The Italian diplomatic headquarters for the new federal capital of Brazil is one of the last works that testify to the international activity of Studio Nervi. Entrusted directly to Pier Luigi by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Pietro Nenni, on 1 July 1969, it was only completed in June 1977, and tested in November 1978, a few weeks before his death which was shortly followed by that of his son Antonio.
The composition is divided into a main volume, housing the chancellery and the ambassador's residence, and a secondary body, with a cross plan, for the officials' flats.
Typical of Nervi's work, the main block of completed form, neither iterable nor modifiable, has a double symmetry and is configured as a 'palace' modernly transfigured through the structural energy of reinforced concrete and the expressiveness of the exposed face.
The pivotal structural element is the tetrapod, an octagonal pillar that opens with four arms and on which rests the plate that contains the offices and living quarters. The configuration of the tetrapod confirms Nervi's habit, but also that of all post-war Italian architecture, of designing accomplished structural forms, contrary to any attempt at standardisation. From the intrados emerge the main ribs, which, intertwining at 45 degrees, draw rhomboid shapes with rounded edges.
The truncated pyramid roof of the ballroom, on the other hand, bears the imprint of Nervi's construction history: the ferroconcrete planks, the hallmark of all his works, even when the radical change of the construction site no longer justified them, and the sloping supports, a further version of the multi-section pillar.
It is not an easy building site, both because of the distance and because it is managed by a local company that is not sufficiently specialised in the realisation of the fair-faced reinforced concrete, on which the material enhancement of the work is played out. Only the assiduous presence on site of the firm's engineers and Nervi & Bartoli's technicians will solve the main difficulties.
