Telling your 71-year-old grandmother you plan to construct a gigantic replica of a uterus on her doorstep must be one of the least pleasant tasks for any grandson.
That, however, is the bind of Igor de Vetyemy, a young Brazilian architect behind a controversial project to build a museum inspired entirely by sex on one of the world’s most famous beaches.
Plans to erect the ”interactive” Cidade do Sexo (City of Sex) just off Copacabana beach have divided Rio de Janeiro — a city renowned for its sensuality, but also one keen to crack down on sex tourism and child prostitution.
Hoping to sever her city’s ties with sex tourism, Rio’s evangelical governor, Rosinha Matheus, recently banned the sale of postcards featuring naked women. While she has yet to officially comment on the scheme, blueprints for the museum are unlikely to please her.
Boasting strip joints, sex ”capsules” and a swingers’ club — all packed into a futuristic, phallus-like white labyrinth — the planned museum resembles an oversized set from Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.
”Brazil has this huge link with sex yet it has no museum to celebrate this,” said Vetyemy (25), whose supporters range from Rio’s mayor to Nigel Coates, the British architect behind the Body Zone at London’s Millennium Dome.
”There is this huge hypocrisy surrounding sex here. People are terrified of talking about the idea, and only really discuss the negative things related to sex, like sexual tourism or child prostitution. I wanted to deal with it in a natural, official way,” said Vetyemy, an Oxford University architecture graduate.
Coates said the project was a key step in updating Rio’s tradition of contemporary architecture. But that is scant comfort to residents of Copacabana.
”It’s absolutely absurd,” said Horacio Magalhaes, head of the Friends of Copacabana residents group. ”The project can only serve to encourage sex tourism and stigmatise the borough.”
Controversy grew recently, as other prominent members of Rio society joined the debate. Zuenir Ventura, author of Cidade Partida (Divided City), a book about the social divisions in Rio, said the project was ”segregationist”. What supporters called a Sex Drome, he said, would be a giant brothel.
But Vetyemy is unrepentant. ”It isn’t something that is going to denigrate the neighbourhood — it’s a serious project,” he said. ”In theory, my grandmother actually liked the idea — until she realised it might actually be built.” — Â