111555th 5 th INTERNATIONAL PLANNING HISTORY SOCIETY CONFERENCE TRADİCİONALİSMS AND MODERNİSMS İN THE RESİDENTİAL ARCHİTECARCHİTECTURETURE OF THE CİTY OF SÃO PAULO İN THE PERİOD 19301930----1955.1955. JANJULIO, MARISTELA DA SILVA Address:Av. Trabalhador Sancarlense, 400 São Carlos, SP e-mail: [email protected] ABSTRACT In the first decades of the twentieth century, several “Life Reform” movements emerge in Europe, especially in Germany, in a reaction to overcrowded cities. Most of them inspired by the Garden City movement, which had arisen in England at the end of nineteenth century, as an alternative to the existing city . Within these movements, there is a discussion on housing, still taken by the traditional architecture, where the domestic environment is considered as the locus where a new kind of life is promoted for a “new man”, healthy, connected to Nature and traditions such as the crafts. .From the 1920’s on, the Modern Movement is being constituted and its architecture will be dedicated to the rational “type-man”, man of science and technology, an abstract dweller. Conceptualizing modern and traditional architectures, the contrasts are apparently striking. However, what should really be regarded as modern or traditional, conservative or revolutionary? In Brazil, these issues resonate as early as the 1920s. Here we also see the increasing dissemination of "modernity", which does not exclude the persistence of traditional architecture. The new language of the Modern Movement architecture will be appropriated by the minor architecture, which largely dispenses with the help of architects, but that is always present, forming the fabric of our cities. EUROPE A key issue on traditional architecture is that it can’t be reduced to a style or to a simple formal system, It is the point of convergence of reflections, works and attitudes, in a conscious opposition to modernity. The forefront of modernity means "first of all an attitude of rejection, criticism of the procedures that had consolidated through a social accord, a subversion of languages that were widespread and stable. But on the other hand, it means proposing the new as horizon to drive consensus and collective acceptance, as the means to get rationality and efficiency (...)". (SOLA-MORALES, 1980, p.9) Dialectic between breaking with the past and constructing, between criticism and proposals, confronted by a reality of already established languages. (SOLA-MORALES, op.cit ., p.9-10) Cities, nations and regions in planning history There is always some tension between the avant-garde of modernity, and the established language of traditional architecture. (SOLA-MORALES, op.cit ., p.15) Despite this tension, both modernity and traditionalism will always be inexorably linked, in a set of contrasts, where one can’t think of one without having the other. We conceptualize traditional and modern architecture 1 clearly, but it’s difficult to define their works and countless times we find crosses between them. We cannot always put traditionalism and modernity on opposing sides. In the work of many architects, they are present and amalgamate, coexisting. An example of this "symbiosis" is the Dalcroze Institute, of Heinrich Tessenow, built between 1910 and 1912 in Hellerau, the first German garden city. The building shows a classic design in the central area and lateral wings, influenced by vernacular architecture, with large sloping roofs. Tessenow’s architecture is basic, with classical references, but most of all there’s a depuration of elements, a purity of form. (García Roig, 2002, p.85-89) Colquhoun, (2002, p.64) says that this aspect of Tessenow’s work, abstraction and pure forms, anticipates the work of Mies van der Rohe. The institute constitutes the most legitimate expression of community life expected in Hellerau. It incorporates the concept of Wolkshaus , or "house of the people", that Theodor Fischer had referred to. (GARCÍA ROIG, 2002, p.85-89) Some of the questions raised by Tessenow’s work is mass housing and the problem of standardization. He uses permanent elements that are above eras and styles. Many of his drawings show small “type” houses with their furniture and equipment . It’s a "minor" Architecture, housing for middle class. This class, for Tessenow, would be the foundation of German social order, housed in medium- sized cities between 20,000 and 60,000 inhabitants. (Colquhoun, 2002, p.61-2) Besides, in Tessenow’s work the Sachlichkeit (Objectivity), acquires a precise formulation in the architecture of the house. "(...) we must now consider the pure objectivity (die reine Sachlichkeit ) as authentic goal to achieve in the configuration of the house. (...) trying to express the feeling of each particular individual in the design of the house would be a chimera. This is not an individual work, but the collective work of many men (...) ". (TESSENOW, 1909, p. 9) The work of Heinrich Tessenow leads us to consider which really are the factors that must be analyzed in the conceptualization of modern or traditional, of conservative or revolutionary. Garcia Roig (2002, p.16) says that his "work can be considered rare for not joining an avant-garde experimentalism, technical-functional, (.. .) or a conservative traditionalism, as is the case of Schultze Naumburg (...). " Tessenow’s architecture is perhaps a path that could have been traversed towards an architecture for the modern age, other than that of the Modern Movement. The solutions he proposes - a return to craftsmanship, living in small towns -, are also common to a set of movements that search a reform of life, which take place in Germany before and after World War I. The majority of these movements were 1 In this text, when referring to "modern architecture", we’re talking about the one that develops in the 1920’s, particularly in German and also the architecture of Le Corbusier, both presented in the CIAMs and leading (though not only them) to the constitution of the "International Style". 2 111555th 5 th INTERNATIONAL PLANNING HISTORY SOCIETY CONFERENCE related to the ideals that supported the garden city movement. One of the aspects that these reformers advocated concerned physical activity, through farm work, house building and other tasks related to outdoor living. The search for a new man, "healthy". (GARCÍA ROIG, 2002, p.66-75) Such questions seem to conflict with natural course of events, they appear unsuitable for that historical period - from 1918 onwards, especially the years between 1922 and 1933 -, when Modern Movement is being constituted and later the "International Style" consolidates. (GARCÍA ROIG, 2002, p.56). It is an intense era. In 1918, following the war and the abdication of William II, many events take place. Workers, soldiers, intellectuals and artists participate actively: in the revolution, which explains the strong ties between politics and art. In this atmosphere, the Arbeitsrat für Kunst (Working Council for Art) arises in Berlin, founded by Taut, Walter Gropius and Adolf Behne, simultaneously and in close connection with the Novembergruppe Group (November Group), which joined , after the war, the revolutionary artists of all Germany. In March 1919, the Arbeitsrat für Kunst publishes a letter summarizing the Architektur-Programm (Architecture Program), of 1918, from Bruno Taut, in which the union of the arts under the wings of architecture constitutes the main objective. It highlights the cosmic attribute of architecture, its religious foundations, its condition of utopia. (GARCÍA ROIG, op.cit ., p.86, 103-4) Bruno Taut seems to conceive its architecture between two poles: small single- family houses - minor architecture – and symbolic public buildings, both connected to a transcendental unity, the individual and the collective - the "house of the people" - a concept that Taut develops as a colorful crystal building. Also in 1919, Walter Gropius was appointed director of the school renamed Staatliches Bauhaus (State Bauhaus) in Weimar. (GARCÍA ROIG, op.cit ., p.104), where he accomplished to unify the arts under the leadership of architecture. However, the architecture that arises in Germany from 1922 on, the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), as its name suggests, shows a dramatic change in the arts as a whole, towards a new realism . (COLQUHOUN, 2002, p.159) After all utopian reform movements, after the summit of Expressionism, a change of course takes place, in search of concrete, immediate achievements. Behne's position - who had been one of the spokesmen of Expressionism and one of the main characters of Arbeitsrat für Kunst -, contrary to the use of the machine, is symbolic. It shows the changes. In 1922, in his paper Kunst Handwerk, Technik (Art, Craft and Technology), (COLQUHOUN, op.cit ., p.159) he says that division of labor brought about by machine was an improvement of the old "organic" relationship between the artisan and the product of his work. After a transitional period, the worker would understand his role within an industrialized society. A return to craftsmanship was no longer possible. The architecture that arises is made for a new man, “type-man”, the "hygienic man" that "must acknowledge the full implementation of Taylorism as a premise for his own 'reconstruction.’” (TAFURI, 1984, p.363) The "new man" should be the representative of a society that requires Cities, nations and regions in planning history the intellect, the man of science, technology and calculation, which can conquer nature . In what concerns to the Bauhaus, during the period 1919-1922, it gives up its expressionist ideology and espouses the concepts of New Objectivity, De Stijl and L'Esprit Nouveau . It is introduced in the school an "objective" approach and the use of industrial materials and new manufacturing techniques. (COLQUHOUN, op.cit ., p.160-1) In the first exhibition of the Bauhaus in 1923, several pieces of furniture designed and produced in the school’s workshops are exhibited as prototypes for industrial production. In architecture, changes are linked mainly to the postwar public housing program, of the Republican government, financed by the government, trying to solve the housing deficit.