He is the author of emblematic works since the mid-20th century, such as the Paulistano Athletic Club stadium in São Paulo, Brazil, from 1958, and works such as the impressive Praça do Patriarca, also in São Paulo, made between 1992-2002. He has carried out works on both sides of the Atlantic, such as the Museu dos Coches in Lisbon in 2015 or the reform for the Sesc 24 de Maio, in 2017.
His architecture seemed to resurface outside of Brazil as he was approaching 70 years old. In addition to the Pritzker, in recent years he was awarded the Golden Lion of Venice, in 2016, the Praemium Imperiale of Japan, in 2016 and the Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), in 2017.
The son of an engineer, he was born in Vitória, Espírito Santo (Brazil) in 1928. He took his degree in Rio de Janeiro before moving to São Paulo, where he consolidated his career, always linked to teaching architecture, being a professor of projects at FAU-USP between 1961 and 1999.
The same year in which he won the contest for the Brazil Pavilion for Expo'70 in Osaka, in a team with Jorge Caron, Júlio Katinsky and Ruy Ohtake, he was retaliated, preventing him from working for the Brazilian military junta in 1969, a situation of which he did not he would be rehabilitated until 1980, when he was amnestied. He practiced the dodency until 1998.
With a trajectory of extraordinary architectures, his architectural thought and discourse accompanied him at the same level. In an interview on El País, in 2015, he reflected on the city of São Paulo like this: "São Paulo should have 250 kilometers of subway and it has 50, 60, even today. Just yesterday, the newspapers reported that São Paulo sells 500 cars a day. This has been going on for a long time. If you imagine how much water a car costs or uses per day, you will see that water consumption has been growing in São Paulo for a long time."
His architecture seemed to resurface outside of Brazil as he was approaching 70 years old. In addition to the Pritzker, in recent years he was awarded the Golden Lion of Venice, in 2016, the Praemium Imperiale of Japan, in 2016 and the Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), in 2017.
The son of an engineer, he was born in Vitória, Espírito Santo (Brazil) in 1928. He took his degree in Rio de Janeiro before moving to São Paulo, where he consolidated his career, always linked to teaching architecture, being a professor of projects at FAU-USP between 1961 and 1999.
The same year in which he won the contest for the Brazil Pavilion for Expo'70 in Osaka, in a team with Jorge Caron, Júlio Katinsky and Ruy Ohtake, he was retaliated, preventing him from working for the Brazilian military junta in 1969, a situation of which he did not he would be rehabilitated until 1980, when he was amnestied. He practiced the dodency until 1998.
With a trajectory of extraordinary architectures, his architectural thought and discourse accompanied him at the same level. In an interview on El País, in 2015, he reflected on the city of São Paulo like this: "São Paulo should have 250 kilometers of subway and it has 50, 60, even today. Just yesterday, the newspapers reported that São Paulo sells 500 cars a day. This has been going on for a long time. If you imagine how much water a car costs or uses per day, you will see that water consumption has been growing in São Paulo for a long time."
When asked in 2018 about the possibility of dying, he quoted Hannah Arendt: “I am very curious. We know, right? I really like a saying that, if I'm not mistaken, is by Hannah Arendt, or she said it: 'we all know that we are going to die, however we know that we were not born to die, we were born to continue"'.
Currently his legacy as an architect, some 8,800 documents and models, related to more than 320 projects, is in the Casa da Arquitectura, a Portuguese institution based in Matosinhos, near Porto, which is dedicated to preserving and disseminating architecture.
