A comprehensive consideration of the architecture and interiors of the great contemporary Brazilian architect, designer, and filmmaker. Weinfeld is renowned for work that exudes the power of classical modernism while being completely of its own moment. Biophilic design, an approach to architecture that emphasizes and embraces the natural world and its restorative qualities, is at its heart, allowing for a gorgeous aesthetics while also celebrating nature. Here, design offers sublime symbiosis where natural world and that which is human-made serve as complements. Above all, the buildings are easy to be in, inviting, and elegant—and all without ostentatiousness.
Featured projects span four decades in the architect’s ongoing quest for beauty and his deeply felt devotion to modernist principles, including the Jardim Building, overlooking New York’s High Line; his reinvention of the Four Seasons restaurant in the iconic Seagram Building; La Petite Afrique in Monte Carlo, with its deep plant-studded balconies; and the monolithic Fasano Hotel in São Paulo, among many others.
With work ranging from residential towers and houses to bars, hotels, restaurants, equestrian centres, and bookstores, to name only a few of the types at which Weinfeld excels, he is most concerned with how people feel in his spaces, and designs with the ultimate goal that any given place—house interior, courtyard garden, or simple hall between rooms—evoke happiness and pleasure.
Isay Weinfeld is a filmmaker, designer of interiors and furniture, and head architect at his eponymous firm, founded in 1973. Oscar Riera Ojeda is an editor and designer based in the United States, China, and Argentina. Born in 1966, in Buenos Aires, he moved to Boston in 1990. Since then he has designed, edited, and published over two hundred architecture, design, and photography books. His work has received many international awards, in-depth reviews, and citations. He is a regular contributor and consultant for several publications in the field. He is currently the director of the eponymous boutique publishing architecture house Oscar Riera Ojeda Publishers. Aaron Betsky is a critic, curator, educator, lecturer and author of more than a dozen books. He is director of Architecture + Design at Virginia Tech. Previously, he was dean of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture and, after independence, president of the School of Architecture at Taliesin. James Moore McCown is a writer and marketing consultant based in Boston. At present he writes for architecture and design magazines including Metropolis, Architectural Record, Architect's Newspaper, New England Home, Art New England and other regional and national publications. James is the co-author of Rizzoli's The Home Office as well as Architecture in Detail: Colors and Architecture in Detail: Spaces. Fernando Guerra is an architectural photographer based in Lisbon, Portugal.