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Architecture and the
Paradox of Dissidence
Edited by Ines Weizman
R ~~o~ ;~~n~~~upL ON DO N A ND N EW Y O RK
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Chapter 5
Designing dissent
Vila nova Artigas and the Sao
Paulo School of Architecture
Ana Marfa Leon
Arrested and forced to retire from teaching at the start of the Brazilian dictatorship,
architect .Joao Batista Vilanova Artigas (1915-85) wound up working for the regime that
had curtailed his freedom, How and why did this central figure in Brazilian architecture
turn from resistance to collaboration? A significant body of recent Brazilian scholarship
has focused on particular actors and time periods related to this question.' and by
looking for connections across a broader time scale, this essay intends to complement
and respond to these studies from an external point of view. Here, Artigas' writing,
during the 19505 and 19605 prior to the Brazilian dictatorship, will be explored in order
to establish continuities and contradictions in his discourse that can help explain his
position as both a dissident and a collaborator.
Pedagogy and industrialisation were recurring topics in Artigas' writing, and
came together most strongly in his best-known work, the Sao Paulo School of Architecture
(Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade de Sao Paulo, hereafter FAU-
USp, 1961-69), of which he designed both the building and pedagogy (Figure 5.1) The
building is known for its large atrium, often used as a common room (Figure 5.2) with
ample sky-lit studios privileging the studio course, and large concrete spans thanks
to technological advances in the Brazilian construction industry. These characteristics
reflect the pedagogy of the school, whose curriculum prioritised the studio course within
the curriculum yet maintained links to its polytechnic origins, with a strong emphasis
on building technology. In what follows, I focus on the origins of these discourses in
the 1950s, when Brazil experienced a process of accelerated industrialisation, and the
school went through a revision of its curriculum. I then trace the incorporation of these
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Figure 5.1
Vilanova Artigas, FAU
Sp ' front view from
Ave. Luciano Gualberto
photograph c. 2011 I
discourses into the pedagogy of the school in the 1960s. followed by debates on the
political role of the discipline prompted by the military coup of 1964. This context, paired
with the threat of incoming foreign firms and the continuity of the state's developmentalist
policies, illuminates broader links in Artiqas' attitudes toward the state. I argue Artigas'
appropriation of foreign pedagogies and technology echoed the developmentalist
policies of the Brazilian military regime. and his fixation with the threat of United States
imperialism ultimately superseded the abuses of the regime he served.
Industrialisation and foreign influx
After the Second World War, Brazil began a process of accelerated industrialisation,
consolidated in the latter half of the 1950s with the developmentalist project of J uscelino
Kubitschek (1956-611.' It is possible to roughly bookend the period between two
architectural events: the 1943 'Brazil Builds' exhibition at MoMA and the construction
from scratch of Brasilia, the new modern Brazilian capital. built between 1956-1960.
These events point to a heightened attention to architecture's role in the representation
of the state. It was also a time of complex political alliances, in which the Partido
Comunista Brasileiro, or PCB (the Brazilian communist party), in an effort to resist
more conservative movements, maintained a position that could be described as anti-
imperialist rather than anti-capitalist: it protested the invasion of foreign enterprises but
promoted the industrialisation that was linked to it. As a member of the PCB, Artigas
participated in this somewhat contradictory position
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Ana Maria Leon
In 1946, the young Artiqas was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation grant to
travel to the United States. In a letter, he described what he wished to see:
Figure 5.2
Vilanova Artigas,
FAU USP,SaoPaulo,
1961-69, main
atrium (photograph
c. 2011, with tarp
covering syklight for
maintenance)
What interests me most in this moment is to see the United States, and
really the part that concerns education. As much as people read about
'the Bauhaus,' for example, they can't imagine how things happen at the
practical level.
IArtigas et aI., 1997, p. 27)3
Following these plans, Artigas spent 1947 travelling around the US in search of the
Bauhaus - not the place closed down by Nazi Germany, but its academic reconfiguration
in America. Although we don't know his itinerary, we can infer from his letter that he
probably visited Walter Gropius' Harvard Graduate School of Design in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, and Mies van der Hohe's Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.
The visit, prompted by an interest in Bauhaus pedagogy as it was being translated into
the US, seems to have had repercussions back in Brazil.
