Vilanova Artigas and the Meanings of Concrete in Brazil

The Journal of Architecture

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João Vilanova Artigas and the meanings of concrete in Brazil Felipe Contier & Renato Anelli To cite this article: Felipe Contier & Renato Anelli (2015) João Vilanova Artigas and the meanings of concrete in Brazil, The Journal of Architecture, 20:3, 445-473, DOI: 10.1080/13602365.2015.1048698

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445 The Journal of Architecture Volume 20 Number 3

João Vilanova Artigas and the meanings of concrete in Brazil

Felipe Contier, Renato Anelli

Institute of Architecture and Urbanism, University of São Paulo, Brazil (authors’ e-mail addresses: [email protected] ; [email protected] ; [email protected] ) )

Brazil has a recognised tradition in modern architecture, led by Oscar Niemeyer, whose work has been distinguished since 1943 by his free forms enabled by reinforced concrete. Before that, however, the country already harboured important lesser-known experiments with concrete, which were responsible for a wide process of modernisation of producer relationships in construction. The architect João Vilanova Artigas participated in these two eras, bringin bringing g releva relevant nt theore theoretica ticall and projec project-ba t-based sed positio positions ns relatin relating g to how the use of reinforced concrete could be understood in Brazil. In 1956, various critiques converged, making Artigas the leader of a radical school based on exposed reinforced concrete. The three elements that structure this paper contemplate changes in construction in Brazil, identifying inflexions in Artigas s production: his early constructional morality ; his proximity proximity to Niemeyer; and the displacement of monumental figurativeness to construction itself. ’

Introduction The histor historyy of reinfo reinforce rced d concre concrete te is insepa inseparab rable le from the process of the modernisation of construction, includin including g technical technical specificat specification, ion, aesthetic aesthetic renovation, training, legislative changes, innovation, technology transfer and changes in the consumer market and supply industry. In Brazil, this process includes specific economic and cultural dynamics in which the formation of a renowned modern architectural tectural and engineeri engineering ng culture, culture, responsib responsible le for important important technolo technologica gicall achievem achievements ents regarding regarding reinforced concrete structures, stands out.1 In this overall picture, it is important to recover the radical meaning concrete had in debates on modernisation in Brazil Brazil in the twenti twentieth eth centur century. y. Some Some contex contextt shou should ld firs firstt be give given n to the the hist histor orio iogr grap aphy hy of modern modern archit architect ecture ure in Brazil Brazil.. The first first works works of modern architecture were regarded as part of the nation’s success.2 # 2015 RIBA Enterprises

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By the 1970s, 1970s, Yves Bruand Bruand had alread alreadyy interinterpreted the relationship between form, construction techniqu techniques es and policy policy as an evolution evolutionary ary process process that that would would culmi culminat nate e in a modern modern archit architect ecture ure 3 engage engaged d in the constr construct uction ion of the state. state. From the 1980s, new studies sought to identify the complexi plexity ty of this this histor historica icall proces process, s, inspir inspired ed by the French Annales tradition tradition in historical historical scholarsh scholarship, ip, the Venice School of architectu architectural ral history and by contem contempor porane aneous ous AngloAnglo-Sax Saxon on stanc stances. es.4 The identification of technical, political and social modernisation in Latin American countries in a period prior prior to the emerge emergence nce of moder modern n archit architect ecture ure prompted a questioning of periodisation and historical determinism determinism..5 The The inst instru rume ment ntal al role role of the the moder modern n vangua vanguards rds in the constr construct uction ion of nation nation states also emerged as an explanatory factor of the dynamics of South American policy, with New Monumentality being identified as a common strategy. 6 1360-2365 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2015.1048698

446 João Vilanova Artigas and the meanings of concrete in Brazil Felipe Contier, Renato Anelli

Euro Europe pean an and and Nort North h Amer Americ ican an scho schola lars rshi hip, p, however, presents a different trajectory of understan standi ding ng.. In the the new new edit editio ions ns of Pionee Pioneers rs of Modern Design in Design in the 1950s, Pevsner included Brazilian zilian produc productio tion n (dispa (disparag raging ingly) ly) as a refere reference nce point for the revised discussions of modern architecture in Europe. Max Bill, Ernesto Rogers, Bruno Zevi and others that followed, made little effort to understand the specific processes of Brazil, interested only in its production as an expression of European architectural culture. The same judgements, arguments and facts continued to be repeated by important authors.7 Even more recent works, such as those by Jean-Loui Jean-Louiss Cohen Cohen8 and Adrian Adrian Forty, Forty,9 which sought some rapport with the critical production of Brazilian Brazilian and Latin Latin American American historians, historians, present a very very limi limite ted d info inform rmat atio ion n base base,, perh perhap apss due due to language difficulties. In his comprehensive study of reinforced reinforced concrete, concrete, Forty Forty does not discuss discuss local technological research developed in the early twentieth century, which allowed concrete construction to flourish quickly, even before the emergence of modern architecture. Cohen fails to see that the collaboration of Costa with Le Corbusier from the time of the Ministry of Education and Health in 1936 was decisive for the formulation of the principles of New Monument Monumentality ality,, on which which modern modern Brazilian Brazilian production of the following decades is based. In light of this, the work presented here aims to contribute to the diffusion diffusion of a new historiogra historiography phy of modern modern Brazilian architecture, strongly grounded in recent Brazilian academic research. Despite being less known than Oscar Niemeyer (1907–2012), 2012), the architect architect João Vilanova Vilanova Artigas Artigas (1915–1985) stands out as a significant leader in

the context of the renewal of the language of and thinki thinking ng around around archit architect ecture ure in concr concrete ete in the 10 1950s. This paper will highlight highlight the intellect intellectual ual conflict Artigas felt between the aesthetic tradition of a popular national modernism and the ethical modernit modernityy of a construct constructive ive realism. realism. This conflict conflict can be identified both in his design choices and in his debate debatess with with others others—especially especially his dialogue dialogue with with Niemey Niemeyer. er. The three three differ different ent epoch epochss that that structure this paper mirror the changes in construction in Brazil and point out inflexions in Artigas’s work: the ’constructional morality’ learned from his early practice, practice, set against against the industria industrialisat lisation ion of concrete construction in Brazil; the defence of Niemeyer’s popular modernism in the context of the idea of a ‘Brazilian Brazilian modern modern architect architecture ure’; and, and, finally, the displacement of monumental figurativeness to construction itself.

