Gregori Warchavchik

Gregori I. Warchavchik (; April 2, 1896 – July 27, 1972) was an Imperial Russian-born Brazilian architect of Ashkenazi Jewish origin. He was born the first of three children into the wealthy Jewish family of Sofia Podgaetz and Elias Warchavchik.

He then began to study at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma, the Superior Institute of Fine Arts. This move was likely due to the rise of Mussolini in Italy in 1922, and he felt generally unsafe as an Ashkenazi Jew and as a Bolshevik Russian by nationality. This is considered the first document of the Modernist movement in Brazil.

Casa Modernista in Santa Cruz In 1927, he began designing the first modernist residence in Brazil, the Casa Modernista da rua Santa Cruz. The house was built to be his personal residence for his family, and was located on Santa Cruz street in the Vila Mariana of São Paulo. In 1983, a construction company wanted to build a luxury residential condominium in the area called the "Palais Versailles", which was opposed by the "Associação Pró-Parque Modernista", which led the house to receive a heritage listing in 1984 by the federal, state, and municipal bodies. However, due to ongoing lawsuits, the property was abandoned until 2000, when work was carried out to restore it until 2008, when the City Hall of the Municipality of São Paulo became the owner of the building. The house at Itápolis was built throughout 1929, and was visited by architect Le Corbusier during its construction, who said the project was a gesture that contributed to the residence's international visibility and to Warchavchik's reputation. It was inaugurated at the Exposição de uma Casa Modernista ("Exhibition of a Modernist House"), which was held from 26 March to 20 April 1930. He was likely hired because of the "radical transformation" advocated by Costa in the teaching of architecture. Career decline He designed the Lasar Segall Museum in São Paulo that opened in 1967. In 1930 he and Lucio Costa established a joint architecture studio in Rio de Janeiro, and one of the designers in the studio between 1932 and 1936 was the then young architectural student, Oscar Niemeyer.