“Orelhão” (“Big Ear” in Portuguese) is the name given to the iconic egg-shaped telephone booths who have been decorating the sidewalks in Brazil since January 20 and 25, 1971 when they made their appearance in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo respectively. Designed by Brazilian-Chinese architect Chu Ming Silveira, this telephone booth is as identical to the metropolises of Brazil as the red telephone booth is to London.
Although the mobile phone has, since the 2010s, displaced telephone booths from the urban landscape, the “Big Ear” is still part of the furnishing of Brazilian streets and these other cities in Latin America but also in China and Africa. . Orelhão’s official website celebrates the 50th birthday of this global design emblem.
Wanting to solve the problem of the high cost of building telephone booths and their frequent vandalism, Chu Ming Silveira chose acrylic and fiberglass as the basic materials to build an egg-shaped shell that is particularly solid, light and sun-resistant, the rain and fire.
Although officially named “CHU I” and “CHU II”, Silveira shells went on to become immortal as “Orelhão” (Big Ear) and “Orelhinha” (Small Ear). The smaller acrylic orange “Little Ears” were created to be placed in confined spaces such as shops and workplaces with many people. Although originally designed to be mounted on a wall or small column, it has been shown that they can be adapted to other types of brackets. And their oval shape was adopted not only for reasons of acoustics and aesthetics, but also for the stability of the production method.
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