The formation of the industrial complex of concrete construction As in Europe, the early use of reinforced concrete in Brazil preceded the first expressions expressions of modern architecture in which, of course, the material was preemine eminent nt throug throughou houtt the twenti twentieth eth centur century, y, as a resu result lt of its its cons constr truc ucti tion onal al and and aest aesthe heti ticc proprogrammes. Nevertheless, the use of reinforced concrete crete implie implied d from from the start a broad broad proces processs of modernisation in constructional production. Introduced by immigrants and foreign entrepreneurs, mainly German and French, reinforced concrete crete was soon soon dissem dissemina inated ted in Brazil Brazil throug through h many kinds and scales of work: from modest residential dential buildings buildings to large infrastruc infrastructural tural construcconstruction tionss such such as brid bridge gess and and dams dams,, as well well as tall tall


Figure 1. The first house designed by Artigas for himself, exterior, São Paulo, 1942 (photograph: FAUUSP Archives).

buildings. This success is explicable in terms of the following favourable factors: a) a good supply of unskilled labourers; b) the availability of sufficient labourers among the European immigrants who, being originally linked to carpentry trades, were skilled enough to make formwork and props; c) production in quantity of cement; d) investors who were interested in emerging markets; e) local skilled engineers, such as the graduates from the Polytechnique Schools of Rio de Janeiro (1792), São Paulo

(1893), Bahia (1897) and Pernambuco (1912), amongst whom many scientists, structural engineers and pioneer businessmen in reinforced concrete stood out. The beginning of technological research aimed at developing a national process of reinforced concrete production coincided almost exactly with the import of Hennebique’s patented technologies in the 1890s: when the magazine Le Béton Armé publicised Hennebique’s system (1899), the Polytechnique School of São Paulo founded its Office


Figure 2. The first house designed by Artigas for himself, interior, ground floor, São Paulo, 1942 (photograph: FAUUSP Archives).

of Materials-Resistance and started testing it.11 The decision to overcome the technological gap with Europe was evident at various times: in 1905, Hippolito Gustavo Pojul Jr published his Manual of Materials Resistance, disseminating research reports conducted in the Office, and in 1913 reinforced concrete was already part of Paula Souza’s class textbooks, enabling its diffusion as a construction technique. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, new immigrant workers, having brought the necessary knowledge from their respective countries, introduced brick masonry construction techniques. At the same time, institutions for the Arts and Crafts were created in Rio de Janeiro (1856), Salvador (1872), São Paulo (1873) and Recife (1980), marking the strategy of the new local elite to train

skilled labourers at all levels in order to meet the needs of art and industry.12 These initiatives contributed to the appearance of workshops for steel forging, carpentry, stained glass, mosaics, carvings and stucco, as well as the creation of a body of trade labourers whose qualifications and technical skills gave them relative freedom and better salaries than those paid to factory workers.13 Many of these immigrants were Italian, Spanish and Portuguese: they brought knowledge of their trades as well as, often, radical political ideals.14 The architectonic language of official buildings, as well as those preferred by the wealthy classes, depended on these workers who would were thus able to enjoy relative independence. In certain kinds of buildings these workers were also in charge of the design and management of the construction. The First Republic (1889–1930), of a liberal and oligarchic character, gave an international and metropolitan character to the major Brazilian cities. Large foreign companies and consortia entered the Brazilian market, affecting the local construction industry and city management. Their role was to modernise cities and construction, importing their expertise in exchange for broadly favourable business conditions. This period of great freedom for foreign capital gave rise to many companies, such as: the Light Co. (1899);15 the City Co. (1912); the Reinforced Concrete Construction Co. (1913); 16 the Danish construction company, Christiani & Nielsen (1922); the German Wayss & Freytag, established as the National Construction Co. (1924).17 An exception was the Construction Co. of Santos, founded by the engineer Roberto Simonsen (1912).18


Figure 3. The first house designed by Artigas for himself, section details, São Paulo, 1942 (FAUUSP Archives).

The Republic thus required a series of new buildings and public investments—such as roads, bridges, parks, theatres, monuments, administrative centres, railway stations, ports—and the headquarters of public or private companies, many of which were foreign. The ferment in the capital, Rio de Janeiro, and the rapid growth of cities such as São Paulo, which would become the largest city in the country by the late 1950s, heated up the housing market, both rental and residential. The conjunction of reinforced concrete and some masonry techniques became very popular in the 1920s. Within this broad spectrum of work, the academic architecture that was taught at the National School

of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro and in the course in architecture and engineering at the Polytechnique of São Paulo was predominant. Several foreign architects also worked in Brazil, many of them brought over by companies already active in the country. The fine arts shone in ostentatious public buildings, whereas in more quotidian edifices the main function carried out by architects was akin to that of engineers, taking the form of small construction firms competing with all sorts of tradesmen, contractors and licensed practitioners. However, important technological innovations were happening behind the traditional appearance of the decorative arts that were noticeable on the


