Guide to Brazil

Paulo Mendes da Rocha leaves behind incomparable legacy in Brazilian architecture

Among the most influential modernists in Brazilian history, Paulo Mendes da Rocha designed many of São Paulo's most famous tourist attractions and left a legacy of devoted followers

Paulo Mendes da rocha
Architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha was one of the most influential modernists in Brazilian history. Photo: Diego Padgurschi/Folhapress

Paulo Mendes da Rocha, one of the most celebrated figures in the history of Brazilian architecture, died on Sunday at 92 years of age. After a career spanning almost seven decades, he contracted lung cancer and was hospitalized in São Paulo. His son and fellow architect Pedro Mendes da Rocha wrote that, after spending his life designing buildings made from concrete and steel, his father was now “designing galaxies with the stars.”

Despite being born in Vitória, the capital of southeastern state Espírito Santo, Paulo Mendes da Rocha made his life and career in São Paulo, moving to the city aged six. Many of the metropolis’ most famous tourist attractions are of his design, including the Pinacoteca, the Brazilian Sculpture Museum (MuBE), and the Museu da Língua Portuguesa, damaged by a fire in 2015 and close to reopening.

Among his most recent tours de force is Sesc 24 de Maio, a stunning community center located in the heart of downtown São Paulo. A masterpiece of architecture and urbanism, the project displayed Mendes da Rocha’s lifelong ambition of marrying modern design with history and culture in a way that is both inclusive and harmonious. 

Mendes da Rocha garnered international acclaim when pictures of his works began to be published in foreign architecture magazines in the 1990s. However, despite the fame, he focused his entire career on Brazil, building just a single project outside of his home country: the National Coach Museum in Lisbon.

Mendes da Rocha won a series of accolades throughout his life, including a Golden Lion at the 2016 Venice Biennale for lifetime achievement. In 2006, he became only the second Brazilian architect after Oscar Niemeyer to win the Pritzker Prize, often referred to as the Nobel Prize of architecture.

Greatly inspired by Niemeyer and fellow Brazilian architect João Batista Vilanova Artigas, Mendes da Rocha was a member of the so-called Paulista School of modernist Brazilian architects, who were as critically acclaimed as they were politically active.

A staunch critic of real estate speculation and urbanism’s colonization by economic interests, Mendes da Rocha was a firm believer that, when it comes to architecture, “there is no private property.”

“If there is space, it is public,” he would argue. 

Persecuted by the military dictatorship

Mendes da Rocha studied architecture at the Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie in São Paulo. Soon after graduating, his project was chosen to design the gymnasium of a local sports club in 1958. His open-sided circular structure, covered with wood and metal paneling and held up by six pillars, gained nationwide acclaim for a young Mendes da Rocha, and won him an award at the 1961 São Paulo Bienal.

Paulo Mendes da Rocha Sesc 24 de Maio
Sesc 24 de Maio: one of Paulo Mendes da Rocha’s masterpieces. Photo: Eduardo Knapp/Folhapress

That same year, Mendes da Rocha began teaching at the University of São Paulo’s architecture college. When the incoming military government issued its notorious Institutional Act No. 5 in 1968, he was exiled from the university and was only able to return in 1980. 

Under orders of the military, Mendes da Rocha was forbidden from working for the state, and spent the dictatorship designing homes in the most upmarket neighborhoods of São Paulo. In total, he finalized 30 residential projects between 1960 and 1980, 23 of which were built. Among them was Casa Butantã, where he lived with his first wife Virgínia Ferraz Navarro and their children. 

The Paulista School

While working at the University of São Paulo, Mendes da Rocha helped bring through generations of architects who he would later work alongside. “He would always say that ‘success is making successors,'” says Philip Yang, founder of the Urbanism and Studies for the Metropolis Institute.

“In this sense, his life was extremely successful. He leaves us a school of successors and a great legacy for Brazil, which combines enthusiastic design, permanent restlessness, and a concern for the crossroads between architecture and urban scale. I hope his successors carry these ideas with them.”

Mendes da Rocha was one of the leading names of the Paulista School of Brazilian architects, led by his mentor Vilanova Artigas. These were modernist designers, known for their brutalist straight lines and open spaces, and the use of reinforced concrete.

While Mendes da Rocha’s unique style can be seen all over São Paulo, from the leafy western neighborhoods all the way to the poorer, more working-class east, there have been a number of his projects for the city that never made it off the ground. Among the most recent examples was a plan to build a square remodelling the main entrance to Ibirapuera Park, cutting down the parking lot and giving more space to pedestrians. Then-São Paulo Mayor João Doria shelved the proposal, claiming a lack of funds.

Paulo Mendes da Rocha is survived by his wife, Helene, and his children Renata, Guilherme, Paulo, Pedro, Joana, and Naná.

Guide to Brazil

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