Modernist Stone Garden, Rio de Janeiro, 1960s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Modernist Stone Garden, Rio de Janeiro, 1960s — Archive & Atlas

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Modernist Stone Garden, Rio de Janeiro, 1960s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1960–1969

AA-2026-222959

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Someone in the Brazilian parks department in the 1960s decided that concrete pillars and river stones could be arranged to look like nature had simply lost an argument with an architect. The spiky agave and sansevieria plants poke through the gaps as if placed by a committee that had read about landscaping but never actually done any gardening themselves, which, in the era of Burle Marx's tropical modernism, was often close to the truth.

In the distance a slender monument rises above the palm trees, the kind of civic sculpture cities built in the 1960s to prove they had both money and modern taste, usually at the same time and for the same photo opportunity. The mountains behind it look unimpressed, having seen the skyline change shape more often than the municipal budget allowed for maintenance.

The stones in the foreground are arranged with the confident irregularity of a design meant to look accidental, which is the hardest kind of order to fake convincingly. Nobody in 1960s Rio seems to have doubted that a public plaza could double as abstract sculpture, and for a while, it apparently did.

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