Anecdotes, photos and drawings: Swiss architect Martino Pedrozzi spent two months working in the office of Oscar Niemeyer, who was 91 at the time – and recounts his experiences in the heart-warming little book Mini Cigarillos, published by Lars Müller Publishers. Anneke Bokern has read it for us.
Anneke Bokern
Mini Cigarillos: Working with Oscar Niemeyer for Two Months, Martino Pedrozzi, Lars Müller Publishers, Zurich 2025, → jetzt bestellen
Lasting impression
Comprehensive, profound, opulent – these are adjectives one often comes across in reviews of architecture books. But can an architecture book also be moving? Mini Cigarillos – Working with Oscar Niemeyer for Two Months proves that it can. In 1999, the Swiss architect Martino Pedrozzi (born 1971) spent two months working in the studio of the then 91-year-old Niemeyer on Copacabana. Not a long time, but it left a lasting impression on the young architect – and has given us this heart-warming little book. Having already been published in Italian in 2020 and in Portuguese in 2022, it is now available in English from Lars Müller Publishers.
© Martino Pedrozzi
Encounters with the master
In Mini Cigarillos, Pedrozzi recounts his encounters with the master, beginning with an unsuccessful first application. Three years later, he sent a second application, accompanied by a letter of recommendation from Kenneth Frampton, which was rewarded with a personally signed invitation to Rio. Thus began the little adventure that Pedrozzi brings to life for us over 52 pages through short anecdotes, photographs and drawings.
© Page 47 of Stamo, Papadaki, The Work of Oscar Niemeyer, (New York: Reinhold,1950)
Stories
Of course, there is a story behind the title Mini Cigarillos too. Shortly before his departure, Pedrozzi bought two boxes of Davidoff Mini Cigarillos at the airport because he had seen them in a photograph of Niemeyer. When, right at the start of his stay, it turned out after a lunch in the office that Niemeyer had run out of cigarillos, he produced the boxes and won the architect’s heart.
Front page of the weekly Folha de Niterói dated July 28, 1999, © Martino Pedrozzi archive
Little anecdotes of everaday office life
What follows are numerous little anecdotes, brief scenes from everyday office life and witticisms from the master. This is likely to be of particular interest to true Niemeyer fans, and Pedrozzi does not shy away from a few clichés – such as Niemeyer’s well-known drawings of female bodies as architectural references. At times, however, it also offers unexpected insights that bring the famous architect to life. We learn, for instance, that he disliked flying and that he would sometimes stand for a long time at the office’s panoramic window, gazing at the landscape.
The roof of Canoas, House, scale 1:20, designed by the author, as a coffee table, © Martino Pedrozzi
Trip to Brasilia
Thanks to the cigarillos, the young Swiss man became very close to the revered architect, was invited to private parties and was chosen to accompany him on a 1,000-kilometre drive to Brasília in his white Mercedes. "He was so tiny that his head didn’t rise above the back of the seat”, Pedrozzi observed.
The fact that the whole thing doesn’t turn into a hagiography is mainly because the little book is entirely unpretentious in both content and form. The anecdotes are brief, and the format and presentation are equally modest: on the left, a black-and-white snapshot or a sketch; on the right, a short piece of text. You can leaf through and read the little book in three quarters of an hour – but during those three quarters of an hour, you have a smile on your face. At the end of Perozzi’s stay, Niemeyer wrote a dedication in his memoirs: he hoped to see him again someday. That reunion never took place. One wonders how many anecdotes there might have been to tell had Perozzi worked with Niemeyer for two years rather than two months. Or would that have merely diluted the impressions?
Mini Cigarillos: Working with Oscar Niemeyer for Two Months
Martino Pedrozzi
64 pages, 28 illustrations
Text: English
Paperback, 11 x 17 cm
Design: Lars Müller Publishers
Lars Müller Publishers, Zurich 2025
ISBN 978-3-03778-808-0
