Igor de Vetyemy

Who is Igor de Vetyemy?

Igor de Vetyemy, is a Brazilian architect, urban planner, professor and designer. Considered to be one of the exponents of avant-gard Brazilian architecture, he represented the country, together with Paulo Mendes da Rocha and others, in 2008 London Festival of Architecture. In his book "Exhibit Design: The Future", the North American Critic Georges Jacob describes de Vetyemy as "an oxford educated proponent of bio-climate architecture, who believes in surprising the senses." With a focus in Sustainable architecture and another in formal space research, the architect’s projects always intend to surprise human senses, emphasizing the sensitive character of architecture. Between 2000 and 2012, de Vetyemy studied in Rio de Janeiro, Oxford and Delft. In 2006, he became an Architecture Professor at Estácio de Sá University and, in 2008, at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Having studied with Master Oscar Niemeyer himself in the beginning of the 2000s, the influence of the "reinforced concrete poet" is clear in the first years of his career. Manuel Sanches, a Brazilian architect, sociologist and Politic Sciences professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, considers Igor de Vetyemy's work "a demonstration that Brazilian contemporary architecture is worthy of the prestige it has since Niemeyer designed Pampulha Surprising, innovative in the use of materials, in the proposal of constructive methods and, above all, in aesthetics.". But despite the strong influence of Brazilian Masters of tropical modernism, according to the British critic Richard J. Williams, Igor de Vetyemy represents a shift from that architecture in the approach to the vernacular sensuality of Brazilian architecture. In his words, "Niemeyer and his circle pretended that such commodification did not exist, but ended up, by default, endorsing it. Vetyemy recognizes the reality of the situation. Such frankness suggests a less romantic, but more realistic, future.".