The "flying saucer"

MAC - Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

Oscar Niemeyer (2006)

"Como é fácil explicar este projeto!
Lembro quando fui ver o local. O mar, as montanhas do Rio, uma paisagem magnífica que eu devia preservar.
E subi com o edifício, adotando a forma circular que, a meu ver, o espaço requeria.
O estudo estava pronto, e uma rampa levando os visitantes ao museu completou o meu projeto. "

Manuscrito da primeira versão do texto de 1996


The Niterói Contemporary Art Museum (Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói — MAC)was designed by the great modernist architect Oscar Niemeyer, born in Rio de Janeiro in the 1907 and still alive.
The museum has a modern structure and is cupola makes it look like the big calice of a flower("surfacing of the water surface that is an echo of the sea - as a strong stem which opens into flower, flame, cup?" sais Italo Campofiorito, architect and art critic)or a flying saucer (in Portuguese "disco voador", as Brazilian people are used to call it).

The entire structure of the building, whose cylindrical base is surrounded by a 817-square metre reflecting pool, is the perfect place where experimenting, with the camera, visual effects of its shapes and reflections on the water...


Photo available also here