area 114 | São Paulo

The cityscape of São Paulo appears indecipherable to the eyes of its inhabitants. The Italian anthropologist Massimo Canevacci has defined it a polyphonic city. But São Paulo is also an autophagous city which has to devour itself in order to grow. As a result there are today few buildings that bear witness to the fact that the city is 450 years old. The great force of São Paulo is its modern part, which went through a phase of vertiginous growth between the Thirties and Sixties, at an apparent rhythm of a new building a day. It is precisely this historical phase that has moulded the character and physiognomy of the present-day city, in which some of the outstanding architectural examples of the period appear in all their evidence, as the Parque do Ibirapuera (1954) by Oscar Niemeyer and the Museu de Arte di São Paulo (1958) by Lina Bo Bardi. The city today appears to be organized in different layers on the basis of which it is possible, by simplifying, to classify the urban growth in three clearly defined nuclei. On the one side we find the production which caters to the capitalist market, on the other avant-garde architecture, while the third nucleus, distributed around the former two, consists of the shapeless city built without any rules and planned according to the logic of survival, the city of favelas and undisciplined construction.
The first group, which one may define “conservative” by virtue of its bond with the status quo and the financial capital, vaunts a production that is higher in terms of number, even if of little architectonic interest. The demand for such buildings is not inspired by any desire for quality, instead adapting to populist and marketing values. The worst examples are neoclassic buildings that are an eyesore in the richest districts of the city. However, as architecture is a mirror of society, the group of conservative works features a number of examples of a considerable architectonic level. The most important large-scale contemporary buildings, multifunctional centres or large residential complexes, have been designed by Aflalo & Gasperini firm, which has by now operated on a local level for 50 years, mainly to meet the demands of private individuals and real estate groups. Among the most important recent projects we may remember the Parque da Juventude (1998-2010), the result of an architecture competition, which has turned Brazil’s largest penitentiary into a public park with a library and a school for technical studies. The current projects of the Aflalo & Gasperini firm are, among other things, aimed at research on building technology, the decomposition of the elements of architectural volumes, sustainability and integration of buildings
in the urban tissue. If we continue to analyze the most positive traits of the conservative group we observe, even if on a smaller scale, a growing demand on the part of a small nucleus of customers with a certain spending power, belonging to the milieu of people who usually patronize certain sophisticated temples of the consumer society, restaurants and bars. Due to the peculiarity of the urban life and the lack of pubic spaces, the desire to socialize within one’s social class, combined with the feeling of insecurity caused by the violence of the city, the urban elite has come to appreciate closed spaces. The detached dwellings of the wealthy classes are enormous (houses of about 1,000 sqm are not uncommon), and their interiors can accommodate a large number of persons. The most sophisticated prefer a contemporary style in order to be able to elevate themselves a notch above analogous income brackets, while the large majority decorate their dwellings in period style, resorting both to elements of a vague Tuscan flavour and to others that remind of mountain chalets or colonial Brazilian fazendas.
This demand, which is translated in works characterized by very complex details, is subject to fashions and trends. The principal professional firms that may be considered to belong to this area comprise Isay Weinfeld, Marcio Kogan, Arthur Casas and Thiago Bernardes. While Weinfeld and Kogan enrich and render more sophisticated the original repertory of Aurélio Flores, a Mexican architect who settled in São Paulo in the Sixties, Casas utilizes a language inspired by the work of French designer Andrea Putman. Bernardes, who comes from a family of architects (he is the nephew of Sergio and son of Cláudio Bernardes, two important architects who work in Rio de Janeiro), has designed works of a certain interest; he enhances natural materials and aims to create a spatiality of a monumental kind in domestic environments. The group of conservative firms which operate on a small scale has recently been joined by the Triptyque firm, consisting of three French architects and a Brazilian one who has studied in Paris. While it has not yet got very involved in the local debate, it has nevertheless brought some fresh air and new ideas in the scenario
of São Paulo. But it is undoubtedly in the avant-garde group that one encounters the most interesting production. The best part of its production is realized by professionals aged between 40 and 55, whose formative years may thus be retraced to the period in which Brazil returned to democracy after a period of dictatorship. Unlike the architects who reached success within the Brazilian architectural movement, the famous school of Rio de Janeiro led by Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, the leading figures of the present-day avant-garde have not begun their work by following a blazed path. While modern Brazilian architecture represented the official image of the country – the most important example being the city of Brasilia – in a past epoch, the avant-garde of São Paulo is working in a very difficult context, without being able to count on any backing from the state or the market. And this is largely so because it is openly in dialogue with another Brazilian architectural movement, the Paulista school, which is inspired by the innovative ideas of Vilanova Artigas and Paulo Mendes da Rocha.
