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Parallel Lives: Transparent Sculptures, Porous Architectures
Full text linkThe text registers and discusses the affinities between the transparency of a branch of modern sculpture and the characteristic porosity of Brazilian modern architecture, placed in the broader context of the exchange between architecture, painting, sculpture and construction in the twentieth century
Alexander Calder’s Flying Saucers
Full text linkOne of Alexander Calder’s largest artworks can be found in Venezuela, at the University of Caracas. It is the result of a unique collaboration between an architect, an acoustician and an artist. The university’s great fan shaped auditorium, designed by Carlos Villanueva in 1953, proved to be acoustically problematic and the engineer therefore proposed a solution with interior claddings. This was rejected, however, because it would radically change the shape of the hall. Finally, Alexander Calder was approached. He came up with an innovative installation consisting of 30 reflectors shaped as flying saucers and suspended from the ceilin
Art, Architecture and Public Space in New York, 1950–1970
Full text linkIn the decades after World War II there was much discussion about the need for collaboration between the architect and artist either as embodied in one or as distinctly different creative talents working closely but creatively independently together. Many saw little actual collaboration and questioned the relationship artistically or saw art as a cover for otherwise bland architecture. However, architects like Wallace K. Harrison, Gordon Bunshaft, and others worked regularly with artists like Josef Albers, Isamu Noguchi, Gyorgy Kepes or Richard Lippold. While many of those art installations remain today, they are under constant pressure because of real estate changes, renovations or simply neglect
Listing and Protecting the MoMo. Brazil/Brasilia
Full text linkAlso in the field of preservation, Brazil has made an unparalleled contribution to the MoMo. After all, when in 1988 docomomo was founded, the country already had a number of modernist works legally protected. And Brasilia had joined the select World Heritage of UNESCO, the first modernist urban complex to be conferred that honor. The precedent was established, and since then other MoMo works - all prior to Brasilia - received the distinction: the Bauhaus in 1996, the Schröder House and the University of Caracas in 2000, the Tugendhat House in 2001, the White City of Tel Aviv in 2003
Brasilia 1960-2010: Modern Movement Universal Ideal
Full text linkSince Brasilia’s World Heritage inscription in 1987, the city has developed public awareness regarding the value of a major accomplishment in the history of urbanism. The singularity of Brasilia lies in its ability of being simultaneously rooted in the past while looking ahead to the future, envisioning an approach that should affirm Brazil’s industrialization effort and the need to provide access to life quality incorporating a specific genuine cultural tradition; an approach where the new capital should be the image of the homeland. Lúcio Costa, the architect who sensed and perceived the need to rescue architectural heritage, formulated unprecedented theoretical principles, articulating both realities. He was aware of the fact that modern architecture was a powerful means to foster a national identity because, according to modern principles argued in Brazil, a bond should exist between an erudite avant-garde and traditional popular features. Costa revealed the structural resemblance between raw architecture from the 18th Century - the plain Portuguese style - and the new constructions, discovering the same logic, rationality, rigor and strictness
Brasilia. Monumentality Issues
Full text linkLúcio Costa proposes an urbs and a civitas in his winning entry for the Brasilia competition (1957). The new seat of citizenship was to celebrate the March to the West dreamt by Brazilian Independence’s Patriarch José Bonifácio (1823) - who named the new capital - and taken up by president Juscelino Kubitschek (1955) - who promised fifty years of progress in five. Brasilia was to be a machine for remembering past, present and future hopes. Therefore, it had to be a memorable object itself, composed of memorable elements; differentiation from context counted in all levels. Like Costa, Oscar Niemeyer knew that common monumental features included volumetric simplicity, unusual size, scale or shape and extraordinary richness, as shown by his Palácio da Alvorada, the presidential residence (1956)
The Itamaraty Palace in Brasilia
Full text linkThis article explores the headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil, the Itamaraty Palace which is one of the most important buildings designed by Oscar Niemeyer in Brasilia. Besides the constructive complexity, in this project the architect organizes and ranks several spatial correlations, making the palace terrace - the varanda - its great architectural surprise