Upon his return to Sao Paulo in 1948, Artigas became director of the journal
Fundamentos, a publication addressed to PCB members.4 There, and in the context
of the Cold War, he wrote against the imperialism implicit in measuring systems _
from British, to metric, to Le Corbusier's 'Modular' _ and described these systems
as impositions by foreign companies that gave the upper hand to their products,
privileging certain racial and ideal types through their standards (i.e., establishing
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human heights for building spaces and interior furnishings). Artigas also noted that the
influx of US measuring systems, developments and investment left few options for
modern Brazilian architecture in the context of his political convictions:
Where are we? Or what to do? Wait for a new society and continue doing
what we're doing, or abandon the trades of the architect given they are
oriented in a direction hostile to the people, and launch ourselves into a
revolutionary battle completely?
(Artiqas. 1981, p. 77)5
Arguing for a third way out Artigas stated that through contact with people
affected by design, architects could develop a critical attitude. For him, this was the only
path that would allow architecture to remain within its own boundaries and at the same
time maintain an awareness of its own incapacity to disentangle from oppressive forms
of production. Artigas also mentioned Mies' and Gropius' work in the US, describing
the former as excessively concerned with form, and the latter as focused on technology
and opposed to any connections between architecture and art (Artigas, 1981, p. 63).
Artigas used these broad generalisations to construct his argument against foreign
influence, but in the case of Gropius, the interest in industrialisation was close to the
postwar industrialisation of Brazil and to Artigas' own position.Gropius explained his views on the topic himself when he visited Sao Paulo
in 1954, and presented a lecture titled 'The Architect in Industrialised Society'." The
lecture framed the balance of art and science as the fundamental aspect of design, and
encouraged architecture's involvement in the development of more modern construction
technologies. In 1952, Gropius delivered a previous version of the same lecture at the
Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects, but he omitted a few passages
for the Brazilian audience. In Chicago, he argued that current university education
favoured the sciences to the arts, and he made a plea for the latter's importance at a time
of excessive emphasis on mechanisation and expediency. By erasing these segments,
the weight of the Brazil lecture shifted to a warning about the perils of architecture losing
ground on the construction site in competition with 'the engineer, the scientist and
the constructor' (Gropius, 1954). He argued architecture should keep up to date with
new production and construction processes, yet warned that new modes of production
altered these processes by removing labour from the hands of the craftsman. However,
he did not seem aware that this process of removal was being replicated at a global
scale, as large construction companies started expanding their reach and, through their
expertise, took projects away from the hands of local professionals.
The dominance of United States brands, materials, systems and architecture
firms haunted the production of local architecture in postwar South America. While
the 1950s policies of Brazil's President Juscelino Kubitschek sought to reduce foreign
dependence through subsidised import substitution - by discouraging exports
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Ana Marfa leon
world leadership' for the US. This translated to the dissemination of the corporate
architecture of firms such as Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), Harrison & Abramovitz,
and Gropius' own firm, The Architects' Collaborative (TAO The buildings produced by
these firms populated cities from the Middle East to the South American Andes, and
were described by architecture historian Manfredo Tafuri as an architectural esperanto
(Tatun. 1986, p. 339).' Confronted by their efficiency and expediency, local architects
felt their own work was being threatened, along with their authority in the design of
their own cities, ordinances and buildings.
Although TAC was not active in Brazil, Gropius' visit mobilised Artigas, who
responded to the lecture in an article describing the visitor as an 'imperialist agent' who
had put 'all the weight of his world fame to prove the yanqui superiority' (Artigas et aI.,
2004, p. 55).' These words might seem strong, but should be framed in the context of
the Cold War. For instance, the conclusion of Gropius' speech in Chicago reflects the
opposing point of view:
It is not enough [... J that we defend our democracy only; we must wage and
win the battle of ideas to make democracy a positive force and the role of us
architects is to find the dynamic means [of] how to make these ideas visible
in our environment.
