♪ [Water bubbling] ♪ ♪ [Denise Zmekhol speaking Portuguese] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Wind blowing] Zmekhol: I left Brazil for a new life in California... with only memories of my father-- the bitter and the sweet... ♪ but now so many years later, news arrives about my father's legacy that reopens childhood wounds and calls me back home to São Paulo... ♪ searching for my father in the work he created.

♪ ♪ This is what brought me back.

♪ It's shocking to see what's happened to my father's architectural masterpiece, knowing what it once was.

♪ ♪ [Man speaking Portuguese] [Woman speaking Portuguese] ♪ [Man speaking Portuguese] [Man speaking Portuguese] ♪ [Man speaking Portuguese] [Woman speaking Portuguese] [Man speaking Portuguese] ♪ [Woman speaking Portuguese] ♪ Zmekhol: A vision of the future 24 stories above São Paulo, the Pele de Vidro-- Skin of Glass.

My father designed it in the 1960s, and I was conceived at the same time as this building.

♪ My father was everything a daughter could have dreamed of-- playful, charming, affectionate.

♪ He was born in Paris to parents who immigrated from Syria and then made their new life in Brazil.

♪ Curious, determined, the top of his class, he became a prolific architect as soon as he graduated... ♪ but who was my father as a young man?

Going through these photos makes me realize how little I know about his past.

We never got a chance to talk about his early years.

At 29, he met my mother Graca, like him, a child of Syrian-Lebanese immigrants, and together, they began building dreams.

♪ By their wedding day, my father had already designed our family home.

♪ ♪ [Man speaking Portuguese] Zmekhol: Everything felt possible in those days.

It was a time of great hope and optimism in Brazil.

[Astrud Gilberto singing in Portuguese] ♪ [Lores speaking Portuguese] ♪ ♪ ♪ [Woman speaking Portuguese] Zmekhol: Brasilia, the new capital city, was built from the ground up in 3 short years.

♪ Our country was moving toward modernization and social reform after centuries of extreme inequality.

♪ My parents visited Brasilia during construction.

♪ I can only imagine how this epic project inspired my father.

♪ At the age of 32, he was beginning the most significant work of his lifetime, the Pele de Vidro.

♪ [Meyer speaking Portuguese] [Man speaking Portuguese] ♪ [Man speaking Portuguese] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Zmekhol speaking Portuguese] ♪ [Gunshot] [Screaming] [Shouting] Construction of the Pele de Vidro was almost finished in 1964 when Brazil's military staged a coup with backing from the United States.

It was the height of the Cold War, and the U.S. feared that Brazil was leaning toward communism.

21 years of dictatorship followed, brutally ending Brazil's hopes for social reform.

Our promising, tropical democracy vanished... ♪ but I was living in a child's world, safe in the home my father built, surrounded by family and friends.

♪ Yara, our closest neighbor, was like another mother to me.

♪ ♪ [Yara speaking Portuguese] Yara: Heh!

♪ ♪ ♪ [Man singing in Portuguese] ♪ [Rumbling] [Whistle blows, explosion] ♪ [Explosion] ♪ [Explosion] ♪ [People screaming] ♪ Zmekhol: In time, I began to understand what was really going on.

The military censored the media and tortured, killed, and exiled people they said were communists.

♪ My father's colleagues at the school of architecture remember that time well.

♪ ♪ ♪ [Zmekhol speaking Portuguese] [Zmekhol speaking Portuguese] [Chico Buarque's "Apesar de Voce" playing] [Zmekhol speaking Portuguese] ♪ ♪ ♪ As a child, I often passed by the Pele De Vidro, but I never went inside.

Now I come here hoping to meet the people who have made this place their home... but I can't get in.

I need the approval of the occupation leaders.

[Man speaking Portuguese] Zmekhol: So I wait, looking in from outside.

I hear Portuguese, Spanish, French, kids playing... a mother calling her child.

I'm so curious about the lives within my father's creation.

♪ People were at the heart of his work.

♪ He designed the Pele de Vidro with great care for the life inside.

At a time when most offices were dark and closed, he created a space of light and transparency, a structure open to the world around it.

♪ This is the only photo I ever found of my father at the Pele de Vidro, standing on the rooftop, about to transform the skyline of São Paulo.

♪ [Woman speaking Portuguese] [Wisnik speaking Portuguese] ♪ ♪ [Botti speaking Portuguese] ♪ [Woman speaking Portuguese] Zmekhol: Finding my father's drawings at the School of Architecture is a revelation.

I had no idea how much was here.

[Ferreira de Brito speaking Portuguese] [Paper rustling] ♪ ♪ [Zmekhol speaking Portuguese] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Camera shutter clicks] Zmekhol: Gal was one of my father's students.

Together, we go around São Paulo visiting the buildings my father designed.

♪ ♪ ♪ [Rapid clicking] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Zmekhol: And finally, the house my father built for our family.

It feels so strange that it's now someone else's home.

Zmekhol: This garden, so full of memories.

Running in circles with my brother... summer dinners with neighbors and friends... but there are shadows here of harder times.

♪ When I was 11, I began to sense a growing tension between my parents.

♪ Some nights, lying in bed, I could hear my mother crying.

♪ ♪ [Yara speaking Portuguese] ♪ Zmekhol: And then one day, my father left.

♪ ♪ [Speaking Portuguese] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ I've been waiting 6 weeks.

