Roberto Cerqueira César

Who he is

Roberto Cerqueira César (São Paulo, 31 January 1917 — 25 June 2003) trained as an engineer-architect at the Escola Politécnica of the University of São Paulo. He joined Rino Levii‘s office in 1941, became a partner of the firm in 1945 and stayed there for half a century — he is one of the architects who introduced modern architecture to São Paulo. He was also the only remaining signatory of the founding minutes of the São Paulo Department of the Institute of Architects of Brazil, in 1943, and one of the authors of the project for the IAB-SP headquarters.

In his early years alongside Levi, he signed the projects that would establish the firm’s reputation: the Edifício Prudência e Capitalizaçãoi (designed in 1944, delivered in 1948), the Teatro Cultura Artística (1950) and, in 1944, the Maternidade Universitária of the USP School of Medicine — never built, but awarded Public Building Design Project at the 1st São Paulo Biennial, in 1951. With Rino Levi, he won third place in the Brasília Pilot Plan competition (1956), with a polynuclear city proposal. In the 1960s, now alongside Luís Roberto Carvalho Francoi, he designed the Faculdade de Medicina do ABC (1967), in Santo André, and the Fiesp headquarters on Avenida Paulistai (1969).

His second career was public and perhaps longer-lasting. A professor at FAU-USP from 1954 to 1967 — head of the Department of Composition in 1963 — and a visiting professor at the FAU of UnB, he wrote Sunday columns in O Estado de S. Paulo from 1958 to 1975 warning of the effects of the capital’s disorderly expansion: transport, housing, the cost of services, property speculation. He proposed the creation of the city’s planning bodies and later chaired them: he was the first president of EMURB, the first president of COGEP (later SEMPLA) and the first State Secretary for Metropolitan Affairs of São Paulo (1975–1979). From that period come the Zoning Law, the Expressway Plan, the PDDI, the Nova Paulista and the Watershed Protection Law. After leaving the Rino Levi office, he founded, with Paulo Bruna, Paulo Bruna Arquitetos Associados, in 1992.

Language

• Style: technically rooted modern rationalism, inherited and practised within Rino Levi’s firm — floor plans zoned by function, a modular structure, and the conviction that a project is resolved in the drawing, from the initial concept down to the detail. Those who worked with him say he drew everything: acoustics, lighting design, seat calculations, the bathroom.
• Materials and signature: precast elements and constructive rationalisation, especially in the industrial production of the 1990s; the ground floor treated as an intermediate area between the building and the city — at the Fiesp headquarters, the volume steps back at each storey, creating the sloped plane that became the building’s signature.
• Awards: Award for Public Building Design Project at the 1st São Paulo Biennial (1951, for the FMUSP Maternidade Universitária); Grand Prize of the 3rd São Paulo International Architecture Biennial (1997) for the Ática Shopping Cultural, in Pinheirosi, and an honourable mention at the Quito Biennial (1998); the Valorização da Construção Civil award (2003).

Landmark works

• Edifício Prudência e Capitalizaçãoi, in Higienópolisi — with Rino Levii, gardens and panel by Roberto Burle Marxi; a listed heritage building.
• Edifício do Teatro Cultura Artística, São Paulo.
• Edifício do Hospital Albert Einstein, in Morumbii, and Hospital do Câncer.
• Cine Ipiranga, São Paulo.
• Fiesp headquarters, on Avenida Paulistai.
• Edifício do Banco Sul-Americano, on Avenida Paulistai — today Itaú.
• Santo André Civic Centre.
• IAB-SP headquarters, a listed heritage building.
• Ática Shopping Cultural, in Pinheirosi.