(Gropius, 1952, pp. 45-46)
While Artigas saw Gropius' visit as an imperialist imposition, Gropius
sketched out this political tension as a 'battle of ideas' with architecture as a tool
to render these ideas in the built environment. It is this 'making visible' that Artigas
resisted, noting the ease with which foreign firms could 'urbanisa' Brazil using their
own employees with the simple provision of hiring one Brazilian.w In opposition to
the onslaught of United States dominance - both through corporate firms and the
imposition of measurement and building systems - he argued for a new architecture: a
tormecso da nova arquitetura (Artigas et el., 2004, p, 54). This new architecture, already
latent in the country, would resist foreign domination through the understanding of
popular wants and needs to combat generic internationalism with a language rooted
in the local. The strengthening of the discipline, which was essential to resisting the
foreign influx, would happen through the renovation of the architectural curriculum
and the strengthening of architectural pedagogy, an evolution ironically influenced by
Artigas' early visit to the United States. Artigas played a key role in the development of
the pedagogy at FAU-USp,but to understand how his political convictions came to bear
on the curriculum, we should briefly explore the origins of the school.
Pedagogies of dissent
The restructuring of the Brazil Institute of Architects (lnstituto de Arquitetos do Brasil,
lAB), and its first national congress celebrated in Sao Paulo in 1944, propelled the
reorganisation of the discipline and its separation from engineering schools, In 1948,
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the FAU-USP was created to replace the Polytechnic School, an older institution that
granted the title of 'engineer-architect' in Sao Paulo. which was Artigas' own title. In
contrast to a more difficult process in Rio de Janeiro, which had to contend with a
beaux-arts tradition as it turned to modernity, Sao Paulo's process was more fluid,
Historians agree that by highlighting the common elements between the technical
principles of correct construction and those of modern architecture. the polytechnic
was a point of departure rather than opposition for the FAU-USP11In 1957, a commission
that included Artiqas" reviewed the existing curriculum and asserted the importance
of reconceptualising the composition course (the equivalent of studio) and established
its organisation. structure, methods and work programmes (Pereira, 2009, pp. 35-36).13
Years later, Artigas remembered this process as a battle:
What we can call the fight for the autonomy of architectural education,
had its most intense phase between 1947-60 [.. 1 The first models of
education evolved from an academic position (the beaux-arts tradition) and
a technocratic position (the Polytechnic) into a modernist position, in the
aesthetic sense. influenced by the Bauhaus and by Le Corbusier, and. at
the same time, turned into a broader understanding of the construction
problems of the country,
(Pereira, 2009, p. 381"
For Artigas, these pedagogical transformations were not a mere matter of
changing curricula or styles, but a fight for autonomy. In the context of accelerated
industrialisation and the intrusion of foreign firms into the job market, the creation
and strengthening of the studio course was significant not only in terms of pedagogy;
the First National Law for the Regulation of the Professions of Engineers, Architects.
and Surveyors - decree 23.569. dated 1933 - still saw architecture as a specialisation
of engineering, which Artigas felt had shaped a negative perception of architecture
in Brazil as a secondary discipline. In this context, the studio course was created as
a tool to give architecture autonomy from engineering, and authority as a discipline
within the country. allowing it to resist the influx of foreign intervention at all scales
of design.
In 1962, an official reform formalised the recommendations put forth in
1957 and organised all research into three departments whose reformulation involved
significant chences." The Department of Composition. originally rooted in the Durand
tradition. had been previously subdivided into 'small' and 'big compositions'. It was
transformed into the Project Department, which included the areas of project planning.
industrial design and visual communication. The department of Architecture Technology
kept a connection with the professors from the engineering school. Finally, a centre of
folkloric studies. established in 1949 to promote the study of Brazilian architecture.
was absorbed into the departmental structure of the History of Architecture and Project
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Ana Maria Leon
The newly created history department included not only the research of the
Brazilian past, but also the work of modern Brazilian artists such as Tarsila do Amaral
and Anita MaJfatti. These artists were part of the Grupo dos cinco, an organisation
known for group member Oswald de Andrade's 1928 Manifesto Antrop6fago. In this
canonical manifesto, de Andrade claimed Brazil gained its strength from cannibal ising
other cultures and digesting foreign influences into new creative impulses. The return
to their work in the 1960s was reframed by the ethos of participation epitomised
by Marxist educator Paulo Freire's enormously successful literacy proqtamrnea.I"
Politically motivated by the requirement of literacy to be able to vote, Freire's pedagogy
led a general turn to participation in various Brazilian art forms _ from the theatre of
Augusto Boal, which incorporated the audience into the play, to the art works of Helio
Oiticica and Lygia Clark, who sought to turn observers into participants.v Echoing this
emphasis on the popular and the local, architects became interested in the use of
rougher vernacular materials and exalted the virtues of pre-colonial traditions. Artigas
was interested in keeping foreign influences at bay and would also partially participate
in these experiments, but they found a stronger response in a younger generation at
FAU-USP,whose work would be interrupted by the rise of the military regime.
