Museu de Arte Moderna

The Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio looks like the air itself carved through the concrete. It’s bold, brutalist, and somehow still breezy, like the building itself is pausing to admire the ocean.

Designed by Affonso Eduardo Reidy, the museum is all long horizontal lines and muscular grace, lifted just enough off the ground to feel like it’s hovering. In the middle of all that cool modernism, a spiral staircase unfurls like the building is letting out a held breath. It’s a delicate waft of air in the middle of the heavy architecture, a swirl of motion and rhythm that feels almost improvised, like Eduardo Reidy sketched it in mid-dance. This kind of contrast plays through the entire museum: weight and lift, roughness and elegance, art and sky.