Modern and Traditional: Brasilia’s Paradigms

By the 1950s, a shared culture spreading internationally through teaching and specialized literature became common currency in professional circles and gave rise to a repertoire of urban theories and practices. An examination of Lúcio Costa’s winning entry for the pilot plan of Brasilia attest to the existence of these paradigmatic formulae. Further more, not only was Brasilia a product of this culture, it grew to become itself archetypal. Yet, this high tide would be short-lived. In late 50s and early 60s, this veritable urban designer’s toolbox began to lose its legitimacy to become target of critical scrutiny

GIS-Assisted Identification Of Historic Districts: A Conceptual Model Case Study In Planaltina, Brazil

Georeferencing and digital databases are being used increasingly as tools for the identification, visualization, and management of cultural heritage sites. Likewise, typological models are useful for classifying buildings and structuring knowledge about historic urban districts. The merging of these two approaches provides increased spatial awareness of the built fabric, especially when studying entire neighborhoods whose character is yet to be formally defined. The historic preservation survey of the historic center of Planaltina, a nineteenth-century town in central Brazil, provided a test case for this combination. The site boundary as well as the defining character of the site had to be derived from the survey itself. To achieve this, the survey team recorded on a relational database each building lot as an assemblage of morphological features. Each database record was then linked to the lot’s spatial location using a Geographic Information System. This setup delivers dynamic maps providing direct visual assistance for the team in defining the limits and dominant character of areas of historic interest within the site. In turn, the results assist in the definition of values to be preserved as well as design regulations to be enacted for interventions and infill projects in each area

Literary History and Architectural Traditionalism in Portugal and Brazil

This article outlines the formation of architectural theory in Portugal and Brazil during the nineteenth century, arguing that such theory was initially contained within the social circle and methodological scope of literary history. It makes this case by following the architectural discourses of writers, literary critics, and ethnographers. This investigation reveals an evolving set of architectural references and methods with which to approach the built environment, while also raising challenges for the cross-disciplinary appropriation of architectural theories. The critique of architectural character in Portugal and Brazil from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries derives much of its motivation and methodology from literary history and criticism. Moreover, it plays out to a great extent within literary circles, even as a Portuguese-language architectural press was emerging during the Belle Époque. I seek to show here how traditionalist architecture in Portugal and Brazil has a longer historical background and clearer theoretical roots than some scholarship on the topic tends to assume. Portuguese-speaking architects and architectural critics appropriated the goals and perspectives of literary historians, formulated long before the rise of traditionalist architectural styles. This appropriation could be seen in an implicit dialogue between Belle Époque architectural traditionalism and ethnographic portrayals of national character construed throughout the second half of the nineteenth century

Fragmento e todo: duas imagens urbanas entre oriente e ocidente, c. 1600

Este artigo analisa as formas de representação de cidades em duas ilustrações produzidas por volta de 1600: a gravura de Macau, por Theodor de Bry, e a vista de Quioto, atribuída a Iwasa Katsumochi Matabei. Investiga-se a relação entre formas de representação fragmentária e global em ambas as imagens. A gravura europeia da cidade retrata o espaço urbano como um todo, enquanto a pintura japonesa representa uma série de fragmentos separados por nuvens douradas. Entretanto, a imagem global da figura europeia é fragmentada pela multiplicidade de perspectivas concomitantes, ao passo que o biombo japonês tem uma ordem global subjacente gerada pela projeção cavaleira. Em ambos os casos, há interação entre olhares fragmentados e uma visão de conjunto que se relacionam de modos variados. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Cidade oriental. Fragmento. Funaki. Iconografia. Iwasa Katsumochi Matabei. Theodor de Bry

Programa de estudios para una arquitectura sostenible y sensible al patrimonio

La aptitud para emplear de modo corriente materiales de baja energía incorporada y para hacerlo en armonía con el carácter de las construcciones verná- culas será capaz de cerrar la brecha conceptual entre la conservación de edificios de valor patrimonial y las metas de reducción de emisiones de carbono en la industria de la construcción. Para capturar localmente las ganancias socioeconómicas que puede generar la conservación de la construcción tradicional como mate- ria y como práctica, se necesita ubicar la enseñanza de los métodos tradicionales de construcción con materia- les regionales en el centro del programa de estudios en arquitectura

Fragmento e todo: duas imagens urbanas entre oriente e ocidente, c. 1600

This article analyzes representations of cities in two pictures created around 1600: Theodor de Bry’s engraving of Macao, and the views of Kyoto attributed to Iwasa Katsumochi Matabei. The relationship between fragmented and total forms of repre- sentation is studied in both pictures. The European engraving depicts urban space as a whole, while the Japanese painting portrays a number of fragmentary scenes separated by golden clouds. However, the global picture in the European print is fragmented by the multiplication of simultaneous perspectives, while the Japanese screen displays underlying global order due to its cavalier projection. In both cases there is interaction between fragmentary views and a global outlook that relate in diverse ways

Accouplement: vicissitudes of an architectural motif in classical France

Coupled columns in French architecture and the reaction to their use from the Renaissance up to the classical rationalism of the early twentieth century hinged on the debates regarding the relation- ship between structural stability and visual delight, over the backdrop of the search for a national classical tradition. This architectural motif was variously put forward under the argument of the load-bearing performance of materials, as a logical derivation of column spacing rules in the classical canon, or even as a reinterpretation of gothic bundled piers. The practical usefulness and moral suitability of iron reinforce- ment in the wide spans entailed by coupled columns accompanied these debates from the seventeenth- century Louvre Colonnade up to Perret’s case for the monumental use of reinforced concrete

Vernacular Patterns in Portugal and Brazil: Evolution and Adaptations

Traditional towns in Portugal and Brazil have evolved a finely tuned coordination between, on the one hand, modular dimensions for street widths and lot sizes, and on the other, a typology of room shapes and layouts within houses. Despite being well documented in urban history, this coordination was in the last century often interpreted as contingent, a result of the limited material means of pre-industrial societies. But the continued application and gradual adaptation of these urban and architectural patterns through periods of industrialization and economic development suggests that they respond both to enduring housing requirements and to piecemeal urban growth. This article surveys the persistence of urban and architectural patterns up to the early 20th century, showing their resilience in addressing modern housing and urbanization requirements

Cem anos de ecletismos na arquitetura residencial paulistana

Os particularismos, ou seja, as formas culturalmente determinadas, tendem a assumir uma existência própria, vinculada a fatores e interpretações externos, e pouco afeitos a constituírem um sistema estilístico autorreferente, tal como o eram o modernismo canônico ou mesmo o classicismo tradicional. Esse contexto existiu na época do ecletismo acadêmico e persiste no período recente, a que se ventura aqui chamar de ecletismo moderno