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Levi, Rino
(b São Paulo, 31 Dec 1901; d São Paulo, 29 Sept 1965). Brazilian architect and teacher. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Milan (1921–2) and the School of Architecture, Rome (Dip. Arch., 1926). In 1927 he established his own office in São Paulo, at that time still a provincial city with hardly more than a million inhabitants. His first projects show a variety of influences, including Italian Rationalism and Art Deco, but he then designed the first modern block of flats in São Paulo, the Columbus Building, completed in 1932. His design had a considerable impact on the still largely horizontal urban landscape and contrasted strongly with the eclecticism of most of the larger houses in the city, winning him an immediate reputation as a modernist architect. Another important work of the 1930s was the design of a large new cinema for São Paulo. Opened in 1936, the UFA Palace, with 3100 seats, was an entirely new concept in cinema design: it had no boxes, but the whole audience was seated in the great auditorium and balcony in perfect viewing and acoustic conditions. The work received enormous critical and public acclaim and won him commissions for further cinemas including the Ipiranga (1919 seats) in São Paulo, designed in 1941. This was a more complex project incorporating the 200-room Hotel Excelsior on the narrow site; the result was an outstanding synthesis of technology, function and aesthetics.
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