Shifting oppositions
In the mid-1960s, Brazil experienced a period of political instability that culminated
in the military coup of 1964 (Schwarz, 1992).18 It initiated an era of repression that
extended to the academic world. At USP. an internal commission organised by the
rector accused a number of teachers and students of distributing what were termed
as Marxist or subversive ideas; they were all arrested. The group included Artigas,
who was shockingly arrested in the middle of class and in front of his students." He
was absolved and moved voluntarily to Uruguay, where he stayed for two years. The
military government was purportedly temporary, but its expiration date was continually
postponed. Towards the end of 1967, university students joined workers in large-
scale protests, which were repressed by the state with escalating violence. In 1968,
the regime cancelled its own term limit, officially becoming a dictatorship. Despite
its conservative, nationalist discourse - used to court the ruling elites _ the regime
supported Kubitschek's developmentalist policies that depended on foreign trade; thus
some continuity existed from the prior administration into the new government.
Artigas moved back to Brazil in 1966, and during this unstable period
worked for the state on the design of a series of elementary schools with different
iterations of similar design principles: various activities united under a single large roof,
a main atrium and large spans. The schools were part of a state plan meant to improve
conditions for elementary education and introduce a modern image of the state in
more distant provinces. They point to Artigas' continued interest in pedagogy, and his
decision to work for the regime that had sent him into exile.20 The large scale and
prefabricated structures of some of these constructions relied precisely on the exact
measuring systems he had criticised as imperialist dominance and the mastery over
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industrialised construction advanced by Gropius. However, this technological mastery
also aligned with the image of modernity sought by the developmentalist project of the
state. It was also during these years that the FAU-USP- another state project - was
designed and built as a larger iteration of this series of schools.
Also, during this time, Artiqas' views were challenged by the Arquitetura
Nova group formed by Sergio Ferro, Rodrigo Lefevre and Flavia Imperio, who
represented a younger generation of FAU-USP faculty. The group started their
studies at the FAU-USP between 1956-57, at the moment of the first revision of its
curriculum. They graduated in 1961, were immediately hired as faculty and started
their careers by participating in the Reform of 1962. Thus their roles as students
and teachers were marked by the pedagogical restructuring that took place at the
school, and by the figure of Artiqas." In 1965, their architectural work was featured
in a journal, introduced with an essay by Artigas titled 'A false crisis' (Artiqas. 1965).22
who argued that the perception of a crisis in functionalism was false. Artigas made
veiled references to his own role as part of the modern movement's formation and
promotion in Brazil, and much of the essay revived the Gropius argument of balancing
science and art. which is understood here as industrialisation and the architect's
artistic intent. Looking at the production of the younger generation of artists. Artigas
credited the new pedagogy, which included historical, economic and social knowledge
_ a clear self-congratulation - for being able to 'invade all sectors of the visual arts,
enriching themselves with a plastic experience that will show its importance in the
near future' (Artigas, 1965, p. 2 2 1 .However, Arquitetura Nova was not as pleased with the current status of
architecture or with the role they had been assigned to play in it. For Imperio, the past
30 years of Brazilian architecture had developed closer to the bourgeois vision of pre-
capitalist economy. The discipline had been limited to monumental state buildings and
high-income residences, remaining far from its true field of operation as a social and
creative activity. Lefevre argued the market had prevented the younger generation of
architects from realising the discipline in their own terms, and they were forced to look
for alternative avenues to work outside the discipline. Ferro most poignantly pointed
out the core of their critique:
The realised work of architecture both hides and reveals a project: as
any other realisation, deforming and attenuating. amplifying or altering,
in practice, its initial proposals. But it keeps [... ] its basic orientation.
And. because of this, the work allows the reconstruction [... 1 of the most
significant traces of the structure of the project.
