São Paulo architectural guide: Twelve routes and a hundred and twenty four projects

são paulo

architectural

guide:

twelve

routes and a

hundred and

twenty four

projects

(1925-2018)

edited by

Fabio Valentim

1st edition

São Paulo, 2021

introduction

Few of the world’s cities have as rich a collection of modern buildings as São Paulo. Oscar Niemeyer, Vilanova Artigas, Lina Bo Bardi, Rino Levi and Paulo Mendes da Rocha are some of the the best known names among the many who have built here. Far from covering everything, this guide seeks to ensure a significant and diverse sampling, including parks, schools, residences, residential and commercial blocks, arcades, clubs and so forth. The selection of works goes beyond the central areas, and includes several peripheral areas and neighbouring municipalities.

The idea of bringing together a set of significant buildings in a guide has been an old wish of ours at Escola da Cidade. Architecture is known in loco, only the experience of the visit allows for a real understanding of the urban context, the scale, the light, the sounds, the plastic expression, the materials, and even the perception of people experiencing the space.

The scope of this guide is not limited to the modern period — we have included more recent works that we consider to be sufficiently recognised as part of the city’s heritage. There are 124 of them, grouped into 12 itineraries drawn out in sector maps for ease of visiting. The grouping of the works into itineraries is also a way of covering a larger extension of the city and thus evidencing the complexity of its scale and diversity.

Gaps exist and they are large, starting with the private residences that functioned — and still function — as a space for experimentation for architects. Visiting them in times of uncertainty is usually not easy; we therefore chose to prioritize public buildings, which are generally more accessible.

It is important to mention the support from teachers, students and ex-students, employees, and supporters of the school in making this project possible and gathering this material. This book also celebrates a first partnering with WMF Martins Fontes, a publisher that has always played an essential part in the publication of architectural works in our country. An architectural guide focused on notable buildings will overlook the city, at least partly. We have therefore included a short essay by photographer Lalo de Almeida at the beginning, presenting São Paulo and its residents based on the twelve suggested routes.

preface

FABIO VALENTIM

In São Paulo, the beginning of modern architecture is commonly associated with the construction of the Casa Warchavchik. Designed for the architect’s own family, the work became known as the Casa Modernista. Aesthetically inspired by European rationalism, the house was actually built in a traditional manner, with limited use of reinforced concrete. Warchavchik would go on to build two notable houses at the end of the 1920s, both in Pacaembu: one on Itápolis Street and the other on Bahia Street. During this same period, the architect Júlio de Abreu designed a surprising vertical building on Angélica Avenue which, despite its pioneering spirit, remained an exception in his body of work, perhaps explaining the little impact it made. Warchavchik’s houses foreshadowed an urban destiny, planned and guided by technique, for the city’s future. Hardly anyone at the time could have imagined a city which, in its urban sprawl, would be home to almost 20 million people by the end of the 20th century, with all the sorts of problems inherent to this scale.

The dimension of the urban sprawl explosion can be seen in the growth diagram of the city in the 20th century. The first railway line, known as the Santos-Jundiaí (São Paulo Railway), crossed the city along the floodplain of the Tietê River, taking advantage of the flat terrain and low land value due to flooding during the rainy season. The first factories were progressively installed along the railway line, in the Brás, Pari and Mooca neighbourhoods. The rivers (Tietê, Pinheiros, and Tamanduateí), originally quite voluminous, were channeled and rectified. Urban growth reached the old floodplains, driven by the construction of expressways alongside the rivers. Creeks and streams were almost all channeled, with new roads and avenues emerging over the old riverbeds. The city gradually lost its relationship with its original geography, gaining, on the other hand, a built geography. Raised with little or no planning, or more accurately, planning limited to the defining of new road routes, the city always lacked more comprehensive urban plans. The first and best known one, by Prestes Maia and Ulhôa Cintra, is the so-called 'Plano de Avenidas', clarified in focus and scope by its name. Its layout, based on ring roads (clockwise and counterclockwise) and radiating avenues, was decisive in the Downtown circulation scheme and the city’s vectors of expansion. The reservoirs built in the south of the city, Guarapiranga (1908) and Billings (1930s) did not initially have the function of supplying the city with drinking water, but were rather water sources linked to the electric power generation system. In the case of the Billings Dam, the system involved the reversal of the Pinheiros River and the construction of massive viaducts feeding fresh water into turbines located at the foot of the Serra do Mar, 800 m below it. It was this energy stock that leveraged the automobile industry in what is known as the abc Paulista, the most important industrial center in the country between the end of the 1940s and 1980.

