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Architecture of Brazil Hugo Segawa Architecture of Brazil 1900–1990 Hugo Segawa Architecture and Urbanism School University of São Paulo São Paulo , Brazil Obra publicada com o apoio do Ministério da Cultura do Brasil/Fundação Biblioteca Nacional/Coordenadoria Geral do Livro e da Leitura Book published with the support of the Brazilian Ministry of Culture/National Library Foundation/General Book and Reading Coordination Translated from the Portuguese by Denilson Amade Souza from the third edition (2010) of “Arquiteturas no Brasil 1900–1990,” by Hugo Segawa, published by Editora da Universidade de São Paulo (Edusp). ISBN 978-1-4614-5430-4 ISBN 978-1-4614-5431-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-5431-1 Springer New York Heidelberg Dordrecht London Library of Congress Control Number: 2012951428 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2013 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, speci fi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on micro fi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Exempted from this legal reservation are brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis or material supplied speci fi cally for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the Copyright Law of the Publisher’s location, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Permissions for use may be obtained through RightsLink at the Copyright Clearance Center. Violations are liable to prosecution under the respective Copyright Law. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a speci fi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein. Printed on acid-free paper Cover illustration: St. Francis of Assisi chapel in Pampulha, designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer. Photograph courtesy of Hugo Segawa Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) An Explanation I come from a generation of Brazilian architects who were taught, at school, that there is one way of doing architecture, of appreciating it, and of enjoying cities. We were taught that the architect takes on a messianic mission when working within society. Our professors told us to read Pevsner, Hitchcock, Giedion, Zevi, among others. These are all authors who wrote totalizing depictions and showed interpreta- tions supported by great models of explanation, which, in turn, could be the answer to any issue regarding the act of seeing and doing architecture. Nothing can be as frustrating as the abyss between academia and real life. This teleological writing that legitimized the establishment of a certain European and North American modernity and consolidated architectural mythologies remains in the imagination of a large number of people. Readers from different backgrounds still seek in books and magazines interpretations of the same level as the ones by the “pioneers of modernist theory”. Certainly, the pevsners, hitchcocks, giedions, and zevis from the end of this millennium will not be so persuasive, nor will their read- ers be so easily persuaded. The risk of conducting a study about the Brazilian architecture in the twentieth century is to inadvertently reproduce that which is being criticized: a totalizing view that erases differences, applauds the dominating forms, and dissimulates diversity. Both recent history and historiography are still recovering from the epistemological impact created, for instance, by Michel Foucault’s ideas: fabrics produced with the micromesh of a complex warp. Within this perspective, the feasibility to give shape to problems and to articulate questions is much more intense than our individual ability to formulate answers: answers that tend to be examined in a more local, maybe deeper, way; one that contemplates the minorities, “the subdued”, the popular movements, and so forth; and a posture that is similar to the tendencies to “regulated” fragmenta- tions of knowledge, as if it were a reaction to the great totalizing readings. In regard to some tendencies in historiography in the end of the 1970s, British historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote: There is nothing new in choosing to see the world via a microscope rather than a telescope, so long as we accept that we are studying the same cosmos, the choice between microcosm and macrocosm is a matter of selecting the appropriate technique. It is signi fi cant that more v vi An Explanation historians fi nd the microscope more useful at present, but this does not necessarily mean that they see the telescopes as out of date instruments. This book has a peculiar genesis: it was summoned by the Metropolitan Autonomous University of Mexico to be part of a collection of monographs on Latin American architecture. Its original format was a thorough collection of Brazilian architecture in the twentieth century for the Latin American public. The opportunity to publish a Brazilian edition has not mischaracterized this pro fi le. The hard and subtle balance to be reached in the contents