Signature · Architecture · São Paulo
Luís Roberto Carvalho Franco
He joined as an intern at 23 and left half a century later as managing partner: the third name of the Rino Levi practice and one of the leading figures of the São Paulo school.
Who he was
Luís Roberto Carvalho Franco (Araras, 14 August 1926 — São Paulo, 19 March 2001) grew up in Araraquara and graduated in the first class of the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at Mackenzie, in 1951. Still a student, in 1949, he joined Rino Levi‘s practice as an intern; he was hired as an architect as soon as he graduated and became the firm’s managing partner, where he stayed for fifty years, from 1951 until his own death, in 2001. After Levi’s death, in 1965, the practice carried on under his leadership and that of Roberto Cerqueira César.
He was one of the founders of the architecture magazine Pilotis (1950) and, in the same year he graduated, shared the 1st Student Prize of the 1st São Paulo Biennial (1951) with Carlos Millan. In 1956 he joined the team that took third place in the Brasília Master Plan competition. He taught at FAU-USP between 1958 and the mid-1960s — first in Architectural Composition, then in Industrial Design. In 1977 he co-authored, with Cerqueira César and Paulo Bruna, Área da Luz: renovação urbana em São Paulo, a study that became a reference on the Luz district.
His output is the institutional, urban and industrial face of the São Paulo school: hospitals, banks, schools, factories and urban plans, with an emphasis on prefabrication and construction rationalisation.
Language
- Style: the constructive rationalism of the São Paulo school — explicit structure, modulation, and the building resolved as a system before being resolved as a form.
- Materials and signature: concrete and precast elements, with research into industrialising construction to reduce timelines; in urban works, the ground floor treated as a transition between building and pavement.
- Awards: 1st Student Prize at the 1st São Paulo Biennial (1951), with Carlos Millan.
Landmark works
- Edifício SESI-FIESP, on Avenida Paulista — with Rino Levi, 1969–1979.
- Hospital Albert Einstein building, in Morumbi.
- Banco Sul-Americano headquarters, on Avenida Paulista — today the Itaú building.
- Faculdade de Medicina do ABC (1967), in Santo André — with Roberto Cerqueira César.
- Centro Cívico de Santo André.
- Colégio Miguel de Cervantes and the Instituto de Engenharia headquarters, São Paulo.
- Morumbi Square business complex, São Paulo.
- Mitra Arquidiocesana headquarters, on Praça da Sé.
Signatures in the portfolio
No development in the collection carries this signature yet — it is here for the weight of the name in São Paulo's high end.
