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Transcontinental Modernism. M&G as an Unité d’habitation and a factory complex in Mozambique
Get PDFWith the aim of contributing to the documentation and conservation of the modern architectural heritage, this paper presents Monteiro & Giro Complex (M&G), built during the 50’s in Quelimane, Mozambique, with the goal of stressing the modernity of the social program and the technological approach. If one wants to gain a better understanding of the worldwide Diaspora of architectural modernism, it is essential to document and analyse the important heritage of sub–Saharan Africa. Modern architectural debates have been reproduced, transformed, contested and sometimes even improved in distant lands and overseas territories. These contradictory aspects of Modernist practice are revealed in the programmatic, technological and structural M&G industrial Complex
The Total Artist. Max Bill according to Tomás Maldonado
Get PDFMax Bill was an important reference in the field of art and architecture in Latin America. Unlike the synthesis of the arts, Max Bill was proposing a program based on “concrete art” and the idea of gute form, which sought to provide a common principle to the built environment that would guarantee its formal quality and harmony. This point was central to the reception of his ideas in Argentina. It was largely Tomás Maldonado who introduced these ideas. He presented Max Bill as a “total artist”, a sort of premonition of the “man of the future”, endowed with a capacity of coherence that would allow the synthesis not of the arts, but that of the artistic product with mass production
Dennis Sharp
Get PDFDennis died on the 6th May after a serious illness that bothered him for several years. He leaves behind his wife Yasmin, his daughter Melani, his son Deen and many friends all over the world. He was a universal man: architect, scholar, critic, writer, teacher, bookseller, cook and walking encyclopedia. He collaborated with architects like Santiago de Calatrava. His books Modern Architecture and Expression (1966) and 20th century architecture - a visual history (1972) became classics. He made exhibitions, was the editor of the magazine World Architecture, he was professor at the Open University and for the development of docomomo he was of vital importance
Brasilia, the Palace of Congress and their Urban Changes
Get PDFThe Palace of Congress in Brasilia, designed by Oscar Niemeyer in 1958, played an effective role in defining its urban context. Lúcio Costa`s original competition sketches show one tower, with a domed horizontal building. Niemeyer conciliated the different levels of the frontal Esplanade and of the lower Plaza behind, rotating it, and placing two domes and two towers instead of one, representing the two legislative institutions housed. The building presence amidst a vast green area became the main symbol of Brasilia. In the last 50 years, however, its surroundings gave place to several new institutional buildings designed by Niemeyer himself
Eliana Cárdenas
Get PDFIt is more common for disciples to write memories of their old masters that it is for a master to bear the hard news of the death of one of his disciples. It is painful and sad to face and deal with the death of Eliana Cardenas, the leading historian of architecture in Cuba
The Competition for Brasilia’s Pilot Plan: Territory and Infrastructure
Get PDFThe Competition for Brasilia’s Pilot Plan, 1957, brought together 26 projects for the Federal Capital. These projects, expressing the planning culture of the first half of the twentieth century, contribute to a diverse knowledge of planning solutions. But what element unites these projects? The common factor to them is the urban structure based on two urban axes. The reason for this is the flat territory and the introduction of such infrastructure. A model of planning cities based on their minimum elements that not only organize, but also qualify the place
The Dislocation of Brazil’s Capital: a Long-Standing Project
Get PDFDislocating the capital to Brazil’s interior highlands is a long standing project in the country’s history. The project was first linked to the transfer of the royal court from Lisbon to the Portuguese America, where a metropolis would be established in what until then had been a colonial purveyor of goods. Until 1953, the quest for a worthy capital involved many factors such as the establishment of a Portuguese empire in the Americas, Portugal’s repudiation of an Ancien Régime monarchy in the South Atlantic, the formation of a counter hegemony in a former colony, or the construction of a unified, republican, and modern Brazilian nation. As Lúcio Costa - the architect of the final iteration of Brazil’s new capital - once put it: “it was a century-old purpose, always postponed.
Arie Sivan, 1940-2010. In Memoriam
Get PDFDesigner, architect, educator, researcher, critic, polemicist, Arie’s multifaceted and ceaseless activity was, sadly, cut short just a week after his participation and lectures at the docomomo Congress and Icomos in Mexico, last August. His formative years at the Architecture faculties in Montevideo, Uruguay, and the Technion in Haifa during the late sixties, were decisive for his long lasting belief in the Modern Movement instrumental role in the creation of “A new society” and, in his words, “A creative relation between people, their environment and their time”
Molotov Sotsgorod
Get PDFThe sky is low above Motovilikha. Making our way along a muddy street, in the timid light of this part of the Urals we see emerging before us a silhouette of carbonated concrete, an iron structure rusting in the cold, whose plaster panels between pilasters suggest a construction site of dubious standards. It is difficult to believe that eighty years before this old workers’ club designed by constructivist architect P. Golosov (Gladyshev, 2008) provided the early Soviet society with up to three hundred thousand meals a day (Semyannikov, 2002). An emblem of the new socialist urbanisation, not only was the workers’ canteen meant to rescue the woman from her kitchen slavery, it was also supposed to be a place capable of generating the new social structure by becoming a venue for festivals and shows in the evenings
Plastic Integration in Mexico: Confluence or Nostalgia
Get PDFFrom the onset of contemporary architecture, the controversial presence of visual arts manifested itself as one of the approaches in its development. In the mid-twentieth century the use of the term “plastic integration” started to be widespread, exposing the confrontation between diverse stances and positions. Three of the pioneers in the forefront of this field were Carlos Obregón Santacilia, with his building for the Secretaría de Salubridad (1929), Mario Pani, with the Hotel Reforma (1936), and Enrique Yáñez, with the Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas (1936-1940). The movement, headed by the leading architects of the time in collaboration with important artists, searched for an intersection between the visual arts and architecture