In 1580 he died Andrea Palladio, great Venetian architect who designed the Church of the Redeemer and the facade of St. George’s Church in Venice, the Palladian Basilica and the Olympic Theater in Vicenza, the Villa Capra, known as Rotonda, giving a new meaning to what we mean by proportion, symmetry, in short, in what we mean by architecture.
In 1613 a considerable part of Palladio’s drawings was acquired by Inigo Jones, considered the first English architect and a sort of grandfather of what we now call the opera. In 1719 Lord Burlington took other original drawings and ancient reconstructions made by Palladio which were in Villa Barbaro, Veneto Maser.
Currently, these two collections transported to England constitute the largest existing body of primary sources on the architect of the Quinhentos: the more than 300 original documents are deposited at Riba, the Royal Institute of British Architects, and can be consulted in low resolution in his place. There is not such a large collection of Palladio’s drawings in Italy.
I am not writing this long introduction to justify the transfer of approximately 11,000 documents by Lucio Costa to the Casa da Arquitectura, in the town of Matosinhos, Portugal. I only scribble such words to deny that the movement of architectural documents is a “new phenomenon” and catches people off guard. Since the 17th century, the collections of great architects have remained with whoever organizes them first.
A brief digression: Contextually, the ease with which Lord Burlington took Palladio’s drawings was a demonstrative sign of the politico-economic decay of the serene Republic of Venice, a country that was ultimately extinguished by Napoleon decades later.
At first glance, the trip to the collection of dr. Lucio – my Carioca origin, my affection for his work and the necessary reverence compels me to use this distinction from now on – for Portugal it looks like a repeat of the document donation by Paulo Mendes da Rocha last year. But it’s not the same thing anymore.
The architect from Rio de Janeiro, born in Toulon, underlined the distinction between scribbling, sketching and risk: “Risk is drawing not only when it wants to understand or signify, but to do, to build. Pike. His architectural work is not limited to incredible risks like those of the Palácio Capanema, the birth certificate of Brazilian architecture of which he is co-author.
In handwritten or typed texts with comments and pen corrections made by the intellectual, we find the genesis of Brasília – a competition won by his enlightening writing -, the construction of the character of Oscar Niemeyer as a man of genius – he It is enough to read “Much construction, Architecture and a miracle” of 1951 – exchanges of letters with fruitful dialogues established with interlocutors of the stature of Le Corbusier.
In principle, anyone who wants to research twentieth-century Brazil, not in the sense of an intellectual’s curiosity, but to understand a project for a national state – something Paulo Mendes da Rocha never aspired to aspire to. -, it is inevitable to go there. by dr. Pike.
His “registers of an experience”, the happy title of his seminal book with a sample of the collection that visited Portugal, above all contains public value in revealing ideas for building institutions with the Brazilian government. For this reason, Lucio Costa’s archives extend far beyond the individual sphere: a value that no other collection by a Brazilian architect will offer us.
It is so rich that we find in its archives even the precedent of the current impasse: when the need to safeguard the artistic and architectural heritage of Brazil arose, dr. Lucio played a central role in the group of intellectuals who founded Sphan, now Iphan. Taking this example from 1937, it is urgent to create an institution for the conservation and dissemination of documents by Brazilian architects.
The work of the architectural collections of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and the University of São Paulo should not be ignored, but it must be assumed that we need an independent institution whose sole and main focus is the collections. themselves. An organization that centralizes fundraising and investments in cataloging and preservation to, on the other hand, support university research.
Such an initiative cannot come from individuals, but from an institutional link which involves the Council of Architecture and Urbanism – the architectural entity with a lot of budget – and the national and regional departments of the Institute of Architects. of Brazil, whose operating structure is more appropriate to lead a new institution.
Schools of architecture and library science must be involved in building teams, that is, brains. Partnerships and contributions from municipal and state governments are welcome for physical and digital infrastructure. If during Bolsonaro’s presidency it seems chimerical to encourage the creation of a new institution, it should be remembered that governments are dying out and that this institute of Brazilian collections could be born within professional bodies and, at the same time, future, to become the Brazilian State.
Paulo Mendes da Rocha and Lucio Costa are architects of great international interest, but many archives of other Brazilian architects may be lost over time due to the lack of an agency interested in receiving them. The Canadian Center for Architecture (CCA) in Canada, the Riba in England, the Casa da Arquitectura in Portugal will remain interested in some and ignore others.
It is up to Brazil to create an institution with the same purpose, starting with collections that are not under solid institutional safeguards, such as those of João Filgueiras Lima, Lelé, Éolo Maia, or even Oscar. Niemeyer, fundamental but fragmented in the family. disputes.
No need to write texts from social media or private WhatsApp messages with inflammatory speeches, complaining about colonialism, putting yourself in the role of victim – it ends up being a repeat of David Luiz’s posture on the way to the locker room , after 7-1, crying and saying “I just wanted to give joy to my people.”
In recent years, specific collections like Hans Broos have emerged, which are very fine initiatives but insufficient – in the general panorama we look like Felipão climbing Bernard, the “boy with joy in his legs”, in half. World Cup final. And we’ll probably still have a Brazilian architecture critic making a new version of the “letter from Mrs. Lucia” with verbal juggling to say he’s proud of the country and that everything will be fine. It’s not good.
It is also not for the press to define Casa da Arquitetura, to rejoice in a budget in euros and to be satisfied with the publication of articles of analysis and opinion. It is up to the newspapers to hold them to account. Ask Casa da Arquitetura what will this digital broadcasting platform look like? Whereas there are around 9,000 articles by Paulo Mendes, 11,000 by dr. Lucio and many others linked to the Infinito Vai exhibition, does it seem sufficient to me to ask when this platform will be available? How many people at Casa da Arquitetura work in archives? What will the exchange between Brazil and Portugal look like under the research grant program for in loco work in archives? Many questions are not asked.
Regarding the Costa family, especially Julieta and Maria Elisa, I understand the difficulty and the risks of maintaining the collection. I don’t see any blame in their decision. There is really no institution to receive in Brazil today. I just wonder why the collection of the Casa de Lucio Costa remained private and did not go to public archives, like that of Iphan, when the current political situation was plausible 15 years ago.
We, as a class of Brazilian architects and I personally include myself in the mea culpa, have made many mistakes in recent years. It’s time to prepare to step into the ongoing global conflict for the archives of good architects. Are we going to become professionals, create an institution and start playing this game in earnest?
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