BOLDTYPE ISSUE #40: Artwork By
The cover of this issue of Boldtype features a photograph by Alan Weintraub of the Edmundo Cavanelas House, designed and built by Oscar Niemeyer in 1954. Featured in the monograph Oscar Niemeyer: Houses, published by Rizzoli in 2006, the house exemplifies the Brazilian architect's elegant fusion of curving forms and modernist simplicity.
The Cavanelas House came at a pivotal point in Niemeyer's career, just as the architect was developing a signature style and gaining recognition in Brazil and beyond. The previous year, Niemeyer's design for his own home, in Canoas, Rio de Janeiro, broke the mold of angular modernism with a freeform, curvaceous roof and pool. With the Cavanelas House in Pedro do Rio, Niemeyer continued his formal innovation, envisioning an asymmetrical, curved roof that echoed the sloping valley floor. Roberto Burle Marx's geometric landscaping completed the dynamic composition.
Taking inspiration from the lush, Brazilian landscape, Niemeyer separated himself from European modernists and fostered a unique, Brazilian architectural movement. Two years after finishing the Cavanelas House, he began work on the commission of a lifetime — Brasília, President Juscelino Kubitschek's utopian vision of a modernist capital. The sweeping forms of his famous Alvorada Palace and Cathedral in Brasília are grand manifestations of the fluidity visible in the modest Cavanelas House.
- Bryony Roberts
