Discovering A High Modernist Gem at the Foot of Rio’s Hills

After bringing modern banking to Brazil—and making a great fortune in the process—Walter Moreira Salles decided to create a showcase home. So in the late 1940s he hired architect Olavo Redig de Campos and landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx, who together created a high modernist jewel with a distinctly tropical twist. Set on an exclusive hillside in Rio de Janeiro’s leafy Gavea district, the complex possesses the geometric scruples of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, except that the vines and tendrils of the surrounding jungle seem to have worked their way into the very foundations of the builders’ plans.

As you approach the main entrance, you see only a monolithic white structure defined by sharp right angles and a large-scale rejection of purely decorative elements. However, as you round the house, your realize that one side of the U-shaped structure is in fact slightly askew, as if it has been pried open by its fertile surroundings. Inside lies a courtyard sheltering an effusion of native plants and trees. Their luxuriant greens and exuberant shapes offer a playful retort to the clean, white lines of the building that encloses them. An undulating roof floats on slender pillars, forming a fourth “wall” that both defines the courtyard and leaves it open to the adjacent pool and gardens.