Oscar Niemeyer’s Iconic Building Turns Into Homeless People’s Toilet

The rising sun reflected in the curves, marbles, and glass bricks of a grand modernist building, like every work of the famous architect Oscar Niemeyer, that’s how the former Banco Boavista building, which embellishes Praça Pio X, at number 118, in Downtown Rio, should be perceived every morning. But that’s not what’s been happening. The sinuous part of the building’s external facade has been accumulating huge amounts of feces and urine from homeless people, even with portable toilets almost always installed nearby. The building is in the vicinity of the beautiful and historic Candelária Church, where today one can only walk by with a nose clip.

The building, dated 1946, a pre-Pampulha period, still has a mosaic panel of Paulo Werneck tile and has been listed by the Rio de Janeiro State Cultural Heritage Institute (Inepac) since 1992, but so much grandeur has not spared it from neglect and filth that took over the region since it became a paradise for the so-called “real-world zombies”: crack addicts. “Terrible this. It’s part of our history that has turned into a public restroom for beggars,” complains Valéria Andrade, 67.

The building is close to Candelária, where a large part of the city’s homeless people sleep, and also acts as a commercial and cultural cradle of the city. Opened in 1948, after calculation by engineer Joaquim Cardozo, the structure still features, on the west facade, adjustable wooden brise-soleil and horizontal concrete brises on the north facade, similar to those of the Ministry of Education headquarters, also in Downtown Rio.

Despite the repeated incident, Comlurb clarifies in a statement that it performs hydraulic cleaning with reuse water three times a day in the entire area around Praça Pio X. It seems they will have to double the goal.