martín, Seis Norte, Siete Norte, and Cuatro Poniente streets in Viña del Mar.
At first glance, the project stands out both for the volumetric treatment of the buildings—arranged on the site to achieve a major urban-scale intervention—and for their distinctive facades.
.jpg?1531751405 "Oscar Niemeyer Auditorium. Image © Manuel Sá")
.jpg?1531751260 "Palácio da Agricultura / Museum of Contemporary Art. Image © Manuel Sá")
.jpg?1531751296 "Palácio da Agricultura / Museum of Contemporary Art. Image © Manuel Sá")
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