MAM Rio
Rio de Janeiro (RJ), 1956 – 1960
Adequacy | 1969
Burle Marx office
Landscape architect: Roberto Burle Marx
Associated architects: Maurício César Monte, Júlio César Pessolani Zavala, Fernando Táboa Pena and John Godfrey Stoddart
Collaborating architects (1969): Andrés Chiriboga and J. Maria de Araújo Souza
Architect: Affonso Eduardo Reidy
Architect: Bandarovsky Izidor
Federal listing, as part of Flamengo Park
MAM Rio’s building, designed by Affonso Eduardo Reidy, and its 40,000 square metre garden were part of a plan of modernisation and urbanisation of the city, which implied the destruction of hills and the creation of land fills to connect the centre of the city to its south zone. In this context, they are emblems of a specific project for the country, which used architecture to to affirm the idea of progress and shape a national identity. In dialogue with modern art, the landscaping of Burle Marx and his collaborators developed, in the new, flat land, a composition of geometric flower beds shaped by vegetation of different colours, volumes and textures, and by stones. There is also a terrace garden, with orthogonal flowerbeds and a black-and-white stone floor with geometric pattern , and, on the ground floor, a small, partly internal courtyard with a water mirror. In the main access of the museum, a square composed of three water mirrors and a floor design with white and red Portuguese stones was designed.
The project, authored by the Burle Marx Office, crosses the pilotis, interconnecting both sides of the construction by the wave pattern on the floor: on the one hand, the city; on the other, the Guanabara Bay. The sculpture garden, also known as the “garden of stones”, and the large extension of lawn – designed with two variations of grass, dark and light green, which recreate the wave pattern of Portuguese mosaics – are meant to be spaces for leisure and outdoor activities, and would be extended with the construction of Flamengo Park in the following years.
