(b Rio de Janeiro, 1 Sept 1905; d Rio de Janeiro, 8 March 1978). Brazilian architect. He graduated in 1926 from the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio de Janeiro, where he won the gold medal; his contemporaries there included Lúcio Costa and Diógenes Rebouças. He then studied urban planning at the Institut d’Urbanisme, University of Paris (1928–9). Initially, like Costa and other contemporaries, he supported the neo-colonial movement in Brazil in the wide-ranging debate on the development of national art that dominated Latin America from the beginning of the century. Later, influenced by the tremendous growth taking place in American cities, he based his work on the rationalist modernism of Le Corbusier and CIAM, and its Brazilian adaptations, specializing in urban planning. An early example is the plan he drew up for the city of Goiânia (1933; with Attilio Corrêa Lima). Other important works include the Prudência office building (1946; also known as the Caramurú building), Salvador, covered with brises-soleil on panels arranged in a chequered fashion and with a roof garden and curved service towers and windbreaks on the roof, for which he won an honourable mention at the first São Paulo Bienniale (1951); and the Hotel da Bahia (1949–51; with Diógenes Rebouças), Salvador, a long, rectangular block of rooms above two floors of public rooms that curve out beyond the plan form in an exuberant manner. He was a versatile architect, designing houses, blocks of flats, public buildings and hospitals, and he made a significant contribution to the development of Brazilian architecture immediately after World War II. He was President of the Instituto de Arquitetos do Brasil (1953–6) and was its representative on the selection jury for the national competition to design the master plan for the new capital city of Brasília.

• Antunes Ribeiro, Paulo
  • Corrêa Lima, Attilio
  • Rebouças, Diógenes