Focus on Brazil: The Eiffel Building

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The Eiffel Building is the second of three residential buildings designed by Oscar Niemeyer and Carlos Lemos in the 1950s located in the center of São Paulo. It is distinguished for its didactic façade whereby service quarters are identified by punctuated concrete screens alongside the living spaces’ floor to ceiling glass. Additionally, the Eiffel offering the first two-story, high-rise luxury apartments of two, three and four bedrooms targeted toward families.

The Eiffel Building consists of a central rectangular volume of twenty-three stories and two angled side wings that offer views of the Republic Square, one of the city’s most predominant central parks. The building’s gentle U-shape supports a small double-sided ground floor level retail corridor while creating floor plans with distinct views of the city center.

Find images of this project by searching the VRC’s online image collection using the search terms “Eiffel” in the Subject field and “São Paulo” in the City field.

Photograph by Kristine Stiphany, courtesy UTSOA Visual Resources Collection.

Architecture Apps: iRhino 3D

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Studio classes may be over for the summer, but it’s a great time to start thinking about new technologies to utilize in your designs and presentations.  iRhino 3D could be a great addition to your digital portfolio, allowing you to design from almost anywhere, or display your model to reviewers in your next pin-up.  The iPhone/iPad app allows you to pan, zoom, and rotate your Rhino model, which can be imported to the app via Dropbox or other similar file sharing platforms.

Image Source: Iphone Active

Focus on Brazil: Guinle Park

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Located in Rio de Janeiro, Guinle Park was designed by Lúcio Costa in the early 1940s when he was director of Brazil’s Federal Department of Historic Preservation and Arts (IPHAN). Originally conceived as a series of six residential buildings situated around what were previously grounds of the Guinle Mansion, only three buildings were ultimately constructed: Nova Cintra (1948), the Bristol (1950) and the Caledonia (1954).

Each of the three structures is elevated off of a natural granite foundation with pilotis, creating a double height space for car and pedestrian circulation and entry. The wood brise soleil façades are modern renditions of vernacular colonial country houses, a reflection of Costa’s reputation for infusing European modernism with characteristics that are distinctly Brazilian. Such contextualization of modernism is carried out in the façade. While on one hand modular and ordered, the differentiation in color, texture and openings of Guinle’s brise soleil echo the vast variations of the surrounding flora and urban life.

Find images of this project by searching the VRC’s online image collection using the search terms “Guinle” in the Subject field and “Rio de Janeiro” in the City field.

Photograph by Kristine Stiphany, courtesy UTSOA Visual Resources Collection.

The ArchDaily Flickr Pool

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The ArchDaily Round Up has been featuring their Flickr pool for some time now, and for good reason. With over 100,000 images, the ArchDaily Flickr showcases striking architectural photography submissions from readers, capturing iconic and lesser known gems the world over. Keep an eye on their “Best from Flickr” posts on Round Up, which highlights the real standouts in the group.

Image source: ArchDaily, photo by Ben Lepley

Focus on Brazil: The Minhocão

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The Minhocão or “big earthworm” is an elevated expressway that was constructed in 1969 under the Maluf mayoral administration to move traffic east to west through the city center. A civil engineer, Maluf was responsible for São Paulo’s largest infrastructure projects. Yet  rather than “lift” the problem of transit off of the ground with concrete, the Minhocão wrecked physical and social havoc on the central neighborhoods through which it passed.

As a result, community groups and urbanists have fought for the closure of the Minhocão since its inauguration. Consistent protest resulted in its closure to traffic on Sundays and holidays beginning in 1976, an accord that expanded to include the hours between 9pm and 5am in the 1990s. During these scheduled windows of time, the Minhocão changes from a river of vehicles to a valuable urban resource filled with bikers, joggers, children, street venders, samba bands and city residents of all stripes.  As a platform for community engagement, the Minhocão is an example of how a public ill can be transformed into a public good with limited resources and an abundance of creativity.

Find images of this project by searching the VRC’s online image collection using the search terms “Minhocão” in the Subject field and “São Paulo” in the City field.

Photograph by Kristine Stiphany, courtesy UTSOA Visual Resources Collection.