area 112 | beauty of built

architect: Christian de Portzamparc

location: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

year: 2011

Barra de Tijuca is a new town in Rio de Janeiro’s southern outskirts. It is a long plain that lacks strong architectural events and urban marks. The site is structured by two highways that cross. On the centre of this cross imagined by Lucio Costa, the Cidade da Musica will be in the very heart of the new town. The Cidade da Musica is raised and established on a vast terrasse ten meters above a garden designed by Fernando. Chacel. This terrasse is the public space, it is the gathering place that gives access to all concert rooms, movie theaters, rehearsal rooms, restaurant, library, shops, and the headquater of the Brazilian Symphonic Orchestra. The Cidade da Musica is seen as a large house on stilts, a great veranda above a garden with ponds, shade and trees. Also, it is an homage to an archetype of Brazilian architecture. Between the two horizontal plates of the roof and the terrasse are set the shapes of the concert rooms in an interplay of volumes and voids. The project is an urban signal, a public symbol floating on the plain with a large visibility. The architecture responds also to the beautiful mountain curves of the Siera Atlantica and the line of the
sea, this place has the guarantee of being a major landmark of the greater Rio.

La Cidade da Musica a conversation with Christian de Portzamparc

Laura Andreini: The Cidade da Musica of Rio de Janeiro is a continuation, many years later, of one of your first important projects, the City of Music of Paris. What are the differences between the two projects, and have the one influenced and served as influence for the other? In fact, while the plan of the City in Paris brings to mind the idea of a musical instrument, the later work appears more complex. Paris vaunts a more sophisticated choice of materials while the city in Rio is more genuine and unitary; the former is an itinerary, the latter a kind of large covered square. Can you try to describe the two projects, their assonances and differences, to allow us to understand the evolution and continuity of your work?
Christian de Portzamparc: The Cité de la Musique in La Villette in Paris consists of two blocks which open on each side of the Fontaine aux Lions, in La Villette. I have conceived it on the basis of two distinct programs: on the one side the educational activities of the National School of Music, and on the other the areas accessible to the public (concert halls and museum). In fact, it was necessary to create an entrance to the Park, that of the Grande Halle, on a kind of public square between the avenue Jean Jaurès and the Park.
In Rio the program features a “City of Arts” and the site is an immense urban plain, which is extended between the sea and the mountains. It is located in the middle of a huge junction of fast urban thoroughfares, in the heart of an enormous new conglomeration without any landmarks. In this case the project must be visible: it is a matter of realizing a public symbol. And I have immediately understood that the complex had to be raised from the ground, to make it possible to see the sea, the mountains and the city, because at the moment all one can see from the ground is cars. The public must therefore be received ten metres above the ground. This has suggested the creation of a large outdoor terrace from which all the facilities may be reached, and where the public is received. Ever since the first small models of the City of Arts of Rio, the idea has been to place the various functions in distinct, separate and acoustically insulated volumes, and to build them in such a way as to make them “float”. The City of Music of Paris had already been conceived in this way, on the basis of a dialectic between the full and closed volumes of the concert halls, and the luminous voids of the generally accessible, open spaces. For reasons of acoustic insulation the halls had necessarily to be closed shells, in concrete, another point which the project has in common with the one in Paris. The novelty therefore consists of the raised terrace covered by a roof thirty metres above the ground. Air, light and shade therefore had to pass between the terrace and the roof, which come to form a veranda, a typical Brazilian archetype, determined by the local climate. The idea is that of inviting visitors, of openness, of the forum: to make people ascend to this great emerging architectural volume by walking up gently sloping ramps, and walk through the closed volumes of the halls. The dimensions of the halls have resulted in a complex measuring about 200 by 90 metres. The veranda is a belvedere on the Barra da Tijuca, above a mangrove garden which will be designed by Fernando Chacel.
But from a viewpoint of “urban strategy”, the theme of the project in Rio is a response to the requirements of Barra, this new Rio. It is a well-known fact that every great city is appreciated and experienced through its landmarks. In this sense nature has been extraordinarily generous with the traditional Rio, its central neighbourhoods and “glamorous” heart, which vaunt lagoons, bays and mountains. We can always find our way thanks to these great elements, and they also serve as protection. The opposite is the case in the new Western Rio, the Barra da Tijuca, where the landscape disappears, the mountains become more distant and the long plain offers neither events nor surprises. One loses sight of the singular skyline formed by the unique, syncopated and languid dance which the geological structure has impressed on the mountains. Along this immense urban plain, this uninterrupted row of towers with apartments and offices, condominiums and shopping malls, there are neither landmarks nor public buildings. I have therefore received astonished reactions from Cariocas for having chosen Barra: “Barra is not Rio”, they have told me, failing to see beyond their own noses...
