Although constructed for very different purposes, Renzo Piano’s 1997 Fondation Beyeler museum in Basel, Switzerland , and Oscar Niemeyer ’s 1970 Itamaraty Palace, which houses Brazil’s Ministry of External Relations in the capital city of Brasília , share similar architectural foundations. And by that I mean the methods by which the two structures, literally, hit the ground. Both appear to float above gardens and have colonnades that land gracefully in organic-shaped pools of water, a design originally conceived by Brasília’s unsung hero Roberto Burle Marx—the Brazilian landscape architect who devised the setting for Niemeyer’s modernist masterpiece. At Itamaraty Palace, the natural world (the pool’s rippling water) creates dappled patterns that are projected onto Niemeyer’s arched forms above. At the Beyeler, it is both the natural world and artwork that tie the site plan together; see how Monet’s Water Lilies is reflected in the glass curtain wall, which in turn connects to the pool of water just beyond. An extraordinary kind of double double take.

Click here for my photos of [Piano’s Beyeler and Niemeyer’s Itamaraty Palace.

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