Vittorio Emmanuel Pareto was born in 1937, in Rio De Janeiro, to an affluent and well-connected family. He attended the Andrews School, in Botafogo, Rio, from 1954-57 before winning a place to study architecture at the University of Brazil in 1958. As a student, he built up considerable practical experience, employed by the practice of Sioma Largman and Adolf Volchan, working on a ten-storey building being constructed in Copocabana. He also managed to win a commission from an American Aid agency to construct four small rural schools in the municipality of Macae. During his final year of university Pareto also worked for ENARCO, a large construction company, where he was to continue for two years after graduation. Amidst rising tensions in 1963 and fearing for his job, Pareto replied to a newspaper advert for a scholarship tot attend the Architectural Association’s Department of Tropical Studies, in London. A few weeks after the 1964 military coup, Pareto heard from the British Consulate that he had been successful and was due to start the course in September of that year. His father paid for plane tickets for Vittorio and his wife and young son, to fly to Lisbon, where they took a train to Paris and then drove to London. Vittorio opted to take the ‘Educational Building’ course within the Department, successfully graduating with a Diploma in Tropical Studies in the Spring of 1965. The family returned to Brazil in June that year and Vittorio managed to secure a job with the Servico Federal de Arquitetura e Urbaninsmo’ (SERFHAU), participating in the new housing and urban development programme which had been established by the 1964 government. He was to continue worked with SERFHAU until the late 1970s, gradually gaining promotion, until he eventually became second in command, as General Secretary. During this period, Pareto also managed to find time to complete a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of London, with Otto Koenigsberger as his advisor (Head of the AA’s Department of Tropical Studies 1956-1971). In the early 1980s, following the restructuring of SERFHAU, Pareto entered UC Berkeley as a post-graduate scholar and was subsequently recruited by the UN Centre for Human Settlements (HABITAT) and stationed in Nairobi, tasked with improving conditions in underdeveloped regions. His career as an independent development planning consultant took off and he was invited to contribute to numerous development projects in Africa, Latin America, the Near East and Asia. Amongst many of these were masterplans developed under the rubric of the American consulting firm, PADCO, and include plans for a number of cities in the Punjab, the South Sudan urban development plan and a masterplan for Karachi. In his retirement, Vittorio has settled in Aosta, Italy.
Sources
- Architectural Association Student Register, 1945-71. AA Archives
- Architectural Association Council Minutes, 19th July, 1965. AA Archives
- Pareto, V.E., ‘Fading Thoughts: A few reminiscences of my youth’ Amazon, KDP, 2024