of this work is a task that must respect the characteristics of the editorial initiative, since it demands a composition that is expressed in architectural jargon, namely, in the French expression b iensé- ance . The circumstances seem to point to the handling of the telescope; however, the microscope was useful at times, even if it meant damaging some totalizing coherence, which does not constitute, in and of itself, a central cause for concern. The maintenance of the lenses and the direction to where they point are of my entire responsibility. I hope the reader may realize, when reading this book, the reasons why I have decided to take these directions. The References When writing a piece of work with the present scope, I decided to examine similar works: manuals of Brazilian Architecture History. These are not plentiful and the ones available bring different perspectives. Works such as Q uatro Séculos de Arquitetura , by Paulo Ferreira Santos (1977, fi rst edition 1965), A tlas dos Monumentos Históricos e Artísticos do Brasil , by Augusto Carlos da Silva Telles (1975), and A rquitetura Brasileira , by Carlos A. C. Lemos (1979), are panoramas of four centuries of architecture. The twentieth century, then, is a segment of this group. Brazilian architecture is part of a broader context in Arquitectura y Urbanismo en Iberoamerica , by Ramón Gutiérrez (1983). Due to the scarce number of publica- tions in this area, issues such as the catalog B razil Builds , edited in 1943 by New York MOMA, and M odern Architecture in Brazil , from Henrique Mindlin, from 1956, could both be deemed as overviews of the Brazilian architecture in the fi rst half of the twentieth century. Strictly speaking, there would be three publications in the same genre as the one of this research: A rquitetura Contemporânea no Brasil , by Yves Bruand (1981), Arquitetura Moderna Brasileira , by Sylvia Ficher and Marlene Milan Acayaba (1982), and the chapter “Arquitetura Contemporânea”, written by Carlos A. C. Lemos in História Geral da Arte no Brasil (coordinated by Walter Zanini, 1983). All the aforementioned publications were central in the writing of the present book. Paulo F. Santos, A. C. Silva Telles, and Carlos A. C. Lemos are simultane- ously historians and actors of that which they report. The tasteful chapter from Paulo Santos’ book is a testimonial of a character that lived the creative fl uids of the modernism in Rio de Janeiro in the fi rst half of the century. Carlos A. C. Lemos is important both for what he wrote and for all I learned as his student and intern; An Explanation vii professor Lemos’ intellectual production in the form of manuals is only a small facet of a life entirely dedicated to research. Both B razil Builds and M odern Architecture in Brazil allude to modern architec- ture and, under the insinuating spirit of the beginning of this explanation, are form- ers of mythographies of Brazilian modern architecture; as such, they are both objects of analysis in my text. The importance of Ficher and Acayaba resides in the modest ambition of being an introductory guide to Brazilian modern architecture. Its origin, by the way, shows its purpose: it was an entry in the I nternational Handbook of Contemporary Developments in Architecture , directed by Warren Sanderson (1982). A plot that was the fi rst to include, in the architectural map of Brazil, some regions that had been little contemplated, without the modern and hegemonic view that characterizes Yves Bruand’s book. Arquitetura Contemporânea no Brasil is the most comprehensive dossier on Brazilian architecture of the twentieth century until 1969, the year when this dis- sertation was concluded, presented at U niversité de Paris IV in 1971, and published in Portuguese 10 years later (unfortunately, without an adequate technical review of the translation, which partially compromises its reading). Bruand wrote a piece of work that was fundamentally based on the varied Brazilian and international bibli- ography and on the gathering of testimonials of local scholars, collecting a docu- mental set of great value: a portrait of the state of the art of the Brazilian bibliography until the 1960s. However, the French author, despite not being an architect himself, assimilated all modernist preconceptions against the architecture of eclecticism (“from the fi nding that the Brazilian architecture had known only two great periods of creative activity: the Luso-Brazilian art from the 17t h and 18 th centuries […] and the current period”, he wrote). Bruand gave special attention to Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Bahia, and Brasília, excluding other important regions, thus avoiding showing the diversity of the production of Brazilian architecture. Moreover, his point of view on the meaning of “modern” has aged over time: “the adjective ‘modern’ is by no means convenient, because it contains only one notion of time applicable to the whole production of a time period and not solely to one of its parts; substituting its chronological