Figure 4. The first house designed by Artigas for himself, plan details, São Paulo, 1942 (FAUUSP Archives).

façades of these buildings. These included: reinforced concrete structures: large spans; verticalisation; reinforced concrete foundations; experiments with metallic formwork; new ways of managing the construction site by increasingly detailed drawings. In this incipient industrial construction complex, the use of reinforced concrete brought about a new technical and social division of labour. Increasingly detailed drawings were introduced as a mediation between the workers and the work they needed to carry out. By codifying the elements of construction into service orders addressed to unskilled workers, this mediation created conditions of work on the construction site analogous to industrial work (real subsumption, according to Marx). In fact:

It was possible, with concrete construction, to detach the skilled, mental work of building from the purely manual element. The opportunities provided by concrete for such a division of labour is what really distinguished concrete and made it uniquely different from all other construction processes in labour terms. No other means of construction allowed such a satisfactory separation of the mental from the manual elements of labour.19 As traditional trades such as artistic ironwork and carpentry gave way to new, lower-skilled trades, such as that of the formwork carpenter, an army of servants was being formed to carry out menial tasks such as the transport of materials, and the preparation of reinforcements and mixing concrete. Many migrants from the poor north east were drawn


Figure 5. House Rio Branco Paranhos, exterior, São Paulo, 1943 (photograph: FAUUSP Archives).

to the south east by the opportunities offered by its industries in the 1930s. These changes were also intertwined with the erection of the first reinforced concrete skyscrapers in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro,20 as happened in other parts of Latin America.21 Liernur22 attributes this growth to the trend to substitute property investment for financial, the latter of which had been adversely affected by the 1929 crisis. After the peak of the crisis, the large amount of available capital directed to the property market helped to stimulate the rational organisation of design and

construction sites, resulting in a higher return on investments. The newspaper A Noite’s new building, whose structure was due to the engineer Emilio Baumgart, was inaugurated in 1930 and, in its innovation in using geometrical shapes and its height of 102 metres, consolidated Brazilian mastery of reinforced concrete structures. The formal renewal of architecture was initiated the activity of foreign architects, or those with foreign training. It is remarkable that two of them, the Ukrainian Gregory Warchavchik and the Brazilian Rino Levi (who both graduated from Rome in


Figure 6. House Rio Branco Paranhos, plan, São Paulo, 1943 (FAUUSP Archives).

1921 and 1926 respectively), started their careers in Santos Builder Co. Warchavchik and Levi developed the first modern architecture in Brazil, the former with his own Modernist House in Santa Cruz St in 1927 and the latter with some simple houses designed and built between 1929 and 1932.23 Despite the small size of these residential programmes, they experimented with abstract geometric-shaped spans and cantilevers of reinforced concrete. Warchavchik’s manifesto24 condemned ‘absurd ornaments’, and praised ’logical construc-

tion’ and a new taste for machines designed by engineers for economy and functionality. The 1930 revolution, a coup d ’é tat against the coffee oligarchy, established a period of modernisation for the Republic. Getúlio Vargas guided the modernisation of public institutions, helping to establish scientific and technical standards25 and guiding industrialisation.26 In this process, new labour legislation and the regulation of unions and professions granted architects and engineers exclusivity for the design and coordination of civil constructions.


Figure 7. Londrina Bus Terminal, exterior, front, Londrina, 1950 (photograph: FAUUSP Archives).

Constructional morality Artigas’s professional trajectory began in this context, away from large reinforced concrete constructions. Being a good designer, the young architect from the Polytechnique School was invited by Warchavchik in 1939 to be his partner in a tender for the Municipal Court of São Paulo. Until then, he had worked in a placement at the Botti & Bratke construction firm. Since 1937 he had also owned a modest ‘purely commercial’ construction firm, in which he satisfied local bourgeois taste through eclectic and historicist variations. At that time, Artigas did not know who Le Corbusier was, nor what was happening in Rio de Janeiro.27 Nevertheless, he imitated the Santa Cruz

St house twice.28 Thereafter, he criticised the concealment of materials evident in the house, which he thought contradicted Warchavchik’s principles, as stated in 1925: that is, bricks concealed by rustic plaster composed of white cement, kaolin and mica in order to confer a concrete-like appearance; a roof-hiding parapet, suggesting an industrial-looking slab and frames that were in fact hand-crafted.29 Despite Warchavchik’s justification, presented at CIAM in 1930, according to which ‘local industry does not produce the necessary, standardised, tasteful and good quality construction yet’,30 to Artigas the house revealed the opposite of what was intended: the mimetic character of an imported style, in conflict with local potential (figs 1, 2, 3, 4).


Figure 8. Londrina Bus Terminal, under construction, Londrina, 1950 (photograph: FAUUSP Archives).

