
Like the Sagrada Familia, Barcelona's iconic basilica designed by the famous Catalan architect and under construction for more than 140 years, this colorful four-story building built into the hillside is an unfinished work.
"I've been doing this for 39 years, it's my life's work. I don't know if I'll finish it before I die, only God knows," the 67-year-old former mason and gardener told AFP.
Nicknamed "Castelinho" (little castle) by the residents of the Paraisopolis favela, this building with its twisting curves has become a tourist attraction for its striking resemblance to another famous work by Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926), Park Güell.
And yet, the Brazilian claims to have never heard of the Catalan genius before starting to build his castle on a plot of land of barely 60 m2 in this poor district where more than 100.000 inhabitants live.
"I made a work that resembles Gaudí's without copying him. It just came out of my mind," he assures.
"I never studied, but I managed to create a work of art," says this black man with a thick salt-and-pepper moustache.
Trip to Barcelona
The resemblance of the "Castelinho" to Gaudí's style was discovered by a student at the beginning of this century.
The story of Estevao Silva da Conceiçao was told in the documentary "Gaudí in the Favela", by filmmaker Sergio Oksman, released in 2002. During the filming, the previous year, the former mason went to Barcelona to see the works of the architect to whom he is compared.
The fame gained from the film has transformed the place into a tourist site and a visit currently costs around five euros.
"There are so many things to see, every little corner is full of details to observe," describes Celly Monteiro Mendes, 24, a tourist from Manaus, in the Brazilian Amazon.
Once through the entrance decorated with multi-coloured painted plates and overlooked by shrubs, visitors enter a cave-like room, the starting point for a maze of low-ceilinged galleries with narrow staircases leading from one floor to the next.
The cement walls covered with small brown pebbles are decorated with hundreds of objects of all kinds: plastic toys, cups, old telephones, masks, coins, clock gears and other hardware. Some of these objects were given to him by visitors.
Enchanted garden
Born in the state of Bahia (northeast), the "Brazilian Gaudí" arrived in Sao Paulo in 1977, where he worked in particular as a mason and gardener.
In 1985 he bought a plot of land to build his house in Paraisopolis and let his imagination run wild.
"I wanted to have a garden, to do something different. I didn't think it would turn into a world-famous work of art like what Gaudi did, otherwise I would have made it even higher," he explains.
"I did it for myself, and it became a tourist spot," sums up Estevao Silva da Conceiçao.
He started by planting a rose garden and built a metal structure around it, but the plants grew too quickly.
Tired of collecting leaves, the gardener preferred to remove all the vegetation and covered the metal structure with cement, laying the foundations of his castle.
The walls were covered with pebbles "to freshen up" the place and he added a broken plate that he had at hand. The first of hundreds of objects that now make up his work.
Plants have reappeared on the top of the four floors, in the open air, where you can hear the birds singing as you observe Brazilian inequalities from above: the shacks of the favela in the foreground and the imposing buildings of the chic Morumbi district in the distance.