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ENGLISH TEXT industry and ideally connected with primitive techniques17. And this primitivism, which is expressed in the raw appearance of the bare concrete means for the PAULO MENDES DA ROCHA | THE TECHNIQUE AND THE “ART OF BUILDING” bourgeois society of the time, an aggressive architecture and an incomplete work. The architect answers these criticisms, explaining the simplicity of his art as a Maria Isabel Villac commitment to society: Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism “Architecture is not guided by a distant aesthetic of social reality. On the contrary, Mackenzie Presbyterian University it can only exist if it is located in this reality, so that together it can carry out the The intentionality of the project adventure of living. [...] The constructions in concrete, simple and essential, show that the architecture can and should relate to people”18. The architecture of Paulo Mendes da Rocha articulates two plans; integrated and The moment in which bare concrete architecture was proposed for a social overlapping. The first one respects a highly technical procedure, open to the territory purpose, in Brazilian society - bourgeois, traditional and stratified - and opposed of knowledge. The second one resides in the imagination, shaped by observing the to the immobility of this stratification, this same society rejects this technique and changes of nature, directed towards the construction of habitat, which expands as qualifies it as “radical”. And as a result, denies that this architecture is an operation historic compromise “beyond strict necessity; joie de vivre and erotic desire to project related to ordinary life and achieves the idea of breaking the order of the forms with and express the urban space to build as part of an experience [...]”2 the established social order which remain neutralized by the suggestion that it is What articulates these two plans to creative activity is the reasoning of the project, simply a laboratory experiment. “always with the idea of model experimental test.”3 So that the strength and virtue But, the passing of time has shown that the spaces projected stimulated the of a project that is social, are revealed in the functional and expressive aspects that expansion of consciousness and the option to build with exposed concrete is not define the spatial configuration. It also certifies that this “socialism” is revealed in a asserted: poetic that favors the relationship between aesthetic emotion and stimulation to the “The stripping of the aesthetic attributes of the building. Before it was a commitment understanding of the historic life because it “speaks of human knowledge about its own between the plan of culture and contemporary techniques, able to deal with the existence and social manifestation of culture” 4 which does not allow for sublimation. problem of massive construction and industrialization of construction”19. “The The project, which is presented as “an understood and desired arrangement”5 seeks reinforced concrete is a technique used as long as it is good for the performance of expression and creating living spaces as a given of the present provocateur of future. a project. If aesthetics and structures are extracted from the living plan, the use of For the architect, architecture concrete is not from the existential philosophies, but rather sought to condition them “...is an inquiry, always. Inquiry by identifying the value of the content of the future to the practice of the art”20. - see the future taking shape, the genesis of the future walking the streets, in the The choice of the technique and the specificity of concrete, according to the spaces of the city, with features that are emerging in time, weaving history, a project architect, aligned the philosophy of existence in its social projection. This resulted in in a constant state of revelation - embracing the future - to the imagination a set of sensitivity and a morality that pierced the individual limits to achieve the educational shapes, buildings, towards an ideal scenario capable of improving illuminate the real possibilities that could be written by a whole culture and connect with universality. existence, that speaks of knowledge about one’s existence as a social manifestation Therefore, rationalism in the architecture of Mendes da Rocha is hinted in the meaning of human culture. A Monumental work”6. and intends the project at aiming to reveal “as a clear commitment to the ideals of The technique and the art of building freedom, independence and the search for an identity between idea and design”21. The architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha is a builder of architectures. The constructor For Mendes da Rocha, objectivity is not the idea of the “world” but “the world.” It is cultivated the technique. The architect-builder produces devices that harbor human from the consciousness of the concrete world - processing through the appropriation existence, once the “architecture is the making and producing things that allow human of constructive thought - the architect conceived the world of ideas21. The project is a existence”7. “The architect-builder houses the art and aesthetics in the same procedure”8. manifestation of consciousness located in the world, and the architecture is a tectonic Making architecture is transforming the nature and en-gender actions of building- and poetic choice to be manifested in its material integrity. The field defines the poetic techniques of existential magnitude because for the architect, “we are managers and architect, so that meaning is in the “temporality” of the technical development of the result of a chance to dwell and live”9. The technical capacity of man - that requires an age, but also on the principle purpose of the project designing architecture that a rational process - allows for what has been anticipated, emotionally, on the horizon “breaks downs the superfluous “24. of desire, in which “one falls in love with one thing, projected onto it feasible desires”10. In the work of Mendes da Rocha, architecture is the art of matter and expresses a The technique and the constructive action “organized the first emotion”11. worldview that speaks of solid values. If you could say that matter is also a concept The technique is an act of knowledge and invention of a process, since “the 25, this definition translates as a desire for contact and solidarity; sense of reality; imagination is a human issue and eminently technical. Those who imagine something, elemental affinity with life. Matter is the first relationship with the world, with nature has to, therefore, know how to make that thing”12. The technique allows access to the and things. It is what endures, which embodies the ideas. Matter condenses the size evidence on the configuration, of the world view, and offers the possibility of making a of human labor and consequently, the potential creator. The matter involves the laws, wish. For the modernity of Mendes da Rocha, the world of technique is no stranger to usages and intentions of all genres; it has within itself a formal vocation and brings the human dimension. Technical knowledge is available. For the architect, what drives about technical relations. technical action is essentially a vital program. A desire13 to be carried out with the idea At the same time limit and possibility, the material guides the process of its own of an experimental model transformation. Matter reports to the imagination; suggested configurations and “[...] If a design that always follows the idea of matrix, capable of producing other illuminates the expressive content of the work. Imagining is not aimless wandering projects”14 as opportunities to build ‘[...] moving transformations ahead of what we without purpose, but involves a cultural and selective attitude of the subject. Imagining now know about the past and what want in the future”15. is thinking, in particular, the design, because “the imagination requires abstraction. For both the architect and his generation, in architecture “forms come from the Not the construction! “. ‘procedures’ of construction, however, still nothing would be radically Cartesian Architecture has to “establish, with raw materials, moving relations” matter nothing” 16. As in the work of other architects of this group, the architecture of Mendes produces tangible quality artifacts, promotes the realization of the intention of da Rocha, in principle, has an intrinsic cultural value and an expression not conforming defining the form and character of a specific form. Matter and formative intention are to the unequal realities of society, and want to be able to reveal the contradictions connected. The transformation of matter is the means of making concrete, productive of historical and social reality in the context of culture. It is in the interpretation of and necessary work. The choice of a subject is implicit in the definition of the form, in programs expressed in unusual spaces for the purpose of changing social attitudes. its operational nature. The participation of the technological emancipation process being a contribution to the The decision for a “main” material as a writing for the form is, in the architecture development of the technique of reinforced and pre-stressed concrete, attached to the of Mendes da Rocha, a choice that stems from the idealist aesthetics. The reduction transgressive meaning of the work. to a single matter is a principle of economy (Malevich), but also the saturation of the surfaces (Matisse), exaltation of the pictorial quality and texture of the formed material. The material transformation Matter, given as a limit, wants to induce the perception of an invariant Confirmation and the option for exposed concrete at the end of the 1950s, is part of a constructive experience and core structure. It suggests an immediate perception of formal renewal revealing a particular system of expression of Brazilian architecture. the aesthetic aspect of the pure forms and opening awareness of the complexity of In fact, it denounces a particular worldview of society and wagers that the notion of space: it wants to surprise intuition and promote contact with the organic nature of order and uneven moral tradition can be transformed.

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