TROPOLISM

A friend came back from Brazil yesterday with a story about meeting Oscar Niemeyer. She didn't speak much Spanish or Portuguese, so their conversation kind of stopped at him saying "yes, the space between buildings and the city are important." What amazed her the most is that he's still up to big, bizarre shapes, and he is 98 (born December 15, 1907).

Case in point, the folks at Daily Dose point us to a theater in Ibirapuera Park, São Paulo, Brazil, which opened last October, in a park Niemeyer designed in the early 1950s. There is a longer description of the project at ARCOweb, in Portuguese. There's a refreshing freedom and exhuberance to this building, not laden with OMA's weighty analyses or preoccupation with history or Gehry's fussyness. Just pure shape, hard and forever.

Picture above by digdoi on Flickr.