(Ferro, 1967, p. 3)
Effectively the first post-Brasilia generation, Arquitetura Nova denounced
the work of Artigas and Oscar Niemeyer as well as the PCB (of which they were both
members) as collaborating with the developmentalist discourse of the military regime. In
contrast. they proposed to focus on the relations of production, the labour conditions of
the construction worker and traditional construction techniques developed specifically
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An a Mari a Leo n
to lower costs and increase access to housing - tactics they defined as the 'poetics
of economy'. This desire for a Brazilian specificity was in alignment with the emphasis
of the history department where Ferro and Lefevre taught. However, their practice was
limited to commissions from friends, thus reducing their scope to the bourgeois class
they sought to escape.
In a way, Arquitetura Nova's position aligned with Artiqas' earlier call for a
closer awareness to the conditions of production and an understanding of the people
they serve as the best path for architecture; his call, after Gropius' visit to Brazil, for
a nova arquitetura focused on popular wants and needs (Artigas et al., 2004, p. 54).
But rather than follow his prior advice, Artigas' practice opted for the integration of
architectural design and advanced construction technologies in a way that followed
the position advocated by Gropius, despite having different formal results. The
heavy monumentality balanced with large spans and openings that informs many of
these works sets itself apart from Tafuri's architectural esperento without falling into
discourses of regionalism or tropicalism. They do not merely make up a regionalist
discourse; they are the result of a shared school. Yet for the same reasons, they
became convenient tropes for the oevelopmentanst discourse of the regime and
monuments to the modernity of the state. In his inaugural lesson at FAU-USP in 1967,
Artigas responded to Arquitetura Nova's objections:
Don't expect me to take sides against machinery or technology. Ouite on
the contrary, I think that both contribute to enlarge the field for architects
and artists, as well as the means of performing their work. I am among
those who believe that machines make it possible for art to have a renewed
function in society.
(Artigas etal., 1997, p. 129)23
In the same lecture, Artigas reflected on the meaning of the word 'design' as
both drawing and intent; that is, purpose (desenho in Portuguese means both drawing
and design). He explained that to design or form an idea, or to have intent, carries with
it an artistic drive, while to draw a font, for instance, implies a technological meaning.
This semantic meditation is indicative of Artigas' interest in Heidegger in the late 1960s,a distant view from his materialist position of the 1950s. However, he had not lost his
political convictions. He specified that the advantage of the word 'design' over 'project'
is that it can be used for a building, an electricity station or a society. Consequently, it
implies the intention of change, including political change: change that can be enacted
through the design of both the social and physical environment.
In October of 1968, these opinions came into direct confrontation at FAU-
USP,where Artigas reconfirmed his choice for 'a Brazilian proposal of development,
revolutionary, of course' - in other words, his intention to continue accepting large-
scale commissions from the state, while maintaining his opposition to it). Seeing the
options for architecture reduced to either serving the regime or what he described
as 'a choice for cheapness based on the fact that we are a poor country', he argued
that poverty comes from oppression, and accepting such an aesthetic would be the
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equivalent of absolving the bourgeoisie of all its faults as the dominant class. Finally,
he saw another, more dangerous option starting to appear in the school: the creation
of guerrillas, militant groups inside the school that were preparing for active combat
against the dictatorship. How can we make a revolution, he asked, without the technical
knowledge and artistic vision needed of the world? (Cunha, 2009, p. 73).24
At this moment several debates overlapped with each other. Issues on
technology and vernacular were often used as shortcuts to allude to larger structural
problems. Arquitetura Nova believed that opting for advanced technological solutions
aligned with the oevelopmentalist project of the state, and resistance was to be found
against it in order to return some agency to architecture by controlling production
independent of the forces of capital. For Artigas, oevelopmentalsm was a deliberate
choice against poverty and oppression. Yet both sides of the debate were superseded
by the urgency of the increasing violence and repression taking over Brazil, and the
more radical option of actual combat. Then the military intervened.
Between dictatorship and empire
In the early 1970s, the Brazilian military removed the main actors of the debate from
the school. Ferro and Lefevre were imprisoned and accused of subversive activities.
Imperio was also briefly detained (Koury, 2003, p. 3D). After their release, Ferro and
Imperio combined their practice with other disciplines: Imperio worked on theatre
scenography and collaborated with playwrights Augusto Baal and Jose Celso Martinez
Correa, who were linked to the wider tropicalist movement. Ferro focused on writing
and painting, and relocated to France, where he could not practise, and instead taughtat the Grenoble School of Architecture. Finding architecture too entangled with the
restrictions of the regime, the group seemed to lose faith in the discipline's possibilities
for political agency. Only Lefevre continued working as an architect. before his
premature death in a car accident."
