The Oscar Niemeyer Auditorium

What do you see when you look around you? More specifically, what do you know of your surroundings? How well can you decipher the stories that are continuously being told through the objects that are part of your everyday life? The ingredients used to make your daily bread can tell the story of industrialised mass-production, or it may reflect small-scale businesses and an invested interest in organic farming, where products are part of a holistic worldview. The type of wine you drink can reflect the standardisation of taste as the industry became even more international, or it may tell the story of the specific circumstances – the terroir – of a particular plot of land, where the wine was produced, perhaps grapes picked by hand by the farmer himself.

The history of architecture is remarkable, as it says so much about humanity and the skills developed throughout the centuries by human minds and hands. Many who today lambast contemporary buildings for their ugliness, and who state that buildings made from concrete are soulless, seem to not know the cultural history of the material. Concrete is a composite material and the second most used after water. It has been found in Mayan ruins from 850 A.D., but it was already used in Ancient Egypt. Still today, concrete buildings made by the Romans can be found all over Europe, and in Greece, ancient concrete ruins decorate the landscape.

In more recent times, concrete has been an extremely popular material, as it is malleable both durable. It has become associated with 20th century modernist architecture, in particular brutalist buildings. Oscar Niemeyer was a Brazilian architect, today most known for designing civic buildings in the planned city Brasilia, often using concrete. The way you recognize his style is his preferred use of abstract forms and curves. In his memoirs, he summarised his view of aesthetics:

”I am not attracted to straight angles or to the straight line, hard and inflexible, created by man. I am attracted to free-flowing, sensual curves. The curves that I find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuousness of its rivers, in the waves of the ocean, and on the body of the beloved woman. Curves make up the entire Universe, the curved Universe of Einstein.”

The Oscar Niemeyer Auditorium in Ravello, above the Amalfi coast, reflects this architectural credo. Ravello is known as la città della musica, and the building was completed in 2010, only two years before Niemeyer’s passing, to provide a covered structure, allowing the extension of the town’s musical season. 

Before receiving the assignment, Niemeyer had never been to Ravello, and so the early stages of the process had to be based in his imagination of what Ravello was like, and in particular, how he could make use of the town’s spectacular geographical location, perched high on the cliffs above the coastline. To underline the beauty of this view, Niemeyer planned a panoramic terrace in front of the auditorium. The building itself has a concave shape, similar to the mandolin’s sound box, which guarantees excellent acoustics. 

The Oscar Niemeyer Auditorium

Ravello, Italy