Architecture as Civil Commitment: Lucio Costa's Modernist Project for Brazil

Gaia Piccarolo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781317179160
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architektur
• Subtopic: Architektur Allgemein

Architecture as Civil Commitment analyses the many ways in which Lucio Costa shaped the discourse of Brazilian modern architecture, tracing the roots, developments, and counter-marches of a singular form of engagement that programmatically chose to act by cultural means rather than by political ones.

Split into five chapters, the book addresses specific case-studies of Costa's professional activity, pointing towards his multiple roles in the Brazilian federal government and focusing on passages of his work that are much less known outside of Brazil, such as his role inside Estado Novo bureaucracy, his leadership at SPHAN, and his participation in UNESCO's headquarters project, all the way to the design of Brasilia.

Digging deep into the original documents, the book crafts a powerful historical reconstruction that gives the international readership a detailed picture of one of the most fascinating architects of the 20th century, in all his contradictory geniality. It is an ideal read for those interested in Brazilian modernism, students and scholars of architectural and urban planning history, socio-cultural and political history, and visual arts.

1 The start of a militant career

The direction of the School of Fine Arts

The young director of the School of Fine Arts

Addressing the very beginning of the establishment of the militant project pursued from the early 1930s by Lucio Costa leads us to first consider the episode that, in some way, was the main detonator of the same project, while also addressing the context of a professional career that seems framed – at least initially – in the traditional educational upbringing of a young and gifted architect belonging to the Carioca upper bourgeoisie.

In particular, we refer to the direction of the National School of Fine Arts, unanimously recognised – often without detailed historical reconstruction – as the first act of Costa’s militant career, frequently called into question by historiography as a fundamental turning point in the process aiming to introduce modern architecture onto Brazilian soil.¹

It is precisely the importance of this episode that today determines – in light of new interpretative keys – the need to once again question the sources and re-evaluate the role of this first prestigious public appointment, placing it within the broader context of Costa’s relations with the political and institutional realities. In order to do so, it is first necessary to take a step back and outline the conditions in which the specific official duty was shaped.

As is well known, Costa’s academic training at the same National School of Fine Arts and the first phase of his professional activity have come to raise the issue in the years (especially while the architect was still alive) of the difficulty of containing his eclectic and traditionalist production within the frame of his consolidated image as an authoritative member and “ideologist” of Brazilian modernism. Although this production has long since been redeemed from historiographical silence, it is astonishing to see how few inquiries have been made into this delicate transition from the late 1920s and early 1930s, a transition that cannot be solely explained, as it has up until now, in terms of a sudden “conversion” to the modernist creed, but that rather seems to have been rooted in the solicitations, acquaintances, and opportunities given by a series of important professional occasions.

Costa enrolled in the School of Fine Arts in 1917, at the age of fifteen. His family had in fact just returned to settle in Rio de Janeiro after having lived for several years in Europe, where he was born and where his schooling had taken place.²

Once he had completed the three years of the Curso geral, in the first months of 1922 he enrolled in the Curso especial of Architecture, receiving his engenheiro-architecto (engineer-architect) diploma in 1926.³ From about the third year of his academic record, Costa steadily dedicated himself to professional activities and was promptly noticed by his professors, obtaining a number of job opportunities within the same academic environment. After a design experience at the Rebecchi architecture firm,⁴ one of the largest and most successful professional studios in Rio de Janeiro at the time, Costa was invited by the then-professor of “Composição elementar de arquitetura,” Archimedes Memória, to work at the prestigious Escriptorio Technico Heitor de Mello, a studio that Memória had recently come into possession of – together with Francisque Cuchet – after the death of Heitor de Mello. His collaboration with the studio continued for at least two years, allowing Costa to take part in a series of relevant projects, including the neo-colonial restructuring of the old arsenal, which was transformed into the Pavilhão das Grandes Indústrias on the occasion of the Independence Centenary International Exposition of Brazil, taking place in Rio de Janeiro in 1922.⁵

While Costa’s disposition toward renovation only happened once in contact with the modernist environment, his training developed under the aegis of the academic culture and the neo-colonial movement leading the Brazilian and general Latin-American debate in those years.⁶ Costa presumably left Memória’s studio with the arrival of the first assignments from academic figures, among which were the home-atelier for painter Rodolfo Chambelland and the renovation of a colonial residence for the then-director of the School, João Baptista da Costa. It was in this moment that he started the collaboration with his colleague Fernando Valentim, with whom he won the great silver medal at the Exposição Geral of the School of Fine Arts in 1924.⁷ The projects presented by the two students – who were described as the authors of the more interesting projects on display on the pages of the newspaper A Noite⁸ – fit in completely with the eclectic style of the time. In addition to a neo-medieval castle for Baron Smith de Vasconcellos in Itaipava, two small neo-colonial-style cottages (similar to the popular models disseminated by a series of widespread periodical publications),⁹ and the luxurious cottage for Arnaldo Guinle, the two architects also presented the residence for Chambelland and the project for a Solar Brasileiro (Figure 1.1), which Costa submitted on the occasion of the 1923 competition launched by the Instituto Brasileiro de Arquitetos, upon the initiative of José Mariano Filho, president of the Sociedade Brasileira de Belas Artes and the main promoter of the traditionalist cause.¹⁰

Figure 1.1 Lucio Costa, drawing for the competition “Bancos e portões,” launched by José Mariano Filho, 1922–1923. Casa de Lucio Costa.