Even though Artigas did not express these criticisms in the 1940s, his design practice evinces an intuitive search for what he deemed to be more suitable solutions than that of reinforced concrete. Artigas’s criticism was directed at the cost of concrete, which became a luxury item during the Second World War, only available to ‘a dozen landowners who came from Europe and wanted to exhibit what they already had’: after all, a concrete slab was ‘fifty times more expensive than mahogany beams’.31 In search of ’constructional morality’,32 Artigas rejected Corbusian language and found in Frank Lloyd Wright the modern solutions he con-

sidered to be cheaper and more appropriate to local reality: large roofs, timber and exposed bricks. It was with this poetics of the ‘ truth of materials’33 that Artigas began to stand out in the architectural scene of the 1940s. His Polytechnique education enabled him to calculate his buildings’ structures and study innovations in construction. This is how, for example, inspired by photographs of Wright ’s work and a theorem published in a technical magazine,34 he designed in 1943 the famous cantilever of the Rio Branco Paranhos house (figs 5, 6). Despite the relative seclusion of his initial professional practice, Artigas felt supported by the


A home built by Artigas does not follow the laws dictated by man’s routine life, but imposes a vital law, a morality that is always severe, almost puritan. It is not ‘showy’, nor does it impose an appearance of modernity, which today one could define as stylism. [ … ]. Every Artigas houses breaks all the rules of the bourgeois halls. All is open inside the Artigas homes one gets to see, with plenty of glass and often low ceilings; the kitchen is not separate and the bourgeois who might be attracted by the novelty and requisition an Artigas home would be shocked with ‘ so little privacy’, blinded by so much light. 36

Brazilian Modern Architecture

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guidelines of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), which harboured important Brazilian artists and intellectuals. To Artigas, architecture could not be approached other than as a political act.35 Thereby, while the PCB considered that the Brazilian proletariat was not yet formed as a class— thus desiring a democratic bourgeois national revolution—Artigas dedicated himself to reinventing the house designs of São Paulo’s bourgeoisie. PCB’s thesis, known as ‘stagism’, was convenient for architects insofar as they depended on wealthy clients to work, especially in São Paulo where there were not as many public buildings as in Rio de Janeiro. With this background he brought a new attitude, re-educating the residents of his projects by establishing ‘a severe morality’, as defined by Lina Bo Bardi in 1950:

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From 1943, Artigas, who until then had developed a body of work in relative isolation, renewed his architectonic vocabulary, getting closer to the modernism of Niemeyer, who was by then already associated with the first modern public works of the Vargas Government. The convergence with the groups from Rio de Janeiro can be related, amongst other factors, to the New Monumentality37 and to the impact of Brazil Builds,38 when Artigas would have ‘realised that while he endeavoured to build an architecture of local features in isolation, another architecture acknowledged as Brazilian had surfaced through North Americans’ eyes’.39 This inflexion in Artigas’s work arose in a turbulent political, professional and personal context. In 1943, Eduardo Kneese de Mello asked Artigas to lead jointly the creation of the Brazilian Institute of Architects’ (IAB) chapter in São Paulo, in a gesture intended to integrate São Paulo into IAB’s national project, until then dominated by the modernists

Figure 9. Londrina Bus Terminal, part of passenger boarding area, Londrina, 1950 (photograph: FAUUSP Archives).


Figure 10. Londrina Bus Terminal, section, construction details, Londrina, 1950 (FAUUSP Archives).

and located in Rio de Janeiro. At the same time, he concluded his partnership with Duílio Marone in the construction firm in order to establish a new office in 1945, exclusively dedicated to design. Not by chance, the first Brazilian Congress of Architects, held in São Paulo and led by Artigas, promoted in its agenda a distinction between the activities of architects and those of engineers, and asserted the artistic autonomy of architecture. The ‘ social function of architecture’ discussed at the time revealed the will

of the new professional class to take a stance on major national and international subjects. At last, the dismemberment of the Polytechnique School of São Paulo, in which Artigas taught, and the subsequent creation of the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism (FAU) in 1948, allowed him to take a leading position in architectural education, thus widening his influence over other architects. For a short period after Vargas’s dictatorship, the PCB ceased being an illegal party and soon


Figure 11. Olga Baeta House, exterior, entrance, São Paulo, 1956 (photograph: FAUUSP Archives).

became a party of the masses (and very popular amongst intellectuals, artists and architects). This demanded public involvement by the party ’s intellectual leadership, Artigas included, and in turn, this public role implied a collective position. In the Cold War context, opposition to imperialism became inevitable as did criticising both North American and Soviet models. Seeking to reconcile all these agendas, Artigas elaborated a curious theoretical articulation between Socialist Realism, national development and ‘Brazilian modern architecture’,

seen strategically as a unitary block. I will return to this topic. By abandoning construction activities, Artigas’s office was reduced. Yet, he received his first large commissions in this period, notably: São Lucas Hospital (1945), Louveira Building (1946), Sociedade Autolon and Cine Ouro Verde Building (1946), Children’s House (1950), the Londrina Bus Terminal (1950; figs 7, 8, 9, 10)) and the Morumbi Stadium (1952). At the same time, he designed some houses, mostly for friends from the University or


Figure 12. Olga Baeta House, interior, ground floor, São Paulo, 1956 (photograph: FAUUSP Archives).

the Party. These are high-quality projects that show his restlessness in redefining the uses and spatial distribution of his buildings, especially houses. However, the displacement of his previous critical stance towards modernism is nonetheless remarkable. He started to adopt solutions that already had been mastered by architects from Rio, such as the composition of pure geometrical volumes, sometimes supported directly on the ground, sometimes on pilotis; large openings; ramps as linkages between superimposed plans; the independent structure of reinforced concrete. Artigas did not arrive at Niemeyer’s free form, but he did adopt

some of Niemeyer’s parti-pris, such as the butterfly roof of the Kubitschek residence (1943), explored by Artigas in his own house in 1949. In the constructions built during these years, the reinforced concrete form can be analytically deduced but, as with Niemeyer’s work, it is covered by different kinds of material. Yet, reinforced concrete is present, allowing larger light openings, multiple levels, free plans and, especially, formal innovations. This inflexion in Artigas’s work reveals an acknowledgement of the communicative function of architecture towards the masses: precisely at a moment when even the non-specialist press showed some interest in architecture. That does not mean he was not technically committed to the simplicity of the programme and construction: after all, he even calculated most of the structures of his smaller constructions himself. However, it was, for him, rather a political issue—building a popular image of a democratic and modern national project, one that would be able to create the subjective conditions for the emergence of a progressive revolution. Therefore, ‘Brazilian modern architecture’ appears in his work as an image representing this national project. And, as communication with the populace became a more pressing matter than his earlier moral criticism of falseness in construction, the achievements of reinforced concrete and those of Brazilian engineering represented progress, and the possibility of its expression in architectonic form.40 In the early 1950s, with the emergence of the Cold War, Artigas was deeply dedicated to the