Thus, at the end of the 1940s the city became the economic center of the country, showing accelerated growth. São Paulo’s architecture began to gain relevance, maintaining a certain independence from production in Rio de Janeiro. Works such as the Municipal Library and the Jockey Club attest to this. But perhaps the most important achievements of modern architecture in São Paulo are the housing developments promoted by pension funds, such as in the Carmo Floodplain, Mooca, Santo André, among others. In some cases, the scale of these developments led to them being inserted as planned neighbourhoods within the city.

The two main faculties of architecture (Mackenzie Presbyterian University and the São Paulo University), initially linked to engineering schools, became autonomous. Many European architects migrated to São Paulo soon after the end of World War II, in 1945. Among the Italians were Lina Bo Bardi, Maria Bardelli, Ermanno Siffredi, Giancarlo Palanti, and Daniele Calabi. From Northern Europe, Bernard Rudofsky, Victor Reif, Lucjan Korngold, Adolf Franz Heep, among many others. Here, they joined other pre-war immigrant architects like Jaques Pilon and Gregori Warchavchik.

The architects in São Paulo, unlike in Rio de Janeiro when it was still the federal capital, depended on orders from the private sector. Many began their professional careers in construction, as was the case of Rino Levi, Oswaldo Bratke, Artigas, and many others. The bias of architecture schools derived from engineering courses, a professional life linked to construction and the absence of public sector orders in some sense shaped a different path for São Paulo’s architecture. In the 1940s, these architects, alongside Rino Levi and Eduardo Kneese de Mello, endeavoured to create an institute capable of more fully and independently regulating professional practice. Thus the Brazilian Institute of Architects was born in São Paulo, with its headquarters being the object of a competition in 1947 won by a team led by Rino Levi and which included Miguel Forte, Jacob Ruchti, Abelardo de Souza, Hélio Duarte and Roberto Cerqueira César, among others. It is a beautiful design, located on a corner of the city’s New Downtown.

View of the Pinheiros River in the early 1930s. Fundação Energia e Saneamento Archive

Some of the city’s most important designs were built between the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s: commercial and residential buildings in the New Downtown, and high-end residential buildings in Higienópolis. The latter, a neighbourhood whose name refers to the origin of the land division, delivered with running water and a sewage and drainage network, concentrates a number of very high quality buildings. Among the first, designed in the 1940s, are the Prudência Building by Rino Levi, and the Louveira Building by Artigas. Pioneers of modern architecture in residential buildings, together they shaped a type of urban occupation in which the building is generous towards the city. The Lausanne Building, designed by Franz Heep in 1953, with its facade essentially defined by movable shutters, is another keystone of the period. Artacho Jurado, an entrepreneur and self-taught designer of the surprising Bretagne Building, introduced a certain irreverence in his buildings, full of all sorts of colors and cladding. Closer to Downtown, Oswaldo Bratke made a significant set of commercial and residential buildings, some built during World War II, in which the architect even designed bomb-proof underground bunkers in accordance with the legislation of the time, but also a series of construction elements that were difficult to import, and which the national industry, in turn, did not yet produce.

At the beginning of the 1950s, Oscar Niemeyer designed, in addition to Ibirapuera Park, a series of buildings for the real estate market. The highlights among these are the Montreal, the Copan and the Eiffel buildings, all characterized by their strong relationship with the surrounding urban spaces — which might make them the most interesting designs out of the vast work of the carioca architect. In the city center (Downtown São Paulo), many of the new buildings were attached to shopping arcades at the ground levels, creating a very interesting and unique urban project known as São Paulo’s New Downtown. Some of the highlights are the pioneering Esther Building, followed by the California, Copan, and Eiffel, and the Baratos e Afins (now known as the Galeria do Rock), Nova Barão, and Metrópole arcades. Some of these complexes, such as the Esther, Copan, and Nova Barão, are hybrids, combining commercial use with services and housing — models later banned by zoning laws at the beginning of the 1970s, but which today attract attention once again as an urban proposition.

