ESPASSO

"Paulistano" armchair, comprised of a single bent piece of steel with a canvas or leather cover is outstanding in its comfort and visual lightness. They once were part of the living room of the Athletic Club, in São Paulo, and have been included in collection of the Museum of Modern Art, in New York.

Paulo Mendes da Rocha is a true reference of Brazilian contemporary architecture. For the last 50 years, the architect has created buildings of monumental scale using simple forms and materials like steel and concrete. He is part of the so-called Brutalist movement, characterized by a use of prefabricated concrete slabs, and is well known for his massive Brazilian Sculpture Museum in São Paulo.

The architect was born in Vitória, Brazil in 1928. He was influenced by Oscar Niemeyer, Affonso Eduardo Reidy and João Vilanova Artigas and along with those architects created a very international style but which remained strongly Brazilian in character. The first Brazilian to win the prestigious Pritzker prize in 2006 since Oscar Niemeyer in 1988, Mendes da Rocha is a firm believer in the humanistic principle that design should be used to simply improve people’s lives.