Flávio de Aquino interviewed Swiss artist and architect Max Bill during his visit to Brazil. In the interview, Bill expresses his reservations about the Ministério da Educação e Saúde (MES) building—a watershed in Brazilian modern architecture built in 1936 on the basis of the ideas of Le Corbusier, who contributed to the design. Bill’s far-reaching criticism addresses topics, such as the lack of human scale; he is not convinced by the [functional] layout and he believes that the tiles, which were designed by Candido Portinari, are useless (Bill opposed mural painting in modern architecture). Bill asserts that designer Oscar Niemeyer’s tendency toward individualism to the detriment of social function is evident in the Pampulha complex on the outskirts of Belo Horizonte. He is a staunch supporter of the logical and functional form; one of his essential tenets is that both art and architecture should reflect their times, in a natural fashion. Paradoxically, at the end of the interview Bill affirms the importance of modern Brazilian architecture while surreptitiously implying that it illustrates the contradictions innate to poor and outdated instruction in architecture.

In 1951, Max Bill was awarded the Grand Prize at the Primeira Bienal do Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo for his work Dreiteilige Einheit [Tripartite Unity, 1948–51], which is bound to his notion of Die gute form [good form] based on three elements: Schönheit, Form, und Funktion [beauty, form, and function]. Two years later, Max Bill visited Brazil at the invitation of the Ministério das Relações Exteriores. This interview by architect and art critic Flávio de Aquino was first published in the popular weekly Manchete, and a few months later, in the journal HABITAT. Both the interview and the press conference that Bill gave at the Faculdade de Arquitetura da Universidade de São Paulo sparked widespread controversy among Brazilian architects because Bill questioned their commitment to the logic of the creation of form and reminded them of the “social function” of architecture.

On the debate sparked by Bill’s visit, see Eduardo Corona, “O testamento tripartido de Max Bill” (ICAA digital doc. no. 1110330); Lucio Costa, “Max Bill e a arquitetura brasileira vistos por Lucio Costa: oportunidade perdida” (doc. no 1110331); and “O arquiteto, a arquitetura, a sociedade” by Bill himself (doc. no. 1110329).