Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic The best Modernist houses are usually not in cities. The sculptural Brutalist compositions, the sleek villas and the glass boxes tend to dot the exurban edges or the open countryside; places with space and land, views and a little seclusion. Except in one city, that is, one of the biggest — São Paulo. Here the most astonishing houses punctuate the urban fabric, popping up in unexpected places, down tight streets, lurking amid remnants of rainforest, visible occasionally from the always-encroaching high-rises but unnoticeable from the streets. The explosive growth of São Paulo in the late 20th century meant that it swallowed up its edges, rapaciously ingesting its legacy of Modernist houses so that many now find themselves deep inside the city itself. And what houses they are. Perhaps no other city has such an astounding layer of experimental, uplifting, inventive, challenging, often brilliant dwellings from the 1960s and 1970s. The problem, though, is twofold. First, they are fast disappearing under a carpet of new apartment blocks. Second, it can be very difficult to find and see those that do survive. An annual art event, however, is aiming to both raise consciousness of this legacy and expose those incredible and mostly unseen interiors to a more public view. And it has become a much-anticipated happening in the art-conscious city that boasts the second longest-running biennial after Venice. Aberto (“Open”) was founded by Filipe Assis, a São Paulo resident and art adviser who spotted an opening to simultaneously raise awareness of the fragility of this architectural legacy while also exhibiting art and design in dramatic, unforgettable settings. For this year’s edition, two houses associated with São Paulo’s Asian diaspora — and two influential women in Brazilian culture — are being opened up. One is the home of artist Tomie Ohtake, the other once belonged to the lesser-known but nevertheless remarkable architect Chu Ming Silveira.Over coffee in London’s King’s Cross, I asked Assis about the origins — and the ambitions — of Aberto. “It started in 2022 when [design writer and entrepreneur] Lissa Carmona found this house designed by Oscar Niemeyer in São Paulo and told me about it. I said, ‘What Niemeyer house?’ I’d never heard of it. So we contacted the owners to see if they’d be willing to do something with us and it went from there.”Niemeyer, of course, is the totemic Brazilian architect, the man most associated with the country’s reinvention as a Modernist powerhouse — the designer of key government buildings in the new capital of Brasília but also monumental structures such as the vast, S-curved Copan building and Ibirapuera Park in São Paulo. But he had only accepted a very few commissions for private houses, so the discovery of his only home for the city, a 1962 design featuring his characteristic undulating roof, organically curving spaces and a lush, tropical garden, felt like a coup.More importantly, Aberto offered an opportunity to see artworks from Brazil’s golden age of Modernism set against their natural habitat; the fluid spaces, concrete walls and supercool mid-century modern of a now much-admired era. That first edition in Niemeyer’s dramatic house even featured a rare painting by the architect himself, a striking Surrealist allegory of Brazil’s descent in dictatorship entitled “Ruins of Brasília”. “We initially thought it would be a one-off event,” Assis tells me, “an experiment. Having Niemeyer as a first was obvious, but then it seemed to make sense to have Artigas next.”It is so sad to see many of these homes being knocked down. We wanted to bring awareness to these houses and to the intimate relationship between architecture, art and designVilanova Artigas, the architect’s architect and a genius of the concrete sublime, designer of the school of architecture at the University of São Paulo (perhaps, the greatest concrete structure I have ever encountered), was a huge figure in Brazilian Modernism, though he remains far less known than, say, Niemeyer or Lina Bo Bardi. His 1974 house, chosen to accommodate Aberto’s second edition, perfectly illustrated why that influence has been so enduring; a complex, theatrical composition that is as much sculpture as architecture, a three-dimensional chess game in space and mass. This year sees a shift, from arguably Brazilian Modernism’s two great male figures to two less-recognised but also pivotal female figures. The first is the house of Ohtake, one of Brazil’s most enduring and successful artists. Born in Kyoto in 1913, Ohtake was travelling in Brazil when the second world war erupted in the Pacific and got stuck. One of her two sons, Ruy Ohtake (1938-2021) went on