Carmen Miranda Museum

Flamengo Park stretches out along the bay in front of us, but this curious circular concrete pavilion was never meant to celebrate Hollywood glamour. When modernist architect Affonso Eduardo Reidy drew up plans for it in the 1960s, he designed it as a sheltered recreation pavilion for neighborhood children.

It is a compact, twenty-two-meter ring of raw concrete, pleated around an open central patio that pulls daylight right down to the floor. Reidy was a brutalist purist. When cultural leader Ricardo Cravo Albin later spoke with him about finding a home for Carmen Miranda's legacy, Reidy warned him that this building functioned like a strict architectural spaceship. In his eyes, the structure lived by the rule that less is more, and cramming it full of exhibits would destroy its harmony.

When the state finally moved her collection here in the 1970s, Reidy's collaborator Ulisses Burlamaqui took on the challenge. Instead of knocking down the exterior walls or dividing the interior into standard museum galleries, he kept the circular folds intact.

The result is a strange, brilliant contrast. Outside sits the severe, restrained geometry of Brazilian modernism, while packed inside is the glittering, exuberant wardrobe of the most theatrical performer Brazil ever sent into the world.