Figure 13. Olga Baeta House, sections, site plan, São Paulo, 1956 (FAUUSP Archives).

daily activities of the Communist Party, which, as a reaction to its success in the 1945 elections, became illegal once again. Being a member of the editorial board of the Party’s magazine, Fundamentos, Artigas published his most controversial texts in defence of Socialist Realism and figurative art. Abstract art and the influence of Le Corbusier were deemed to be ‘imperialist’—and artisanal tendencies, ‘reactionary’.41 Nevertheless all these passionate controversies did not deter him from his

belief in ‘Brazilian modern architecture’, according to which he continued to design.

Constructive realism Juscelino Kubitschek’s Government was the most successful in containing the opposition and achieving its developmentalist agenda. Kubitschek’s ‘Goal Plan’ involved investments in strategic sectors, such as energy, transport, basic industry and education—enabled by a set of economic


Figure 14. Mario Taques Bittencourt House, exterior, under construction, São Paulo, 1959 (photograph: FAUUSP Archives).

Figure 15. Santa Paula Yacht Club Boathouse, exterior, São Paulo, 1961 (photograph: FAUUSP Archives).


Figure 16. Santa Paula Yacht Club Boathouse, interior, detail of pillar contact point, São Paulo, 1961 (photograph: FAUUSP Archives).

measures that increased public spending rather than the contraction recommended by international creditors. The construction of the new capital crowned the Plan and materialised his policies, further stimulating civil construction. Lúcio Costa won the tender, and the President himself chose Niemeyer to take charge of the plans for the main buildings.42 Brasília shaped the country’s accelerated modernisation process, generating contradictions between the modern forms of architecture in concrete and

the extremely precarious conditions of the construction site.43 Despite the industrialisation plan that the project allegedly represented, modernisation was suggested by architectural forms that did not express a reorganisation of the means of production, which is to say, the means of construction. On the contrary, the construction of an entire city in so little time resulted in irrational solutions 44 and particularly precarious conditions of life and work for the candangos.45 From this perspective, Brasília presents an unequal and incomplete portrait of


Figure 17. Santa Paula Yacht Club Boathouse, under construction, São Paulo, 1961 (photograph: FAUUSP Archives).

Figure 18. Beach house of Giocondo Artigas, exterior, front, Caiobá, Paraná, 1961 (Photograph: FAUUSP Archives).

development, in which formal and technical progress predominated over the social. Brazilian modern architecture, as led by Niemeyer, was recognised as a prospect for the future of the rest of the world devastated by war, and became a pivotal basis for the international debate of that period. This architecture was quickly popularised in the country, being adopted by most architects in the 1950s. Distortions, repetitions and exaggerations ensued as a result, but a high-quality standard of construction also became normal. Sigfried Giedion noted a ‘certain irrationality’ in the speed with which all programmes following the policy for national development embraced

these ideas.46 Despite his enthusiasm for the new architecture in Brazil, he did not fail to point out that the ‘ land speculation’ in which this architecture was involved, was like ‘a cancer in Brazil’s development’.47 Therefore, Giedion followed others’ criticisms of the absence of urban planning and the predominance of property speculation.48 In all these attacks on ‘Brazilian modern architecture’, the best known is that of the Swiss architect Max Bill on his trip to Brazil to attend to the second Bienal of São Paulo in 1953. In an interview with the magazine Manchete, the head of the school of Ulm criticised Brazilian architecture’s formalism as being frivolous, irresponsible and antimodern. This statement provoked antipathy in most Brazilian architects towards Bill, accompanied by expressions of support and unity regarding national architecture.


Figure 19. Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, exterior, entrance façade, São Paulo, 1961 (photograph: FAUUSP Archives).

However, to understand the subsequent positions of Niemeyer and Artigas, we must also consider the change in PCB’s artistic doctrine. Nikita Krushchev, in an article published in the magazine Fundamentos in 1955, harshly criticised the USSR ’s architecture, stating that Socialist Realism should be more committed to economic dynamics and the people’s material needs than to architectural form.49 To the new leader of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party, the neo-classicism that was being practised implied slow, expensive construction, with no

gains in comfort, space or construction quality. To Kruschev, a poetics should be extracted from the elements of the very building, from its proportions, entrances and so on. From this realism, architecture should seek a productive change: industrialisation by means of standard plans and pre-fabricated construction made from cheap and speedy reinforced concrete. In this context Oscar Niemeyer surprised everyone with unexpected self-criticism in his ‘Testimony’.50 He claimed to have started, in 1956, on the occasion


Figure 20. Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, exterior view with parking areas, São Paulo, 1961 (photograph: FAUUSP Archives).