to become an architect, best known for the curved, portholed-concrete hulk of São Paulo’s Hotel Unique. It was Ruy who designed her house and studio in 1969-70. When I visited the house in the Campo Belo neighbourhood about 15 years ago, Tomie was still busily active, working away at a big desk in the centre of the house, the concrete walls studded with small, vivid canvases while big, sculptural pieces that looked like they’d been drawn with some weird 3D marker pen swirled through the spaces. Its walls are concrete, so you might think it would be a grey, austere space, a monkish mix of Japanese minimalism and Brazilian Brutalism — but it is exactly the opposite. There are bold splashes of primary colour, Mondrian-style, on the surfaces. And the studio, which is surmounted by an eye-shaped oculus, looks out on to a garden and pool, the light from which flickers back inside. The whole house is infused with quotes from other architects, little details half-remembered; there are concrete rainwater spouts that might be straight from Le Corbusier; wavy parapets à la Niemeyer (whose wonderful rocking lounger also featured inside, I seem to remember) and there is built-in concrete furniture and blocky bulkheads which evoke the work of Marcel Breuer. It’s a common complaint that these kinds of concrete structures make difficult spaces for display; you can’t exactly screw into the walls to hang pictures. Other surfaces might be of glass, or are undulating or exposed to natural light and fresh air. But Breuer’s building for the Whitney in New York, so successfully adopted by the Met, the Frick and now Sotheby’s, shows that for modern art, brutal is often best. After all, Lina Bo Bardi’s MASP in São Paulo, one of the world’s great Modernist museums, solved the problem by displaying pictures on perspex stands, visible from all around in a brilliant landscape of art. In Ohtake’s former home, her own vivid pieces sparkle against the concrete walls; other works, too, suddenly seem to make sense. Artists have built and inhabited these spaces and other artists are enthusiastic about responding to them. Here a “choreographed” (rather than just curated — these are works in space, after all) selection of art and design will aim to show both the works and the setting to full effect. This year, two houses feature in Aberto for the first time. The other is quite close to Ohtake’s and was designed — for herself — by Chu Ming Silveira (1941-97), an architect I only recently discovered while researching a book on street furniture. Born to a wealthy family in Shanghai, Silveira fled with them to Hong Kong after the communist advance, eventually settling in São Paulo. She became a designer for the Brazilian Telephonic Company, where she created her most familiar work, the 1971 “Orelhão” (big ear). This was a big plastic egg which acted as a phone booth (acknowledging a climate inhospitable to enclosed glass booths) and which became a familiar and beloved fixture of Brazil’s streetscapes, as recognisable as London’s red phone boxes but imbued with Brazilian modernity. Her house in the Morumbi neighbourhood, which she designed and built in the early 1970s, is U-shaped and wraps around a tropical garden and pool while its interior is dominated by a huge concrete fireplace descending from the ceiling like something from an industrial forge. Designer and Aberto curator Claudia Moreira Salles says: “These homes offer an unexpected intimacy”; they were “inspired by oriental designs with low ceilings that enhance engagement with the art . . . Our curation carefully uses architectural elements — openings, angles and natural light — to place artworks, transforming each house into a canvas for an immersive experience.” One display includes works by Anna Maria Maiolino, recently awarded the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the Venice Biennale; Pop feminist Wanda Pimentel, showing female body parts melding into domestic interiors; and two other Brazilian women artists, Lygia Clark and Lygia Pape.We have become used to seeing art in the white cube, the clinical, neutral box, or against the generic white walls of the global art fair. Aberto promises something very different. Assis tells me: “It is so sad to see many of [these homes] being knocked down. São Paulo is always changing but we could say it is . . . not getting more beautiful. We wanted to bring awareness to these houses and to the intimate relationship between architecture, art and design. To see them all together as culture is so important.” Edwin Heathcote is the FT’s architecture and design criticAberto 3, August 11-September 15; aberto.art/enFind out about our latest stories first — follow @FTProperty on X or @ft_houseandhome on Instagram