A discourse that is ideologically left-oriented, which appreciates the social function of architecture, seldom elicits any enthusiasm on the part of those in power, even if they share the same ideology, and it is even less appreciated by those who control the capital. In general lines one may assert that the government does not have any scruples about funding mediocre projects, and the avant-garde group manages to obtain public assignments when the lower hierarchy shows appreciation for the theme. This has, for instance, been the case of the public schools built in the state of São Paulo: the presence in the governmental organization of technicians sympathetic to a high-quality architectural discourse has led to the construction of more than a hundred noteworthy school buildings.Or of the municipal junta’s recent decision to deal with the problem of unauthorized building, urbanizing the spaces and building residential complexes on the areas occupied by favelas. In public competitions avant-garde architects usually manage to find a way to acquire visibility and collaborate with the government; the only problem is that 75% of the projects developed through competitions remain on paper. Outside the state of São Paulo architects in the avant-garde category find private customers in that tiny part of the society which shares the same intellectual values. The commissions principally concern detached dwellings and small venues for cultural initiatives (the best and most conspicuous projects for cultural buildings are those by Oscar Niemeyer and Paulo Mendes da Rocha and, more recently, by archistars as Herzog & de Meuron, who are designing an enormous centre for dance in the central part of the city).The architects who may be considered part of the avant-garde of São Paulo share the same values, respond to the same kind of demand and have an analogous modus operandi: almost all of them divide their professional life between their small design firms and teaching at the architecture faculty. However, their production – and this should be understood as a positive sign of their professional health, which is translated in an incredible vitality – is anything but homogeneous, and may be classified in various categories. The first nucleus may be defined as the Seville Generation and is formed by those architects who participated in the intense debate on the design of the Brazilian pavilion at the Expo in Seville, as Álvaro Puntoni, Angelo Bucci, Milton Braga, Fernando de Melo Franco and Marta Moreira. On that occasion, in 1990, a public competition was launched within the context of which, with Mendes da Rocha in the jury, the choice fell on the project of Puntoni and Bucci, his former students at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo (FAUUSP), that is clearly inspired by the precepts of the Paulista school: a concrete shell, a single large room an few supports, based on a concept of introspective spatiality. The second place was awarded to a building designed by Braga, Melo Franca and Moreira, architects who are today part of the MMBB firm, even if they then adopted a language which took a distance from that of the Paulista school; they have later worked with Mendes da Rocha on various projects, and they are currently the professionals whose work is closest to that of their master.Among the younger generation Puntoni is the most important personality within this process: in addition to being part of the winning team, he was the greatest enthusiast of his own generation, who promoted the revaluation of the architecture of the Paulista school, enriched by the return among the leading figures of the FAUUSP, after the banishment of the military dictatorship, of Artigas and Mendes da Rocha. The Seville generation gave continuity to the social and spatial aims of the original movement, in the conviction that the Brazilian reality had not yet changed sufficiently to require a modification of their discourse. In other words, its representatives believed that it was still worth while to readopt the principles which characterized the though of the Paulist school. This process of reappreciation of the Paulist school has continued until today (also furthered by the Pritzker prize assigned to Mendes da Rocha), and has to some extent influenced an entire generation of architects as for instance the members of the Una, of the Andrade Morettin as well as the even younger architects of the FGMF. But these architects’ production is not limited to the influence of Artigas’ movement, if one considers the way their architectural vocabulary has been inspired from their contacts with other countries: for the first time in Brazil a large group of professionals who during their formative years, between the late Eighties and early Nineties, have spent time working in Europe or in the United States (some of them settling definitively abroad, as for instance Anna Dietzsch, one of the designers of the Praça Victor Civita, who lives and works in New York). If Paolo Mendes da Rocha is a kind of occult leader of the Seville generation, the Uruguayan  Hector Vigliecca is the most prominent personality of the Paulista avant-garde architects. Even if he is not very celebrated, Vigliecca is a fundamental figure in the Brazilian architectural debate, known for having brought an influx of new ideas and influenced a group of architects that is very attentive to the international debate and convinced of the antiquation and obsoleteness of the precepts of the Paulista school. The group influenced by Vigliecca and by postmodern architecture also comprises architects as, among others, Mario Biselli, Francisco Spadoni, NPC Arquitetura and Marcelo Barbosa. The debate on postmodernism is mainly conducted outside the architectural context of the FAUUSP, but involves some universities, as for instance the Mackenzie and the PUC of Campinas, a city 100 km from São Paulo.
Alongside professionals who cannot be considered followers of the Paulista school there is another group of architects on which the ideas and professional choices of Lina Bo Bardi have wielded a decisive influence. This group, which moves along what we may call a Gio-Pontian line, places the accent on a valorisation of craftsmanship aspects and on a study of the true Brazilian spirit, as interpreted by the ordinary citizen. This group first and foremost comprises the architects who have worked with Lina Bo Bardi, as Marcelo Ferraz and Francisco Fanucci (of the Brasil Arquitetura firm), André Vainer and Marcelo Suzuki. To conclude, we may remember the work of Cristina Xavier and Mauro Munhoz, who are both operating on a domestic scale, often with the use of wooden structures. However, the trajectories and works of the two architects are heterogeneous: while Munhoz was initially influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright, Xavier develops his architectural research starting from the practice of construction linked to the building site. As one may observe, between market demands and Paulista avant-garde, the menu is extremely variegated and capable of satisfying the most diverse requirements and the most discriminating palates. And you, what dish would you like to taste?

Fernando Serapião is an architecture critic and editor of the magazine Monolito. He collaborates on different levels with the magazine piauí and with the daily paper Folha de S. Paulo, and has published hundreds of articles in national and foreign magazines, such as Domus China, AV (Spain) and Arquitectura Iberica (Portugal). He has sat on the jury of competitions both in Brazil and abroad, as for instance the World Architectural Festival (Barcelona).