In a certain way, the complex designed by Oscar Niemeyer at Ibirapuera Park marked the introduction and adoption of modern architecture by the municipal government in São Paulo. Composed of a set of pavilions interconnected by a gigantic winding marquee, it is one of the most remarkable urban parks ever built. The construction of the park was part of the program of celebrations of the 4th City Centennial (1954). In addition to Ibirapuera, the program also generated an agreement between the state and the municipality with the objective of eliminating the classroom deficit and eradicating the precariousness of school buildings by the time of the celebrations, which resulted in one of the most important initiatives in the area of school architecture. The Convênio Escolar, together with a small team of architects led by Hélio Duarte, designed over 100 educational buildings in the city, including three theaters. Previously, in the 1930s, the municipal public authority had built 11 modern school buildings, although still within the scope of art deco, known as the Estado Novo schools.

The Carvalho Pinto state government saw, at the start of the 1960s, the creation of the Plano de Ação, and architects in private firms began to participate in the construction of large-scale public facilities — especially schools and forums. It is partly a reflection of the success of the construction of Brasilia and, at the time, Juscelino Kubitschek’s developmentalist policy. The first high schools designed by Vilanova Artigas, the Itanhaém and Guarulhos gymnasiums, embryos of a more autonomous Paulista School architecture, often called 'Paulista Brutalism', are distinguished in this context. The construction of the University of São Paulo Campus, planned since the 1930s, took shape with the Plano de Ação. Among the buildings designed, none had the same impact as the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism designed by Artigas. One of the most influential on later Brazilian architecture, the building became one of the symbols, if not the greatest symbol, of modern Paulista School architecture.

In the transition from the 1950s to the 1960s, large-scale ventures promoted in the private sector shaped Paulista Avenue. The most significant ones are the mixed-use buildings Conjunto Nacional and Nações Unidas, which combine shopping arcades, offices and housing, and the exclusively residential Pauliceia Building, all of them projects designed for very high density. The consolidation of the avenue as a financial center redirected production towards corporate towers, such as the impeccable Banco Sul-Americano, or the generous Cetenco Plaza. But if the avenue is currently acknowledged as the great symbolic space of the city, much of it is due to the presence of the São Paulo Art Museum, the MASP. Designed by Lina Bo Bardi in the mid 1950s, the museum was inaugurated in 1968, becoming the city’s great cultural reference in the 1970s. Its open ground floor, a square sheltered by a suspended block spanning 70m, is one of the most interesting spaces in the city.

In 1964, the military coup that overthrew the federal government instituted a long period of dictatorship. Then, in 1968, the military government enacted the Ato Institucional Nº 5, extinguishing the legislative power and granting almost unrestricted powers to the government. The suspension of numerous professors from the University of São Paulo was one of the first consequences. Within the Faculty of Architecture, Artigas, Jon Maitrejan, and Paulo Mendes da Rocha were excluded. Many university students engaged in the struggle against the dictatorship, and the left itself broke into countless divisions. A complex period followed in which an artificially inflated economic growth, the ‘economic miracle’, accelerated the construction market. On the other hand, there was a calculated dismantling of Brazil’s universities.

The urban sprawl of the city of São Paulo expanded enormously, generating a vast and amorphous self-constructed periphery mixed with massive housing complexes with little to no planning. The so-called ‘dormitory cities’ emerged, islands with no infrastructure, far from downtown, and inhabited exclusively by low-income groups; true ghettos of poverty where all kinds of social issues arising from territorial exclusion would inevitably emerge.

Major road projects, generally linked to automobile-based mobility, were made without any consideration for the surroundings or any care for urban quality, devastating emblematic places of the city such as D. Pedro ii Park and São João Avenue, which is currently covered by the so-called 'Minhocão', a grotesque 3.5km long viaduct. The zoning of the city was established by law in 1972. The following year, an amendment to this law shaped the entire typology that makes up most of the vertical and legal city: the incentive of the single-purpose building, without commerce, protected by setbacks on all sides and occupying only 25% of the projected plot. Associated with a growing wave of violence, it resulted in walled buildings, tall but not dense, and totally disconnected from the city. In São Paulo, verticalization was not a process of urban qualification, nor population density. Commerce, or street life, settled in the old houses that remained isolated between the buildings. Another indirect consequence of the zoning law was the proliferation of shopping malls within the city’s expanded downtown area, in suburban formats: climatized closed boxes surrounded by large parking lots, another blow to public space.

During the dictatorship, the government created a bank specifically to lend credit for housing construction, the BNH (National Housing Bank) which