The Latin America Memorial in São Paulo's Barra Funda neighborhood was designed by Oscar Niemeyer, with a cultural project by the anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro. The state government under Orestes Quércia commissioned it. Construction began in October 1987 and it opened on March 18, 1989. The article names no style and calls it an architectural island of bold white forms.
The complex covers a 84,482-square-meter site, built mainly of exposed and white concrete. Its landmark is the Mão, a 7-meter (23-foot) open concrete hand with a red map of Latin America. The library has a 90-meter beam, and the Marta Traba Gallery is a circle on a single central column.
A fire on November 29, 2013 destroyed about 90 percent of the Simón Bolívar Auditorium. Many events are free, and about 2,000,000 people visited in 2016.
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