of the design for Brasília, a new stage in his career, abandoning the rush, improvisation and excessive originality which were responsible for the distortions of previous years. He then stated that he was committed to ‘the simplicity of construction and [to] the logical and economic sense that many requested’. His new attitude even involved the way he would hire workers, acting as the coordinator of a public office, especially assembled for the buildings of Brasília, and no longer within his private office. Niemeyer also sought the purification of

plastic form in the balance between functional and constructional problems, and—what interests us here—that his buildings ‘should no longer express themselves by their secondary elements, but by their very structure, properly integrated in the original plastic design’. All the factors mentioned above contributed to a change of course in Artigas’s work. Until then, even when shaken by direct contact with the USSR’s neo-classicist architecture as practised in 1953,51 he continued to insist on the argument


that Socialist Realism should recognise in Niemeyer ‘the right position, the materialist standpoint’, because he ‘understood the popular aspirations’ of Brazilians.52 However, the sequence of work in Artigas’s career reveals a more independent path, marked by a sense of continuity and unity. Deliberately rejecting the comfort and softness of a previous phase, his formal rigidness was balanced with spatial fluidity. The dominance of exposed concrete in every element of his buildings reaffirms ethical and aesthetic criteria: low cost, legibility of space, construc-

tive clarity, elimination of the superfluous, etc. In the projects developed after Baeta’s house (1956; figs 11, 12, 13) and Bittencourt II’s house (1959; Fig. 14), Artigas developed his new scheme: splitlevel disposed plans connected by ramps and covered by a single roof. A basic external volume defines the occupation of the site, harbouring the complex internal spaces generated. Despite the rigidity of the buildings’ shapes, enclosed by blind façades, ground floors remained open. This concept was evolved through the houses, schools and other buildings which Artigas designed during this period, including the Santa Paula Yacht Club Boathouse and the beach house of Giocondo Artigas (figs 15, 16, 17, 18). It reached its most accomplished expression in the design for the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism (FAU) of São Paulo University (1961/69). Under the FAU’s giant concrete grid roof, a set of ramps and corridors leads visitors around a large central void, visible from each level. With neither doors nor interruptions, one passes from the city to the studios on the upper level (figs 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25). Agreeing with Niemeyer’s self-criticism according to which the ‘ original plastic conception’ of buildings should be expressed through their structure—their essence—Artigas sought a poetics of the behaviour of structures. His inventive columns were also not limited to strict economic performance (which would represent architecture’s regression to engineering) or to the elegance of their design. Instead, he sought to emphasise the correct structural effort, even if, in order to do that, it was necessary plastically to stress the support points through devices such as oversizing, diagonal lines of compressive stresses,

Figure 21. Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, interior view, roof design, São Paulo, 1961 (photograph: FAUUSP Archives).


Figure 22. Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, under construction, interior court, São Paulo, 1961 (photograph: FAUUSP Archives).

continuity of the system pillar-façade-roof and articulated joints. Artigas related his new poetics to August Perret, who said it was necessary to ‘ faire chanter les points d’appui’.53 Despite the fact that Niemeyer and Artigas took different paths after 1956, they were both connected through the PCB’s theses, whereby the alliance with the bourgeoisie should no longer be focused on the subjective conditions for social transformation (education and co-option of bourgeoisie’s

progressive faction), but on the objective: the development of productive forces. According to this orthodox Marxism, industrialisation would subsequently and ultimately lead to the crisis of capitalism and to the end of labour exploitation. However, the industrialisation of architecture was far from being achieved due to the wide availability of cheap labour, partly prompted by the availability of reinforced concrete. Niemeyer thought this objective should be pursued through political activism, with


Figure 23. Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, under construction, roof exterior, under construction, interior court, São Paulo, 1961 (photograph: FAUUSP Archives).

nothing that could be done immediately in architecture, although in practice his formal freedom had induced innovations in engineering. In Niemeyer ’s mind, architecture was just a distraction, something less important, which at best could instigate the curiosity and imagination of other realities. To Artigas, however, who saw moral content in the choices of materials and techniques (for example, imperialism, elitism, colonialism), this separation between militancy and professionalism became unsustainable:

After all the question arises: where do we stand? Or: what to do? Wait for a new society and keep doing what we do, or abandon the occupation of architecture, since it is oriented in hostility towards the people, and throw ourselves into the revolutionary struggle completely?54 The solution for his dilemma—’a critical attitude towards reality’—was fuzzy when he wrote it in 1952, but would became clearer after 1956.


Figure 24. Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, completed building, public event, São Paulo, 1961 (photograph: FAUUSP Archives).

Hence his attempt to reconcile the impossibility of industrialisation and the limited role of the architect led to a social and economic critique in the language of architecture: Oscar and I have the same worries and find the same problems [ … ], but whereas he always strives to solve the contradictions in a harmonious synthesis, I plainly expose them. In my opinion, the architect’s role does not consist in an adaptation; we should not conceal the existing struggles with an elegant mask, we need fearlessly to reveal them.55

Nevertheless, when we analyse Artigas’s work more closely, we can notice that his new poetics did not break with Niemeyer’s monumentality and its tricks. Artigas’s masterpiece, the FAU, reproduces the lessons taught by Niemeyer’s Alvorada Palace (1957): its front pillar, equally iconic as Niemeyer ’s, also supports a small amount of the load of the façade above it (which seems heavier than it is). Moreover, he displaced the alignment of the sideelevation pillars with the remaining ones in order to emphasise the resulting large span. These and other ‘details’ demonstrate that he was also not


Figure 25. Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, present-day exterior view, São Paulo, 1961 (photograph: Nelson Kon).

willing to give up thearchitectural features that made the buildings of this tradition so amazing. In fact Artigas mixes the truth of materials and structural behaviour with the figurative tradition of Latin American monumentality. Thus the visual effect of the structure is more radical than its effective rationalisation. The exposed marks of the concrete formwork give clues to its production, but its appearance (the appearance of truth) becomes stronger than the content it indicates (the production itself). Thus the exposure of the concrete assumes a radical meaning as the production remains unchanged.

