Travel about 120km north of Rio de Janeiro and greeting you is one of the most harmonious alignments of untamed nature and scenery deftly created by human hands you are likely to find in Brazil. Located in the mountainous municipality of Petrópolis, Casa Cavanelas is the product of two great inventive spirits and longtime collaborators: the architect Oscar Niemeyer and the landscape designer Roberto Burle Marx.
More than 20 years ago, I visited this extraordinary house and garden with my father, the architect Haruyoshi Ono, who was a partner and associate of Burle Marx for almost three decades. The fraternal rapport between them allowed me to observe their working processes on several occasions during my youth, often during lively weekends at Burle Marx’s home in Barra de Guaratiba or on visits to his design studio. Through this I became aware of the importance of landscape design, which would later come to be my own passion and chosen profession.
The house’s first owner, Edmundo Cavanelas, was one of the engineers responsible for the road that links the states of Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais. He bought the site in the early 1950s to build a summer home in a region known for its pleasant climate. Photographs from the time show that the 210,000sq m of land no longer had its original vegetation – probably a legacy of its days as a plantation and cattle ranches. Cavanelas was very pleased to reunite Niemeyer and Burle Marx in this place, especially at such an exciting period in Brazilian culture. The two men had first collaborated at the ministry of education and health in Rio. Architects led by Lúcio Costa, including Niemeyer, worked on the building, while Burle Marx oversaw the landscaping. Then in the 1940s they collaborated again on the Pampulha complex at Belo Horizonte in Minas Gerais, and in the 1960s and 70s on the building of the new capital, Brasilia.
Cavanelas granted both men carte blanche to construct an architectural and horticultural jewel in the middle of a valley, one that still enjoys international admiration today. On arrival, the visitor is met by a row of imperial palms (Roystonea oleracea) lining a small grassy drive, which immediately creates a sense of rhythm and order. The surrounding landscape is predominantly green forest, which seems to envelop the entire site, and is framed by a distant chain of rocky hills. One of the first features to catch the eye is the mirror-like water of the lake running alongside the approach, which changes colour according to the time of year. In the rainy season, it takes on a dark chestnut hue because of the type of soil coursing through the area; in the dry season it stays still and green, becoming a reflector of the sky and forest.
A garden off fluid lines and curving flower beds lies in front of Niemeyer’s low-slung, pavilion-like house. The planting mixes vibrant colours; the eye is drawn to the details. Along the grassy slopes, Monstera deliciosa, Dracaena and pampas grass break up the monotony of the green tapestry. Closer to the dwelling are undulating flower beds in paler shades of green (Duranta repens ‘Aurea’) and violet (Iresine herbstii), as well as taller plants such as Canna indica ‘Purpurea’ and Lagerstroemia indica ‘Rosea’. Typically for a Burle Marx design, the garden features numerous plants that are indigenous to the region. In this case, bromeliads such as Vriesia imperialis are mixed in with agaves, to create a composition of contrasting bulks, textures and shades. Here, the diverse elements that make up the space combine to stimulate the senses.
The house itself contrasts with the garden, its orthogonal geometry emphasised by Niemeyer’s precise line. The elegant, uncluttered construction consists of a large sweep of gently con- cave roof, which sits atop a glass-walled living space with views of the garden from all angles, and a smaller wing that contains the utilities. To the rear is a lower, more symmetrical garden edged by a row of smaller but no less important palms, Arecastrum romanzoffianum, which are native to the Atlantic Forest, and featuring a blue rectangle of swimming pool. Most remarkable is a chromatic caper of a chequered pattern of grass in two shades of green (formerly Stenotaphrum secundatum, today Axonopus compressus ‘Variegatum’), as well as the flower beds that follow the same square/orthogonal pattern with purple-and-yellow-coloured plants (Iresine herbstii and Helichrysum petiolatum, later replaced by Hemerocallis flava). The effect of this mix of perspectives is a play on the relationships of scale.
Casa Cavanelas’s architecture and landscape are in constant dialogue with the natural setting. (As Burle Marx himself put it: ‘Garden is order. It is impulse ordered.’) Visitors who stray into the surrounding forest, replanted by the present owner over the past two decades, are enveloped in intense green and surprised by occasional glimpses of garden through gaps in the dense foliage.
This is an especially emblematic work by Burle Marx and marks a change of phase in his career. To this point, his landscape designs had been characterised by their experimentation with freer and more organic forms – possibly a result of his academic training in the visual arts. From the 1950s, however, his interest in geometric and Cartesian figures came to the fore, allowing a more particular dialogue with the orthogonal nature of architecture. He continued to use both modes, the organic and the orthogonal, throughout his career, but the garden at Casa Cavanelas was a crucial first foray into this expanded visual repertoire.
In some ways, it also reflects the bright and expansive personality of the Roberto Burle Marx I knew. His designs have beguiled generations with their emphasis on fluid, generous spaces through which to move and socialise. Visit Casa Cavanelas even briefly and you might easily intuit his intent to improve individual and collective wellbeing. He was a master of singular elements – water, vegetation, topography, wind, light, climate – and stayed engaged ethically and aesthetically with the wider landscape. The passage of time constantly completes and renews his work.
Burle Marx died in 1994, but left behind a vast archive of over 120,000 items, including projects, plans, photographs, scale models and documents collected over a seven-decade career. When my father joined the Escritório Burle Marx in the 1960s, part of his role was to co-ordinate and preserve these materials. The present generation of landscape architects working at the escritório, myself included, has assumed the task of looking after this rich history by founding a non-profit institute in his name.
The garden at Casa Cavanelas is a singular example of the philosophy and work of Burle Marx, showing us how his art remains timeless, a source of inspiration across the generations. This is exactly how the man himself would have liked it. As he said: ‘Our attitude also has a projective meaning, in relation to the future, to show that there was someone concerned about leaving a valuable legacy in aesthetics and usefulness for posterity’.
A version of this article originally appeared in the July 2022 issue of ‘The World of Interiors’. For more details, visit institutoburlemarx.org
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