Architecture of Brazil: 1900-1990

275 Pages·2013·5.201 MB·English

by  Hugo Segawa (auth.)

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
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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