Denunciation? Unfortunately, it is not this simple since there is an undeniable positivity in it. The first point is to recognise that the marks of concrete production, carefully indicated by Artigas in his drawings, have an evident plastic intentionality. Artigas was always aware of two inescapable conditions of art and architecture: their presence in history and the economy. This is what drove his ‘constructive morality’ in the early 1940s and his postwar turning point towards what he deemed most likely to be identified by the people as progress. Thus he rescued a commitment to the reality of pro-


duction whilst seeking to represent the contradictions of reality. That is why there is no figuration of a non-existent industrialisation in his works, unlike many Brutalist aesthetics of the period. However, within a critical approach to reality, he finds space to value the scientific and technical ingenuity of reinforced concrete. Similarly to the classical language of architecture, Artigas focused his symbolism on pillars, les point d ’appui. The meanings of these symbols, however, cannot be comprehended in terms of their forms in isolation, but only in close relationship to the reality of the project: its budget, its location, its use, etc. Two other projects designed by Artigas at the same time as FAU, help to illustrate this balance between material and the visual representation of reality. In the beach house for his brother Giocondo on the coast at Paraná, far from the industrial context of São Paulo where expertise in advanced reinforced concrete was to be found, Artigas experimented by using a rustic log of wood as a pillar (see Figure 18 above), combining it with other vernacular materials, in, for example, brick walls and stone floors. Nevertheless, in parallel, for the Boathouse of the Santa Paula Yacht Club, he reaffirmed his use of exposed concrete and developed one of his unfulfilled ideas from FAU for the use of the pillar, producing a simply supported structure expressed in four small rolling contact points (see Figure 16 above). His approach can be better understood through an anecdote from the time of the space race, according to which Americans might invest much time and money in research leading to a pen that would be able to write in extreme conditions of temperature, pressure and lack of gravity—whereas Russians

would simply take a pencil. This illustrates the lowtech pragmatism of a certain Marxist culture of the 1950s and 1960s, to which Artigas belonged. In the discussion of modern architecture and underdevelopment, he gave meaning to a diffuse collective feeling by assigning dignity to the simplicity and low technology of reinforced concrete. It was identified as the most suitable option for Third-World conditions, which included intensive use of labour, the loss of traditional construction techniques and engineering expertise: among other factors presented hitherto. If concrete was already closely linked to modernisation of the relationships of production in construction and to the history of Brazilian modern architecture, it was the right time to expose it as a symbol of that awareness. That is why we can think of it in terms of figurativeness, a typical element of the New Monumentality. However, Artigas’s praise for the relative low-tech qualities of concrete cannot be treated as an aesthetic of precariousness, which he vehemently refuted, but rather as a means of demonstrating the cunning of human ingenuity (artistically organised) in the face of the violent nature and limited conditions of development that characterised Brazil in that period. Thus, greater spans and larger cantilevers acquired a sense of boldness and political resistance, which became more radical through an aesthetic purification enabled by the use of less industrial technology and less material variety. A single material—indeed, Le Corbusier’s rationalist dream of a construction site with only one métier —converged with the meaning of concrete in Artigas’s architecture, where the solution was a consequence of a ‘critical attitude towards reality’.


Acknowledgements This work was supported by Fapesp under Grant 2013-03331-8; English translation by Eduardo Orsolini.

Notes and references 1. C. A. Vasconcelos, O concreto armado no Brasil: recordes, realizações, história (São Paulo, Copiare, 1985). 2. L. Costa, ‘Razões da nova arquitetura’, (1936), in, A. Xavier, Depoimento de uma geração (São Paulo, Casac Naify, 2003); P. Goodwin, Brazil Builds (New York, Moma, 1943); H. E. Mindlin, Modern Archi-

tecture in Brazil (New York, Reinhold Publishing Corp., 1956). 3. Y. Bruand, Arquitetura contemporânea no Brasil (São Paulo, Perspectiva, 1999; 1st edition, 1981). 4. Authors such as Sophia da Silva Telles, Otília Arantes, EduardoComas,CarlosAlberto Martinsand SylviaFicher. 5. A. Gorelik. ‘O moderno em debate: cidade, modernidade e modernização ’, in, MIRANDA, Wander Melo (org.), Narrativas da modernidade (Belo Horizonte, Autêntica, 1999), pp. 55–80; J. F. Liernur, Escritos de arquitectura del siglo XX en América Latina (Madrid, Tanais, 2002), pp. 27 –53. 6. M. A. Pereira, A. Gorelik, Das vanguardas a Brasília — Cultura urbana e arquitetura na América Latina (Belo Horizonte, Editora UFMG, 2005), p. 157. 7. Eg, A. Colquhom, Modern Architecture (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002); M. Tafuri, F Dal Co, Architettura Contemporanea (Milan, Electa, 1976). 8. J-L. Cohen, The Future of Architecture Since 1889 (London, Phaidon, 2012). 9. A. Forty, Concrete and culture: a material history (London, Reaktion Books, 2012). 10. His leadership is acknowledged in the recognition of the ‘Artigas School’: cf ., J. Katinsky, ‘Arquitetura Paulista:

uma perigosa montagem ideológica’, Arquitetura e Urbanismo, 17 (1988)—or, more commonly, as the ‘School of São Paulo ’, even though it does not define a regionalist approach. This school is alsousuallyidentified with ‘New Brutalism’: cf ., R. Zein, ‘Brutalismo, sobre sua definição ’, Arquitextos, 84 (2007) . 11. M. Vargas, História da Técnica e da Tecnologia no Brasil (São Paulo, Editora UNESP, 1994). 12. In spite of being created with academic aims, these institutions became providers of specialised services to modern architecture. It is remarkable, for example, that the Lyceum of São Paulo produced the industrialised-looking frames used in MASP or in palaces in Brasília. To Lina Bo Bardi, who came from Italy, it was difficult to believe that ‘old craftsmen’ made this work. Prejudices aside, the Lyceum of Arts and Crafts of São Paulo was financed by industry, and the accumulation of technical knowledge allowed it not only to produce industrialised-looking objects but also to supply the construction industry with products, training and technological innovation. See, R. Schenkman, Do vital ao pano de vidro (MSc Thesis, São Paulo, FAUUSP, 2014). 13. M. L. Gitahy, ‘ Desmemória das metrópoles: apagando os rastros do trabalho de construir’, Ponto (1998). 14. In São Paulo, ‘ at the turn of the century, three quarters of the masons and all the foremen came from Italy’ A. V. Queiroz apud Pedro Arantes, Arquitetura Nova: Sérgio Ferro, Flávio Império e Rodrigo Lefèvre, de Artigas aos mutirões (São Paulo, Editora 34, 2002), p. 20. Until the First World War they were the ‘main leaders of the workers movement ’: M. L. Gitahy, ‘ Desmemória das metrópoles’, op. cit. 15. Hoping to avoid the high cost of imported cement for large hydroelectric power plant construction , in 1924 Light Co. created Brazil’s first cement factory, Portland Perus Brazilian Cement S.A., in São Paulo.


16. Owned by L. Riedlinger, a German businessman who was Hennebique ’s student.

28. Ottini de Arruda Castanho’s and Giulio Pasquali’s houses, according to D. Thomaz, Um olhar sobre Vila-

17. M. L. Freitas, Modernidade concreta: as grandes con strutoras e o concreto armado no Brasil, 1920 a 1940 (DSc Thesis, São Paulo, FAUUSP, 2011). 18. The new processes and techniques introduced by this

nova Artigas e sua contribuição à arquitetura brasileira (MSc Thesis, São Paulo, FAUUSP, 1997). Y. Bruand, Arquitetura Contemporânea no Brasil (São Paulo, Perspectiva, 1981). G. Warchavchik apud H. Segawa, Arquiteturas no Brasil 1900– 1990 (São Paulo, Edusp, 1998). Testimony of Artigas to Sylvia Ficher (1982) apud P. Arantes, Arquitetura Nova, op. cit . ’Constructional morality ’ or ’technological morality’ are terms used by Artigas that became key concepts for his work: see, Ver: S. Ficher, M. Acayaba, Arquitetura moderna brasileira (São Paulo, Projeto, 1982). The notion of ’truth of materials’ appears in Artigas’s text ‘Os caminhos da arquitetura moderna ’ (1952), as a contribution from F. Lloyd Wright, to whom ’the materials should have their color, their own texture, because it must be “ organic”’. Published in the Magazine of the Engineering Institute according to Artigas’s testimony in ‘ A função social do arquiteto’ (1984), in, J. Artigas, Caminhos da arquitetura (São Paulo, Cosac Naify, 2004). Theissue that seems fundamental to us is how Artigas’s political approach in architecture swings between the visual and the technical. A different position from ours, onethat avoids therelationship between ideology and architecture in Artigas’s work, can be seen in R. Zein, ‘ Brutalismo, sobre sua definição’, op. cit. L. B. Bardi, ‘Casas de VilanovaArtigas’, Habitat , 1 (1950). S. Giedion, J. L. Sert, F. Legér, ‘ Nine Points on Monumentality’ (1943), Harvard Architectural Review (1984), pp. 62–63. P. Goodwin, Brazil Builds , op. cit. D. Thomaz, Um olhar sobre Vilanova Artigas e sua contribuição à arquitetura brasileira (MSc Thesis, São Paulo, FAUUSP, 1997), p. 125.

29.

company were directed to the rational organisation

30.

of the construction site. Later, this experience guided the owner’s political campaign which gave rise in

31.

1932 to the first Brazilian agencies for the rationalisation of work: see, A. P. Koury, ‘Remontando o para-

32.

doxo histórico e montando a unidade nacional: os quartéis construídos pela Companhia Construtora de Santos’, II ENANPARQ (Natal, 2012). 19. A. Forty, Concrete and culture , op. cit. , p. 232. 20. C. Rabelo, Arquitetos na cidade: espaços profissionais em expansão (DSc Thesis, São Paulo, FAUUSP, 2011). 21. Amongst which the gigantic Kavanagh Building in Buenos Aires, built between 1933 and 1936, stands out with its 90.000 m² of reinforced concrete. 22. J. F. Liernur, Arquitectura en la Argentina del siglo XX: La construcion de la modernidad (Buenos Aires, Fondo Nacional de las Artes, 2001), p. 202. 23. R. Anelli, A. Guerra, N. Kon, Rino Levi, arquitetura e cidade (São Paulo, Romano Guerra, 2001), pp. 28 –29.

33.

34.

35.

24. G. Warchavchik, ‘Acerca da arquitetura moderna’ (1925), Arte em Revista , 4 (1980), pp. 5–6. 25. Some examples are the creation of the Brazilian Association of Technical Standards (ABNT), the Brazilian Association of Portland Cement (ABCP), the Institute for Technological Researches (IPT) and the Universities of São Paulo (USP) and Porto Alegre (UFRGS). 26. Vargas created a state-based industry: for example, the National Manufacturer of Motors (FNM) and the National Steel Co. (CSN). 27. P. Arantes, Arquitetura Nova, op. cit .

36. 37.

38. 39.

Vilanova Artigas and the Meanings of Concrete in Brazil

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