For a long time, I have awaited the perfect light to film the Itamaraty Palace, Brasília, Planet Earth.

It was bestowed on me by today’s morning. A day of July, at the Brazilian Central Plateau, the sun not so oblique as in the solstice, and yet not in the zenith to disregard the texture of the apparent reinforced concrete.

“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever”: Oscar Niemeyer’s masterpiece – or so I figure – a companion to the Parthenon, Sainte Chapelle, Ronchamp – I set loose my memories and affections.

(Curiously enough: the Itamaraty is a secular associate to three temples separated by millennia).

In the sound track, the building scintillates as Calisto, Planet Jupiter’s glittering satellite, inspiration to the piece by Carlos Walter Soares (1970-), from 2011, composed in partnership and dedicated to Joana Holanda, who plays it on the piano (CD “Piano Presente”, Sesc, 2012). The second segment (interior spaces) is accompanied by the softness of Confidências (1913), by Ernesto Nazareth (1863-1934), played by Maria Teresa Madeira on the piano (CD collection “Ernesto Nazareth Integral”, 2016).

Perfection, video by Frederico de Holanda

about the autor

Frederico de Holanda is professor (architectural theory and history) at Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Universidade de Brasília – UnB.