Home of Oscar Niemeyer
1953
© All photos by Leonardo Finotti
As a young man, Niemeyer worked with Le Corbusier. It is remarkable that they got along. Corbusier's architecture is all about function and technology; if he could, he would have forbidden architects to think about beauty. Niemeyer was the exact opposite. His architecture is poetic, sculptural, soft. He spoke of being inspired by the contours of the female body. Before Niemeyer, concrete was considered hard and severe. Niemeyer showed that it could be as plastic as clay. The architect's home is a manifesto of his lyrical modernism. In large projects, Niemeyer could not altogether avoid sharp angles, but he would, at least for the ground-level portion of the structures, keep the lines flexible and responsive to the contours of the statuary set about in the undergrowth.
246 Estrada-das-Canoas, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
© Arquivo Público do DF
Living room © All photos by Leonardo Finotti
Home of Albert Frey
1963 1964
686 West Palisades Drive, Palm Springs, California, USA
© Don Buckner
Twentieth-century architects love large windows. They say they bring nature into their houses. In this instance the entry of nature is actual. The cliffside, virtually penetrating the frail shell of the house, breaks into the house itself. This may well be the most dramatic confrontation of the principles of the natural and manmade in all of architecture. Before building the home, Albert Frey spent a year studying how the sun fell on the lot, the angles of the shadows, and on the basis of his observations determined the position, plan and height of the house. The structure is built with such attention to the natural environment that one might well describe it as a part of the landscape rather than as a different thing altogether.
© Desert Publications, Christopher Swan
