Signature · Architecture · São Paulo
Rino Levi
He wrote in favour of modern architecture before he could build it — and later built, in Higienópolis, the building that taught São Paulo how to live in an apartment.
Who he is
Rino Levi (São Paulo, 31 December 1901 — Lençóis, Bahia, 29 September 1965) was the son of Italian immigrants and returned to Italy to train: he enrolled in 1921 at the Preparatory and Application School for Civil Architects, in Milan, and transferred in 1924 to the Rome Higher School of Architecture. Still a student, he published in O Estado de S. Paulo, in 1925, the letter Arquitetura e Estética das Cidades (“Architecture and Aesthetics of Cities”) — considered one of the first manifestos for a modern architecture in Brazil. He returned in 1926 and set up an independent practice the following year, starting with small houses and rental homes for the Italian community in São Paulo.
The office grew with two partners who joined from 1936 and stayed until the end: Roberto Cerqueira César (1917–2003) and Luiz Roberto Carvalho Franco (1926–2001) — the trio behind Prudência. It is a body of work on several fronts at once: the Edifício Columbus (1934), which broke new ground by treating all façades and not just the front one; the Cine Ufa-Palácio (1936), where acoustics and sightlines became the central problem of the design; the Instituto Sedes Sapientiae (1940–1942), today PUC-SP, where he built his first roof garden around a courtyard of tropical vegetation; and the series of “introverted residences” that begins with the architect’s own house, in 1944.
International recognition came from a project that never left the drawing board: the Maternidade Universitária of the USP School of Medicine (1944), in which he broke with existing hospital typologies by separating uses into blocks, hierarchising circulation and keeping the floor plans flexible. The project won the Award for Public Building Design at the 1st São Paulo International Biennial, in 1951, and turned him into an authority on hospital architecture — to the point that Venezuela invited him to coordinate the planning of an entire hospital network. He took part in founding MAM/SP in 1948 and served as its executive director; he ran IAB/SP between 1952 and 1955; he had been a member of CIAM since 1945; and he came third in the Brasília competition, in 1956, with a polynuclear city proposal opposed to Lucio Costa’s. He died at 63, travelling in Bahia, shortly after winning the competition for the Santo André Civic Centre. Interested in ornamental plants his whole life, he was honoured by the English botanical artist Margaret Mee, who asked that a new bromeliad collected on the Cauboris river be named after him: Neoregelia leviana.
Language
- Style: modern rationalism with technical research at the centre of the design — free, function-zoned floor plans, a modular structural grid that frees the façade from the structure, and a declared pursuit of the “synthesis of the arts”, with architecture, landscaping, furniture and murals conceived together.
- Materials and signature: ceramic tile on the façade, ground-floor pilotis, roof garden on top, movable partitions instead of masonry walls, internal courtyards with tropical vegetation. The recurring partnership with Roberto Burle Marx — gardens, tile panels and murals — is one of the most cited in Brazilian modern architecture. In some buildings the whole façade becomes a panel, as at the Banco Sul-Americano, clad in marble slabs in a geometric pattern.
- Awards: Award for Public Building Design at the 1st São Paulo International Biennial (1951), for the Maternidade Universitária of the USP School of Medicine. Work included in the Brazil Builds exhibition (MoMA, New York, 1943) and in the exhibition Warchavchik, Pilon, Rino Levi — Três Momentos da Arquitetura Paulista (1983).
Landmark works
- Edifício Prudência e Capitalização (designed in 1944, delivered in 1948), in Higienópolis, with Roberto Cerqueira César and gardens and panel by Roberto Burle Marx — a listed heritage building.
- Edifício Columbus, São Paulo.
- Cine Ufa-Palácio, later Cine Universo, in downtown São Paulo.
- Instituto de Educação Sedes Sapientiae, today PUC-SP.
- Edifício do Teatro Cultura Artística, São Paulo.
- Residência Olivo Gomes, São José dos Campos.
- Edifício do Banco Sul-Americano, on Avenida Paulista — today Itaú.
- Edifício do Hospital Albert Einstein, in Morumbi.
- Santo André Civic Centre, his last project.
