Formerly Brasil based, London trained architect and writer. Louis studied Political Science before moving into Architecture. Louis has been studying, thinking and writing about Brazil for over 15 years and spent a period living in Buenos Aires in 2002. Specialist areas of interest include Brazilian development, urbanism and architecture.
An article published by German news network DW has catalogued Brazil’s descent into the abyss following president Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment. So far, very few high profile supporters of the 2016 coup have acknowledged that it was a mistake, nor the damage it caused – economically, socially, and to Brazil’s democratic institutions. On August 31st 2016 […]
Update March 2022: With Lula’s freedom to run for president, the “LulaMeter” is back. By Louis Smith “A metalworker with a Socialist background had to become President of Brasil to make Capitalism work. If you look at Brasil’s banks, they have never made as much money as under my government” Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, […]
SESC Pompeia is a cultural centre in the east zone of São Paulo, designed by the architect Lina Bo Bardi, and opened in 1982. The site is one of the world’s great democratic spaces in a city often lacking in them. The level of thoughtfulness and sense of place is on par with great buildings like […]
Brasil today sits at a rare turning point for any country. Despite the furore surrounding the Petrobras scandal and the water crisis in São Paulo there are far more pressing issues that underpin whether Brasil can make the very difficult jump from middle income to rich, emerging to developed country, in the near future. Brasil […]
Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho, known simply as Oscar Niemeyer was born December 15 1907. Niemeyer’s work dominated Brasil’s 20th Century architecture and still casts a long shadow over the profession. The government buildings of Brasília were designed at the peak of his creativity, Brasil Wire editor Louis Smith shares photographs taken during a […]
Podem me prender, podem me bater / Podem até deixar-me sem comer / Que eu não mudo de opinião They could arrest me, they could beat me / They could even leave me starving / I wouldn’t change my opinion Opinião – Nara Leão 1964 In March 2014 a group of students at the School […]
Lina Bo Bardi is revered in Brasil as one of the country’s greatest architects and December sees the 100th anniversary of her birth. Her work and ideas even transcend the shadow of Brasil’s titan of Modernism, Oscar Niemeyer; she is truly an architect’s architect. Yet the greatest oddity in a country often criticised for being […]
Neither is it the right angle, which attracts me, nor the straight line, hard, inflexible, made by men. What attracts me is the curve, free and sensual, the curve I find in the mountains of my country, in the winding course of its rivers, in the waves of the sea, in the body of the […]
Dilma Rousseff is often regarded as a great unknown outside of Brasil but she has been an active force in official politics since the mid 1970s when she attended meetings organised by the only opposition party allowed by the then Military Dictatorship, the Democratic Movement Party (MDB), while studying Economics at the Federal University of […]
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