If one were to think “Brazilian 20th-century modernist genius”, one might alight on Oscar Niemeyer, but see also the Italian émigré Lina Bo Bardi, who developed an Italian-style modernism with a Brazilian accent in her adopted homeland. Her Teatro Oficina, in São Paulo, was named by this paper as the best theatre in the world.
Five hundred miles away is one of my favourite residential buildings, A la Ronde; an eccentric 16-sided home in Exmouth, Devon. It was designed in 1796 by Jane and Mary Parminter (two “spinster” cousins, in the words of the National Trust) and relative John Lowder. The cousins, who were not professionals, had been inspired by their Grand Tour of Europe (an unusual undertaking for women at the time) and, in particular, the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy. The critic Lucinda Lambton described the cottage orné with Byzantine inflection as embodying “a magical strangeness that one might dream of only as a child”.