But Barra is immense, it’s the new Rio, it’s an urbanization which poses many questions, with large walled residential compounds and it is a city which has grown too fast: it is a matter of a very impressive urban development, and one of the most rapid: there was nothing here in the early Eighties. Today it is essential for Rio to create an urban quality in Barra. The Cidade is visible and from the Cidade, ten metres above the ground, one rediscovers Rio, the mountains, the sea. Barra becomes beautiful. It needed a public symbol, and only a monumental object which makes one want to climb it could match the vastness of the urban plain of Baixada. In Rio the unity of the volume as a whole is exalted more than in Paris, and the same is also true for the open and variegated nature of its interior.
L.A.: Many of your works preceding the Cidade da Musica are characterized by an accurate and studied choice of the materials and the technological and constructive aspects, as for instance the French embassy in Berlin. This project is on the contrary built mainly in concrete: to what extent has the fact of working in Brazil influenced your choice of materials?
C.d.P: In this project I have in fact continued to work on the notion of what I call the “perforated brick”, something which also applies to the project of Montreal. It is a matter of blocks containing empty spaces. I have defined it “perforated brick” because it is inspired by the sculptures I made when I was a boy: I went to get bricks which had not yet been fired at a kiln in order to sculpt their interior by subtraction. These bricks were empty, they contained six “small channels”, six cylindrical cavities, which pass through them along their long side, cavities which I connected and expanded. Perhaps I was influenced by Etienne Martin’s sculptures, the so-called “demeures”, which I had had the opportunity to see, or by certain sculptures by Henry Moore. This idea of penetrable volume obviously has many other references in the world of architecture and sculpture. In Rio I was thinking of the project I have presented at the competition for the library of Montreal, in 2000. A kind of interiorized landscape: in the place of an atrium-square, in Rio we had a veranda-square, a large horizontal space between the two large plates forming the terrace, ten metres above ground, and the roof thirty metres above it. This empty volume, occupied by the full volumes of the hall, is a block permeated by transparencies, something which is also the case of the project for the library of Montreal. Another characteristic of this project is its exceptional size: I had been prepared for this by some projects we have worked on in the past, built or otherwise, as that of the museum of Seoul of 1996. Bertrand Beau calls them the projets-table, “projects-plates“. But it is a well-known fact that to govern the impact of large dimensions it must be harmonized with the human body, to rediscover the intimacy and open it to greatness; it is a very physical process. One dialogues with the mountains. To achieve a unitary material quality of the construction it was necessary to use concrete as sole material. And this was possible here. In Paris I would have liked to realize everything in concrete, but I knew that the materials would have gotten very dirty and that it would not have been very pretty. I have immediately understood that the large projections I wanted to realize, to support this entire structure, would only be possible by using pre-compression, the technique which Freyssinet has brought to Brazil. Only pre-compressed concrete makes it possible to make the terrace floor and the roof so thin, and to build elements that project from thirty to thirty-five metres that are only 150 cm thick; with classical concrete we would have had to build three or four times thicker, and quite ugly, plates.
Moreover, to avoid having to install dozens of piles supporting the veranda, I have though that the self-same “sails” that supported the halls above could be load-bearing, by making them fan out from below. I got this idea while I was travelling by plane from the building site in Luxembourg to that of Berlin. The sails could start from the ground and turn into gigantic shelves, taking the place of piles which would have passed through the terrace, with a few, concentrated points of contact on the ground. In a very natural way, the sails would no longer be beams but load-bearing walls, which came to form gigantic shelves. I have designed these shells, curved and cylindrical, asking Joseph Attia his opinion as to stability and dimensions. Then, in Rio, Bruno Cantarini and Carlos Fragelli have calculated the structures. There have been very few changes. We have proceeded by making numerous tests with the cooperation of Andrade Guttierez-Carioca and the companies that have managed to realize the casts of these immense shells, with great precision on a length of 120 metres, thanks to the use of sliding formwork!
The forms are here inhabited by the traces of the forces, of the static calculation. Only the possibilities offered by present-day computerized calculation have enabled us to do so. The sails are not in regular and symmetric positions, as in classical structures where a basic arch or colonnade is repeated. The dimension of the shell depends on the size of the hall and on their position. To build a structure of this kind it is necessary to calculate the momentum of flexion in every point, and if one were to resort only to human calculation, this operation would require an infinite amount of time. It is the reason why such a sculpture-structure can only be built today. Reflection and design have therefore proceeded abreast with static calculation. More recently I have thought of the project prepared for Disney in 1988. It is a homage to Rio. That line of the mountains, so peculiar, was there, like an incoherent quotation, while the Cidade defines its own geometry and world with its shells that establish a relationship with the mountain and its profile. I have always been fascinated by the lines traced by the profile of the mountains of Rio. They seem to protect the city with might and grace. In Barra the god of the mountain has beckoned me from afar. I think he has guided the project. I found the site impossible at first, but from an urbanistic point it is a strong decision.