meaning by an element of value is nonsense…” Bruand’s evaluation allows for a triumphalist and apologetic reading of modern architecture in Brazil. If there is no commitment from the intrinsic value of the excellent work that he developed, his positions are historically dated. Starting Points My work does not have the academic pretension of Yves Bruand’s ample effort; it focuses, instead, on another architectural mapping. The portraits of great architects and those of the masterpieces of Brazilian architecture are an undefeated contribution in Arquitetura Contemporânea no Brasil : leading fi gures and achievements are the core of his research. viii An Explanation Without questioning the meaning of such approach, I sought to study the pro- cesses that constitute our modern architecture under various in fl uences, which char- acterize different modernities and which, in turn, entitle the chapters of this book. Accordingly, I do not privilege either architects (honorable exceptions are made to Warchavchik, Niemeyer, Lucio Costa, and Vilanova Artigas) or works (there are exceptions also). What I try to privilege is the inclusion of architects and works into the cultural and architectural debate within a certain snippet of history. When oper- ating with processes, the desire to produce an architectural cartography becomes a dif fi cult endeavor; this is due to the amplitude and complexity of the Brazilian architectural panorama. Nevertheless, even with the absence of several architects and works in the present publication, the possible understanding stemming from the described processes would certainly allow for a contextualization of the leading fi gures and achievements which have not been included in my mapping. The themes urbanism and cities have a signi fi cant weight in the fi rst third of the book and then become virtually pulverized in the remaining of this work. The com- plexity of these topics after World War II, when most Brazilians started living in cities, would not allow for the deepening of the issue, for this would make the author run the risk of writing not one but two books. Meetings such as the ones held by ANPUR and by the S eminários de História da Cidade e do Urbanismo (Seminars of History of the City and Urbanism) in the last years reveal more and more a cer- tain disciplinary autonomy when dealing with these issues. The initial reference to the urban issue has a closer relationship with modernity. A preoccupation that aroused in the end of the nineteenth century—which one would be the architecture of the twentieth century?—was also part of localized debates on the topic in Brazil in the nineteenth century. When dealing with this speci fi c issue, I attempted to retrieve a few interpretations of modernism in architec- ture. There is no univocal de fi nition of modernity: if there are several understand- ings of modernity in Europe, in Brazil the concept of “modern” is even more controversial, precisely because of the need to examine this concept under a per- spective that is appropriate to the local reality and that does not overlook its entropy with ampler means. The second half of the book was organized in order to show the several modernities practiced in Brazilian architecture during the period in between wars. The approach to the topics becomes increasingly schematic as the pages run and the narrative evolves. Naturally, time is a powerful depurator and the greater dis- tance from the happenings allows us to choose the most appropriate lenses through which we examine the issues. Therefore, contemporaneity is always more seductive and instigating. Also, the risks of misinterpretations are proportional to our discernment. Acknowledgements Every list of acknowledgements is one of unfair omissions. I cannot list and thank all the people and institutions that have helped me accomplish this research. However, I must recall Concepción Vargas and Ernesto Alva, who originally com- missioned this book. For the making of the book, I owe my acknowledgements to Vicente Wissenbach, editor of P rojeto journal, to which I contributed for a long time thanks to its editor; to Ruth Verde Zein, colleague at the journal and permanent interlocutor; to Kleber Frizzera and Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo; to Vera Helena Moro Bins Ely and Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina; to Isa Piermatiri and Universidade Federal do Paraná who, at different times of my increasing approximation to the Brazilian architecture of the twentieth century, invited me to teach classes, making me develop a class structure that sustains this work; to archi- tect and teacher Paulo Bruna who, after inviting me to co-teach a graduate class at Universidade Mackenzie, allowed me to expose hypotheses of interpretations that are formulated in this book. To all the students of these classes for having had the patience to listen to and discuss my ideas which, after these sessions, stopped being exclusively mine. ix

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