Artigas was forced to retire from teaching but was allowed to work; the
regime seems to have considered his ideas more dangerous than his buildings. In
the 19705 he worked for the state designing social housing complexes for the State
Company for Popular Houses (Companhia Estadual de Casas Populates. CECAPL
and his practice thrived." Through this work he was able to build for the very poor -
those segments of society Arquitetura Nova was never able to reach. Yet. we cannot
divorce the social content of his practice from the fact that it was done in the service
of a violent authoritarian state. Artigas' position was more complicated than a purely
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An a M a r ia Le on
If the invasion of United States products, systems and design firms was
perceived by Artigas as a threat to Brazilian architects in the 19505, this threat was
somewhat ameliorated thanks to the strict stewardship of the military government
during the years of the dictatorship. The first years of military rule were a period of
great economic growth known as the 'Brazilian miracle', in which import substitution
policies similar to those of Kubitschek's in the 1950s were complemented by
incentives for exports that capitalised on national resources. Thus while the Brazilian
military encouraged foreign investment. it kept its dominance of the internal market
at bay by giving incentives to surplus production and exports. Furthermore, eager to
promote a mixture of technological modernity and national pride, the regime supported
Brazilian architects and discouraged the intervention of foreign firms. Although Artigas'
collaboration with the regime was contrary to his political convictions, it was aligned
with his resistance to foreign economic and architectural modes of dominance. In other
words, his resistance to empire superseded his antagonism to the dictatorship. In the
end, United States imperialism seems to have become a spectre of dominance, haunting
Artigas' essays throughout his career. In his writings, the figure of the distant empire
was a more menacing presence than the regime that actually controlled the country.
Like other miracles, of course, the economic situation was not all it appeared
to be: income concentration favoured the rich over the poor, urban over rural, and
middle-aged over youth. The gains in national production did not benefit those with
lower incomes, who saw their wages stagnate. The lure of education, of higher wages
for skilled workers and trained professionals, promised a way out of poverty. In this
context, the dictatorship kept tight control over the pedagogy of schools, which led
to an additional reform in 1969. University students had played a large role in political
protest. and pedagogy in general was associated with the teachings of Freire and the
left. Yet the regime, perhaps aware of the image of modernity lent by architecture,
decided to support the autonomy of the discipline. The schools of architecture and
engineering were finally separated in the 1969 state-led reforrn.>
In 1973, a report on the teaching of architecture in Brazil was produced by
the FAU-USP for the International Union of Architects IUrA) and UNESCO, using texts by
Artigas and Flavia Motta (Artigas, 1993)." Artigas' voice in the report reveals the degree
to which he was able to operate within the dictatorship, and his focus at the time: the
valorisation of national culture, which he commends the UIA for encouraging in contrast
to the ClAM, as a way to decolonise architecture from foreign influences. Nowhere in
the report is there any mention of the dictatorship or his own forced retirement from
teaching. Going back to his differentiation between 'design' and 'project' of 1967, Artigas
linked the notion of project - as the architectural project - with the demonstration of
sovereignty. He concluded that the reforms he implemented at FAU-USp' which in turn
came to influence other schools of architecture in Brazil, prompted the formation of
a Brazilian school. Artigas argued that this school, characterised by its tachnoloqicaladvances and increased appreciation of national cultures, had been able to maintain
independence from the dominance of foreign tendencies. In other words, although he
was not alJowed to teach, Artigas perceived evidence of his legacy in the curriculum of
the FAU-USP and its success.
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Des ign ing d is s ent
gure 5.3
lanov a Art igas ,
AU USP. Sao Paulo,
961-69 (photograph c.
