Mendes da Rocha, the last great name in Brazilian architecture, has died

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha, winner of the Pritzker Prize in 2006, died Sunday, May 23, at age 92 in São Paulo, where he was hospitalized, his relatives confirmed.

Mendes da Rocha, considered the last great name in Brazilian architecture, was suffering from lung cancer.

The architect was born in 1928 in the Brazilian city of Vitória, in the state of Espírito Santo (northeast), and studied architecture and urban planning at Mackenzie University. He was married and had six children,

He began his career in the 1950s and was part of the movement that was then considered avant-garde in São Paulo, the so-called Paulista School.

His work is extensive, and he holds numerous awards, among them the Pritzker, considered the “Nobel Prize” of architecture, awarded by the Hyatt Foundation of the United States, which recognized his “profound understanding of space and scale with the great variety of buildings he has designed.”

Mendes da Rocha thus became the second Brazilian to receive the award, after Oscar Niemeyer (1988), creator of Brasilia’s main public buildings and considered one of the fathers of modern architecture.

He also won the Mies van der Rohe Award for Latin American Architecture in 2000 for the renovation and adaptation of the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo building, one of his most emblematic works.

Among his best-known works are also the Gymnasium of the Club Athletico Paulistano – his first work -, the Brazilian Museum of Sculpture, or the Official Brazilian Pavilion of the 1970 Expo in Osaka, which was demolished at the end of the event.

The  headquarters of the  Federation of Industries of São Paulo (FIESP), located in central Paulista Avenue, as well as the emblematic Forma furniture store in São Paulo, are considered icons of his relationship with architecture.

In 2015 his only project abroad came off the drawing board: the new National Museum of Cars, in Lisbon, capital of Portugal.

Mendes da Rocha described architecture as “… the transformation of nature, a total fusion of science, art, and technology in a sublime statement of human dignity and intelligence, with the establishments we build for ourselves…”.