Book Description

In the history of architecture examples of lyrical buildings, buildings as the result of a poetic image rather than of a function, are few and far apart in time and space - be it the temple of Apteros Nike, a church by Guarino Guarini or the Eiffel Tower. This is easy to understand. In a world conditioned by physical forces, social impacts, and economic determinism, the architect must be a very powerful dreamer, with dreams big enough to engulf and obliterate all kinds of secondary realities. The extent to which Oscar Niemeyer is the very able, the highly effectual dreamer is made evident in Professor Papadaki's essay. Niemeyer, by giving to basic architectural forms a new and surprising meaning, created variations and new solutions with local patterns which have a grace and subtlety until then unknown to modern architecture," stated Lucio Costa - the most respected architectural voice in all of Latin America - in perhaps the clearest summation of Niemeyer's contribution to contemporary building activity. To all appearances Niemeyer is not a theorist; he indulges in the ineffable delight of designing buildings, in the direct creative processes which in architecture are not free of the painful shocks of reality nor unmixed with heartaches. Yet the stern realities of an architectural problem: the dictates of the terrain, the demands of the building program, the commands of technology, the availability of skills and the choice of materials, the restrictions of budget and the incoherencies of the client - all become with Niemeyer the subjects of a miraculous metamorphosis, the elements of a lyrical act. Professor Papadaki describes the latent state of exuberance which is so much suggested by the climate, the topography and the flora of Brazil and which finds in Niemeyer's work a tangible plastic expression; architecture becoming in its turn one of man's essential joys. -- Amazon.