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Cable-Stayed Bridges: The Düsseldorf Bridge Family
Get PDFThe heart of the famous Düsseldorf Bridge Family are the three cable-stayed bridges built between the late 50s and early 70s of the last century. They mark the beginning of the development of Modern cable-stayed bridges, but not only from a technological point of view. Instead they develop the aesthetical potential once the new structural type has become favorable all over the world
Art and Architecture, a Synthesis
Get PDFThe late CIAM discussions, namely the ones that took part in the scope of the Bergamo Conference in 1947, brought social and intensive public aspirations. Between North and South, the new world retook the European avant-garde issues implementing the most collective values for a better future to come. Giedion’s Architecture You and Me or the struggle for a New Monumentality, were the placed questions that received an extraordinary eco from American Architecture which emerged with a creative energy. Therefore, in our days, the aim is to deepen understand the process and to find the paths for the future. A future that we may create with such awareness that may, generously, give us the tools for increase nowadays architecture and city planning
Civic and Social Infrastructure Conservation through Modern Architecture intervention. Embassy of Chile in Argentina 1966-2009
Get PDFModern heritage is not protected in Chile. Most of Chilean modern architectural heritage stands without an official decree protecting it from being modified or even demolished. This is a consequence of having state-controlled organisms in charge of the protection and defense of architectural heritage that use almost exclusively the building’s age as main criteria for its appraisement. From this point of view it seems difficult that constructions that are only between 40 and 90 years old may catch the attention of heritage preservation government officials. However negative the situation which, in the majority of cases has led to the systematic violation of constructions that constitute valuable records of the status of disciplinary and cultural discussion of Modern Architecture, the following case, paradoxically, couldn’t have crystallized the way it did, if the building had been officially protected, and neither could the docomomo–Chile group could have played a protagonic role in its managemen
On Modern Architecture and Synthesis of the Arts: Dilemmas, Approaches, Vicissitudes
Get PDFThe concept of “synthesis of the arts” became, in the 1940s, a leading principle in the search for renewing and improving modern architecture. Integration with painting and sculpture sought at bringing closer architecture and the people. But many dilemmas stood on the way: from the collaboration processes and the unity of the artistic experience, to “art for art’s sake” predominance or its social content. In the university cities of Mexico and Caracas as well as Burle Marx’s landscapes, the concept of integration reached wider scales. But it found its crisis in the extension to urban planning and the city - which had been, paradoxically, its ultimate target
Mexican Art in Lund’s Museum of Sketches, Sweden
Get PDFThe Mexican collection at Lund’s Museum of Sketches in is an unusual and valuable collection both from a Mexican and from an international perspective: the collection was built by Gunnar Bråhammar in the late 1960s, and counts works by David Alfaro Siqueiros, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and Juan O’Gorman but also Francisco Eppens, Rufino Tamayo, González Camarena, Raul Angiano, Leopoldo Méndez and Desiderio Xochitiotzin. The article discusses especially “the New Deal” by Rivera, “the Image of Mexico” at the Museo Nacional de Antropología e Historia in Mexico City by Morado Chavez, and “El Pájaro Amarillo” by Goertiz, and the great stone mosaic at the Central Library of the National Autonomous University of Mexico by O’Gorman
Lúcio Costa and the Question of Monumentality in his Pilot Plan for Brasilia
Get PDFThe urban design for Brasilia emphasizes the role of the city as a capital, that is to say, as an expression of State identity and power. Lúcio Costa considered monumentality as a characteristic inherent in urbanism, but this should not be achieved by any ostentatious grandiosity in terms of the volumes and sizes designed, and rather by providing a more singular external expression in the building concept used incorporating nature, capable of both pleasing and moving their occupants. The dimension of monumentality is a fundamental question in understanding the urban solution adopted in Brasilia
A Myth that Left the Greenhouse
Get PDFThis is a selection of some writings by authors that visited, commented and analyzed Brasilia, collected mainly in non-Brazilian literature. Testimonies and judgments, most of them expressing mistrust, disbelief, disapproval and prejudice about the embryonic capital, and the change of the nature of the critique, looking to a complex city with half a century of existence. Quotations are presented in chronological order and in a dialectic array, contrasting points of views at distinctive moments of the city
Muralism and Architecture: Art Fusion at Mexico’s University City
Get PDFUniversity City is one of the best examples of twentieth-century Mexican architecture. It has been declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco for it managed to synthesize tradition and avant-garde to create a place where the articulating landscape design is able to assign emptiness a compositional value; while the harmonious layout of the buildings and their careful construction merge with murals that play an important role in forming their identity. These grand scale murals (1952-1956) were capable of communicating the values and spirit of the Mexican revolutionary movement, such as progress and social reform, while also teaching people about the country’s history and its social struggle. The result is a very realistic, didactic, and even narrative art which appeals to the masses
Art, Spectacle, and Permanence. Notes on Le Corbusier and the Synthesis of the Arts
Get PDFIn the light of contemporary architecture, last century’s emblematic ‘artist-architect’ may appear at once disquietingly prophetic and almost surrealistically antiquarian. This essay explores the hypothesis that Le Corbusier’s ultimate passion was the museum, and his ultimate dream that of being assigned a key place in the history of art. Though this may sound simple enough - perhaps trivial - it may help re-organizing a very well-known (but also partly unknown) body of knowledge on the master and to understand better the paradox of the continuing presence in current architectural discussions
The Campus of the University of Brasilia
Get PDFThe Pilot Plan of the new Brazilian Federal Capital, by Lúcio Costa, was selected in a public competition held in 1957. The city was inaugurated barely three years later by President Juscelino Kubitschek, in April 1960, when the official creation of the University of Brasilia became a reality. Preparing to celebrate fifty years of existence, the University campus probably represents the most accomplished set of Brutalist architecture in the country and an excellent sample of the inventive resources of Brazilian architects. A functionalist city inside another. They are distinct from each other, but both dignified and worthy of documentation and preservation actions