The occupation leaders say they're asking the residents for permission to let me in... but then, they stop returning my calls.

Watching the people, I begin to recognize faces and feel the rhythms of their lives.

We are separated by distance and privilege, yet, in a strange way, bound together by what we share-- a home made by my father.

[Man speaking Portuguese] Zmekhol: The Pele de Vidro is one of over 70 buildings downtown occupied by people who need homes.

The housing crisis has sparked a movement.

[Loud banging] [Indistinct chatter] [Cheering] [Man speaking Portuguese] [Indistinct chatter] [Chucre speaking Portuguese] Zmekhol: Péricles is helping me negotiate with the leaders of the Pele de Vidro, and he takes me to one of the occupations he organizes.

[Child speaking Portuguese] [Péricles speaking Portuguese] [Woman speaking Portuguese] [Ribeiro speaking Portuguese] [Péricles speaking Portuguese] [Mendes da Rocha speaking Portuguese] [Meyer speaking Portuguese] ♪ ♪ ♪ [Acayaba speaking Portuguese] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Zmekhol speaking Portuguese] [Yara speaking Portuguese] ♪ ♪ Zmekhol: At my father's funeral, I felt like a stranger... our angry last words still stinging my heart.

Even with Yara there, I felt totally alone.

♪ [Sirens] Zmekhol: A few years after my father died, the federal police made the Pele de Vidro their headquarters... a place for censoring journalists and artists.

♪ My father's creation of openness and light became a center of fear and surveillance... [People clamoring] but the dictatorship was faltering.

People across the country were demanding free elections.

[Cheering and applause] After two decades of struggle, democracy was restored.

The federal police, now working under a democratic government, stayed in the Pele de Vidro.

[Indistinct chatter] [Cameras clicking] They made international headlines identifying the remains of the Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele.

The federal police left the building in 2003... and for years, the Pele de Vidro stood empty and neglected.

♪ ♪ [Lores speaking Portuguese] [Rain falling] [Man speaking Portuguese] ♪ Zmekhol: It would break my father's heart to see his Pele de Vidro like this, as it does mine... but I see this place has become a shelter, its walls protecting so many, and this touches my heart.

♪ ♪ ♪ [Péricles speaking Portuguese] Zmekhol: I've tried so hard to get inside the Pele de Vidro, but after so many months of negotiations, the door is closed... but I am not giving up.

I go to my father's birthplace... the city he loved and would visit often.

I'm here to meet an architect with a deep connection to the Pele de Vidro.

[Speaking Portuguese] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Zmekhol: Pablo's dream came to an end, and the building remained empty... ♪ but a few years later, the Skin of Glass became a canvas for another vision, a radical street art called pixacão.

♪ Zmekhol: When I first met Rafael, he was very guarded, not sure how I felt about his art on the Pele de Vidro.

I wasn't sure either.

♪ [Rafael speaking Portuguese] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Zmekhol: A few months after Rafael's pixacão, people occupied the Pele de Vidro for the first time.

A local filmmaker documented them moving in.

Finally, a window inside.

All this time I imagined if I could only get into the Pele de Vidro, I would find my father there... ♪ but I'm grateful to see this glimpse of life inside.

♪ ♪ [Pablo speaking Portuguese] [Distant sirens] [Low rumbling] [Sirens growing closer] [Overlapping sirens and horns] [Fire roaring] [Radio chatter] [Glass shattering] [Woman speaking Portuguese] Hey, hey, hey!

♪ ♪ ♪ [Zmekhol speaking Portuguese] ♪ ♪ ♪ [Woman speaking Portuguese] ♪ ♪ [Indistinct chatter] ♪ [Zmekhol speaking Portuguese] ♪ ♪ Zmekhol: The governor, the mayor, even the president appear for the cameras... but none of them meet with the survivors just one block away.

[Indistinct chatter] [Barbosa speaking Portuguese] [Speaking Portuguese] [Indistinct chatter] ♪ [Zmekhol speaking Portuguese] ♪ ♪ ♪ [Speaking Portuguese] [Indistinct chatter] [Speaking Portuguese] ♪ ♪ [Woman speaking Portuguese] [Indistinct chatter] [Zmekhol speaking Portuguese] [Indistinct chatter] [Speaking Portuguese] Zmekhol: This is one of the leaders who kept me out of the Pele de Vidro, who abandoned the survivors after the fire.

Soon after he and the other Pele de Vidro leaders were questioned by the police, they went into hiding.

Months later, the camp is gone without a trace, shut down by the city, the survivors scattered throughout São Paulo, looking for shelter.

Many simply vanished into the streets.

[Man speaking Portuguese] [Péricles speaking Portuguese] [Speaking French] Zmekhol: Pablo and Philippe have come from France to honor my father's dream and their own.

♪ ♪ ♪ [Philippe speaking French] ♪ Zmekhol: This drawing will never be more than a dream, a vision of what might have been.

♪ Pablo and Philippe invite Rafael, the pixacão artist, to join them.

♪ [Rafael speaking Portuguese] ♪ [Pablo speaking French] ♪ ♪ [Alves speaking Portuguese] [Speaking Portuguese] Ha ha ha!

[Speaking Portuguese] ♪ Hmm.

♪ [Man singing in Portuguese] ♪ ♪ ♪ [Zmekhol speaking Portuguese] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