Personalities - Cassiano Branco

Cassiano Branco was a portuguese architect (15 Aug 1897-24 April 1970)He graduated in architecture (1926) from the Escola de Belas Artes, Lisbon, and early in his career produced one of the most impressive Art Deco buildings in Lisbon, the

Eden cinema Praça dos Restauradores. He also designed one of the city's most imaginative Rationalist buildings, the Hotel Vitória, Avenida da Liberdade. He later worked on the Coliseum in Rua Passos Manuel, Oporto, another important Modernist building. One of the most talented architects of the early Modern Movement in Portugal, Branco was an unusual figure and a combative personality; his early involvement in left-wing political activity resulted in his increasing professional isolation in the context of the reactionary government (1932-68) of António de Oliveira Salazar.

He also designed town houses with a lively Purist treatment of mass, including several in Avenida A. José de Almeida and Avenida C. Bordalo Pinheiro, as well as the mirror-decorated Café Cristal, 131 Avenida da Liberdade, all in Lisbon.

He later made surprising and ironical use of the historicist vocabulary of the officially approved style, for example Parque Portugal dos Pequenitos (1937-44) in Coimbra and Hotel do Luso, near Coimbra, and the Império cinema, Alameda Afonso Henriques, and residential block (1951), Praça de Londres, both in Lisbon. He also worked on plans for bridges and dams, and a railway station for Benguela in Angola