The relations with Mariano Filho – a central figure in the local artistic debate who was engaged in an intense campaign to promote the neo-colonial movement – held an important role in Costa’s professional development. Mariano Filho introduced the young architect to the study of traditional Brazilian architecture, representing – in light of his future commitment in the field of heritage – a surprising element of continuity among the different phases of his professional career. This first impact with the remains of colonial architecture proved to be revealing and symptomatic, since it came to fuel an interest in the legacy of the past that – from a nostalgic Ruskinian approach, combined with a somewhat free design re-appropriation – would lead to a more realistic desire to assess issues in terms of preservation, and – in his more mature design activity – to a surprising ability to re-actualise traditional architectural solutions. Among the initiatives sponsored by Mariano Filho – many of which aimed at collecting research material for his private residence, the neo-colonial Solar Monjope – there was Costa’s expedition to the colonial town of Diamantina, in Minas Gerais, in May of 1924, an event that took place in a period of great interest for national historical and artistic heritage, shared by figures linked to the modernist movement, such as Tarsila do Amaral and Oswald de Andrade.¹¹ During his stay in Diamantina – with visits to Sabará, Ouro Preto, and Mariana – Costa carefully observed the constructive and decorative details of colonial architecture, of which he began to appreciate the sober simplicity, constructive reality, and proportional beauty, comparing (and contrasting) it – in an interview he released upon his return from the expedition – to the artificiality of the neo-colonial style.¹² According to Mariano Filho, the project Costa later presented for the design competition of the Brazilian Pavilion at the Exposition of Philadelphia (which was also never carried out) represents one of the greatest “spiritual” compromises on the part of the young Costa – who would win, again – with the traditionalist movement.¹³

The years 1926 and 1927 – despite a number of trips to Europe and to the historic cities of Minas Gerais after his graduation¹⁴ – proved to be very productive, with the construction of various residences in collaboration with Fernando Valentim and the participation in a series of public open competitions. In the competition for the Argentine embassy, in particular, Costa achieved double recognition with two projects that were clearly influenced by his recent travels, presenting styles that were, respectively, “Hispanic, imbued with neo-colonial spirit” and “Florentine.”¹⁵ In an interview he released for the occasion, the architect openly showed for the first time that he acknowledged some of the avant-garde architectural developments in Europe, although describing them as transitional phenomena in some ways comparable to that of Art Nouveau.¹⁶ Although this project also only remained on paper, it seems to some way represent Costa’s definitive recognition in the professional world. In fact, his involvement – together with a small number of local professionals – in the survey launched by the newspaper O Paíz on the adequacy of skyscrapers within the context of Rio de Janeiro came only a few months later.¹⁷

In 1929, year in which Costa claimed to have been slightly scandalised by a conference held by Le Corbusier at the School of Fine Arts,¹⁸ he was commissioned by Manuel Bandeira – a figure that together with Rodrigo Mello Franco de Andrade would play a fundamental role in his appointment to the position of school director the following year – to write his first relevant theoretical essay, “O Aleijadinho e a arquitetura tradicional,” from which he would partially distance himself in the following years.¹⁹

Therefore, during the years of global financial crisis, on the doorstep of the crucial political events that agitated Brazil at the end of the decade, Costa benefited from an undoubtedly relevant position in the disciplinary debate, not only as an architect – with the support of influential clients – but also as a theoretical and intellectual reference. In the aftermath of the Revolution of 1930, his authority was confirmed by various important public engagements; not only was he a member of the commission in charge of evaluating the plan for the capital drawn up by the French urban planner Donat Alfred Agache,²⁰ but he was also in charge of directing the major renovation of the neo-classical Itamaraty Palace, headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a position he would be forced to give up once appointed school director.

It is in this context – in line with the growing awareness of the partial isolation of Brazil’s artistic and architectural scene – that he had the opportunity to bring a significant renewal within the newly formed institutional reality, through the elaboration of an educational reform for the main academic institution in the country. One of the cultural initiatives that was promoted by the provisional government taking office after the Revolution headed by Getúlio Vargas, and by the new Ministry of Education and Public Health in particular,²¹ was in fact Costa’s appointment to the direction of the National School of Fine Arts.²²

Strangely, up until now, nobody seems to have questioned the choice of Francisco Campos, minister of Education of the provisional government, to assign the position to Costa, who was only twenty-eight years old at the time; this is even more peculiar if we consider that the school’s regulations foresaw that the director was to be selected among the school’s own board of professors. Costa himself, on several occasions, defined his election as an act of coercion, attributing his initial positive recept...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Foreword by Fernando Luiz Lara
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. The start of a militant career: the direction of the School of Fine Arts
• 2. Reasons for the new architecture: Gustavo Capanema’s grands travaux
• 3. A programme for national architecture: the years of the Estado Novo
• 4. A strategy of mediation: between the CIAM and the SPHAN
• 5. Shaping the true Machine Age: art, city, landscape
• Bibliography
• Index