29 - PCF Headquarters

29 - PCF Headquarters - Oscar Niemeyer - 1980

2 Pl. du Colonel Fabien, Paris

Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida de Niemeyer Soares is one of the most famous Brazilian architects and designers. His work, which is closely related to the International Style movement, holds a major place in the history of modern architecture. As a communist, Niemeyer fled to France in 1964, after his government had been overthrown by a right-wing dictatorship. The French Communist Party then commissioned him to design the party’s headquarters.

Niemeyer’s final design was a vertical serpentine block of offices coupled with vertical service cores in two separate towers alongside a series of subterranean public spaces to preserve the openness of the site rising above the ground. The curving six-story structure is supported on five pairs of columns that not only bear the weight of the cantilevered plates but incorporate crucial service ducts as well. A spiral staircase leads to the expansive main dining room on the sixth floor with a view of the city. The entire secretariat block is wrapped in a tinted glass curtain wall designed by Jean Prouvé. This emphasis on verticality ultimately enhanced Niemeyer’s gestural forms. Beneath the vertical block are exhibition spaces, a reception hall, lounge, bookshop, conference rooms, and a 450set auditorium carved into the site to prevent its extension into the open public space. Only a portion of the irregular dome extends above ground providing the iconic white mound. Inside the 11 meter-high dome, the auditorium’s ceiling is clad in thousands of light-diffusing anodized aluminum blades.

Through opening the ground plane, Niemeyer intended to avoid excessive occupation of the site and maximize green space for the city. Niemeyer’s guiding principle for the project was carefully considered balance between open space and architectural volume, he wanted to show the importance of the harmony between the two. His’s preoccupation with formal unity resulted in a work that seemingly transcended political divides. Right-wing president G. Pompidou called it “the only good thing those Commies had ever done.” 138