In this text, Oscar Niemeyer comments on the discomfort and misgivings that many people in the world of architecture feel in response to modern Brazilian architecture. “The traditionalists” long to preserve the sometimes age-old popular tradition, while “the rationalists” defend objective and simple solutions. Niemeyer considers such criticism respectable, even when it comes from foreign sources, and analyzes its motivations and justifications. He believes that one of architecture’s main failings is the lack of human content, and that that failing reflects a social paradox. Niemeyer is aware of the limitations of his profession, which mostly constructs bourgeois homes, government complexes, and commercial projects. The lack of a civil construction industry at the time had led to a motley assortment of formal solutions, which in turn made architecture with social content impossible; architecture was oriented, rather, towards speculation of forms based on the operative constructive systems. Like urbanist Lúcio Costa, with whom he shared a concern with the ongoing lack of interest in urban planning, Niemeyer believes that an alliance between traditional forms and modern techniques is impossible. In an attempt to eschew obsolete solutions, Niemeyer devises a new visual meaning that reflects harmonious logic and tries to avoid real estate exploitation. A staunch socialist, he looks to the Soviet case with its unwavering commitment to the collective. 

Oscar Niemeyer delivered this lecture at the Faculdade Nacional de Arquitetura (Rio de Janeiro) on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of that institution’s founding. His reflections are a response to an array of criticisms of the “formalism” that prevailed in modern Brazilian architecture, criticisms aimed, albeit indirectly, at a certain vision of design and production. Underlying the debate is the fact that Niemeyer was a member of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) and, as such, he struggled with the contradictions innate to designing projects for elites and for the bourgeois, as opposed to a proletarian State.

[For further reading, see in the ICAA digital archive also by Niemeyer “Depoimento” (doc. no. 1110334), “Forma e função na arquitetura” (doc. no. 1110349), and “Arquitetura = Architecture” (doc. no. 1110340); and by Mário Pedrosa “Niemeyer e crítica de arte” (doc. no. 1086699), “L’architecture moderne au Brésil” (doc. no. 1086489), “A cidade nova, síntese das artes” (doc. no. 1086503), “Espaço e arquitetura” (doc. no. 1087020), “Introdução à arquitetura brasileira – I; Introdução à arquitetura brasileira – II” (doc. no. 1086620), “Introdução ao tema inaugural: A cidade no’CORE’ da Cidade Universitária” (doc. no. 1110830), and “Reflexões em torno da nova capital” (doc. no. 1086728)].