L. A.: What has the relationship with the companies which have realized the building been like, and how has the development and control of the construction of a building of such important dimensions been tackled?
C.d.P: We have created a Brazilian team; Betrand Beau, who had directed the project of the Cité de la Musique of Paris, Nanda Eskes, a Carioca who had worked with the firm in Paris, Clovis Cunha and Ana-Paula Fontes have formed a fundamental team; along with this, I have also been assisted by Duccio Cardelli and Christophe Escapasse, first in Paris and then in Rio. With Nanda, we have chosen the various “key” figures: Bruno Cantarini and Carlos Fragelli for the structure, Xu Yaying for the acoustics together with Ze Nepomulceno.
At the building site the management of the contracts and the supervision has been taken care of by Rio-Urb, the city organism responsible for constructions. The Andrade Guttierez-Carioca firm has done a good job; we have numerous preliminary tests with them to identify the ideal type of formwork. My responsibility as an architect, in this project, is defined in the following terms by the contract: to realize the design and details of the project, verify the projects elaborated by the firms and follow their execution attentively. It is sufficient. Just for once, I haven’t had to deal with costs and schedules…Unfortunately, during the construction the building site has been delayed for two years, due to difficulties with the management of the supply of funds on the part of the municipality. In 2006 this delay has given us time to prepare ourselves very well and to verify projects and execution. When the works were resumed in 2008 an incredible acceleration has taken place: up to 3000 workers on the site at the same time, a record. And all this in an orderly fashion, without accidents, with perfect control. This management has later given rise to a lot of criticism against the new municipality. Today all that remains are the internal works, and a lot of elements to correct. In spite of everything, the building is there.
L.A.: To what extent has the culture and tradition of Brazilian modernism, starting with the genial work of Oscar Niemeyer, influenced your idea and the conceptual construction of the project?
C.d.P: In the final analysis, the images of Brazil which I had seen when I was fifteen were only a spark, and later, in the Eighties, Elizabeth has made me discover the importance of Brazilian modernism which was the most creative in the world from the Forties to the Sixties. I feel free before this heritage. I have a strong idiosyncrasy: in this project I have never sought, even for a moment, a “Brazilian way”; it would have blocked me. But there is concrete, the climate, my relationship with the place, its history, its technical culture – just as in New York, in Berlin or in Almere – and because of this, I never have a single solution. And if one should recognize a homage to Oscar Niemeyer in my works at Artigas or Reidy, this happens without my knowledge, and this is perhaps precisely why it can work and it is a felicitous encounter. And the fact of using concrete to express a movement, a levitation, is always to some extent a Brazilian lesson.
L.A.: The beauty of building is a kind of praise of architecture as discipline, which is accomplished with its realization; do you feel that you have succeeded, with the construction of the Cidade da Musica, in creating an architecture that can also be considered as a visual work of art, instinctively devoted to the pursuit of an aesthetic which is reverberated in the design of the form and the image of the building?
C.d.P: On the other hand, there would still be a lot to say about the concert halls. But we will leave that for the next time.

Christian de Portzamparc was born in 1944, in Casablanca. In the nineteen-sixties, he studied painting and architecture at the “Ecole des Beaux Arts” in Paris, and worked with Eugene Baudoin and Gorge Candilis. In 1965 through to 1970, he continued his meditations and critical analyse of thereigning architectural doctrines and theoretical structures. In 1995, he created the LVMH Tower, in New York City, for the HQ of LVMH: USA, a project which gained unanimous critical acclaim. He became the first French architect to gain the prestigious “Pritzker Architectural Prize” in 1994, at the age of 50. CdP is concerned with research, he avoids pure speculation. For him, architecture is concerned with the quality of life. Within this realm, aesthetics themselves are conditioned by ethics, and he maintains that we have too often dissociated one from the other. His projects are drawn from dreams, reflection and from that state of real world awareness, of the concrete reality, that incorporates large scale perceptions and the observation of minute detail, as well as more regulation bound considerations that must be respected, container or worked around. Today CdP continues his reserarch work on and through projects that are under way around the world, his freshness, the plasure and the passion intact, with, above all, the same perfectionism that has characterised his work from the beginning. For 2006, the “Collège de France” has created a 53rd chair, that of “Artistic Crreations”, and has called on CdP to be its first occupant.