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Home > Witness > Orelhão: Brazil's iconic egg-shaped telephone booth
Podcast: Witness
Episode:

Orelhão: Brazil's iconic egg-shaped telephone booth

Category: Society & Culture
Duration: 00:08:57
Publish Date: 2024-06-14 09:00:00
Description:

In 1971, a female architect called Chu Ming Silveira created Brazil's iconic egg-shaped telephone booth, Orelhão.

More than 50,000 of the booths were installed across Brazil and the design was so successful that other countries decided to use it.

Chu Ming was born in China and moved over to Brazil with her family in 1949, following the end of the Chinese Civil War.

At a time when not many architects were women in the country, she was tasked with creating a design for a cheap, light-weight and visually attractive public phone booth.

Chu Ming died in 1997, aged 58. In 2017, Google decided to celebrate her life by creating a doodle.

Her son, Alan Chu, has been sharing his memories of Chu Ming with Matt Pintus.

(Photo: Chu Ming using an Orelhão phone booth. Credit: Chu Ming Silveira’s Collection - Ouvio.arq.br)

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