Costa and Niemeyer combined their ideas for the Brazil Pavilion at the World’s Fair in 1939. Based off of the Ministry of Education building that they had just designed, the pavilion’s overall form was a 3 story L-shaped parti suspended on a series of steel pilotis.²⁸ The long side of the building was curved, organic in nature and 70 meters long with 15 equally spaced bays that faced an organic shaped central garden and courtyard designed by Roberto Burle Marx. Similar to Neimeyer’s overall design approach, the geometry of the site influenced this “twisting and stretching” of the form.²⁹ On the upper floor, the long form housed and enclosed the main gallery space, while the short end acted as a portico that connected this gallery space to an auditorium. This shorter side was the main entrance to the building, and the viewer reached the second level via a large, curving ramp that transported the people from the street level to the entry portico that framed a second story view of the interior courtyard.³⁰ The courtyard not only contained Marx’s garden, but other “tropical” exhibits, including a lily pond, snake pit, orchid house, aquarium and aviary.³¹

Another main aspect of the building design was the porous facade. The ground floor, which housed a restaurant, dance floor and coffee bar had several different entry points along the long edge of the street that allowed people to walk directly to the garden. In a typical Brazilian fashion, this ground floor was open to the elements. Curved, opaque walls with raised lettering framed these entry points, as well as hid the back of house operations from visitors.³² The upper floor facade was punctured only at the short side and contained one large opening for the portico and a glazed wall for the offices. The glazed wall was affixed with a large metallic brise-soleil and along with the main ramp, serves to denote the entry to the pavilion. Even though it is an innovative work of modernist architecture, the building design is more sophisticated than the simple adaptation of the modernist style. Costa and Neimeyer collaborated with and integrated art, painting and sculpture to communicate cultural ideas in tandem with the architecture. One can begin to see the pavilion transcends into a work of plastic integration.

Main Exhibition Gallery. Photographer unknown.
1939. Print, Arqtexto no. 16.