011), s tudent gra f f it i :
auhaus Weimar
x odus 1 , Hoc hs c hule
es ta l tung Ulm
xodus 2, Faculdade
e A r q ui t et u ra e
rbanism a Sao Paulo
x odus 3
However. we should remember this pedagogical structure was rooted in the
reconfigurations of the Bauhaus that Artigas studied in his visit to the United States (this
connection to the Bauhaus is a generally accepted notion, see Figure 5.3). Thus, his
resistance to United States modern corporate architecture was based on appropriating
the same system that had trained the architects of these firms. By reconfiguring the
modern architecture curriculum into a Brazilian curriculum, Artigas enacted an import
substitution operation in architecture: he replaced foreign imports with domestic
production. In other words, the architect's reappropriation of foreign pedagogy as an
element of resistance paralleled the economic policies of developmental ism.
Artigas was confronted with extreme choices: to build, and in this way
maintain some kind of agency despite serving a regime he opposed. or to resist. and
lose the ability to practise, abandoning the discipline altogether. Ultimately, he chose to
collaborate with the state in order to continue a lifetime resistance to what he viewed as
United States imperialism. To do so, he appropriated the pedagogies and technologies
of the international agents he opposed. and mobilised them into the formation of a local
modern architectural language. By adopting foreign methods to resist external modesof domination, Artigas echoed the import substitution industrialisation enforced by the
state. In doing so, he wilfully elided the more immediate. local threat of a violent and
repressive regime.
. . .
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Ana Maria Leon
A partial confirmation of Artigas' admittedly congratulatory view might be found by
going back to the building itself. The FAU·USP,both as building and pedagogy, stands
as a reminder of Artigas' attempt to establish dissidence through pedagogy, resistance
through design. Most recently, the 2011 general student strike on its premises
specifically protested the continued existence of residual power structures established
by the military dictatorship (tau em greve, 2011). The present building, filled with
the protest graffiti of generations of students, points to both the pedagogy and the
architecture of a school designed for dissent.
Acknowledgements
I want to thank MIT Brazil for funding part of this research, and the FAU·USP librarians
for hosting me, Rafael Urano Frajndlich assisted with Sao Paulo research, and the MIT
interlibrary loan system located books and journals remotely. Niko Vicario helped me
think through my argument. The reviewer's comments were very useful in the final
revision, Thanks finally to Ines Weizman for convening and organising the conference
and editing the proceedings.
Notes
Most of Artiqas' texts have been compiled in Artiqas. 1981, 1997, 1989 and 2004. A significant bodyof research on this subject has been done by a series of dissertations at FAU-USP,particularly as it
involves Arquitetura Nova, the younger generation that briefly succeeded and opposed him. Costa,
2008; Guimaraes. 2006; Cunha. 2009; Pereira, 2009. For the work of Ferro, Imperio and Lefevre as
an outcome of this debate, see Arantes. 2002; Koury. 2003.
For an overview and analysis of the develoomentalist project of Kubitschek. see Sikkink. 1991,
p.122-70.
Artigas. letter to Henrique Mindlin dated 17 August 1946, in Artiqas. 1997
Artigas' return to Brazil in 1948 coincided with the foundation of two key institutions. The Museum of
Modern Art, or MAM. in which he was a founding member only to distance himself as a member of
the PCB, which considered the biennials promoted by the MAM as an instance of imperialism, and the
FAU-USP.discussed in the second part of this piece. For an institutional history of the MAM. see Le
Blanc, 2011. Caroline Jones has worked on the Sao Paulo Biennial, conceptualizing Oscar Niemeyer's
projects at Ibirapuera as a type of antropofagia of Le Corbusier's Modular. See Jones, 2013, pp. 3-36. Artfqas. 'Os Caminhos da Arquitetura Medema'. in Artiqas. 1981, p. 77. First published in
Fundamentos 24 (January 1952)
Different versions of this lecture had been delivered to the Chicago Chapter of the AlA in April 1952,
and in a visit to Japan. In Brazil it was presented to the Fourth Congress of Brazilian Architects. We
should note his use of the term 'art' refers specifically to the creative potential of the architect as an
'artist' (Gropius. 1952).
For an economic explanation of the Brazilian Miracle and its consequences in the larger Brazilian
population. see Pisblow, 1973. Fishlow explains the previous moment of economic growth under
Kubitschek operated through import substitution but discouraged exports and offset payments with
foreign investment. Thus: 'In the guise of reducing foreign dependence, it considerably increased it'
{p. 476). For a political history of twentieth-century Brazil, see Skidmore. 1967 and 1988.
During this period SOM designed the Banco de Bogota in Colombia (1958), plus buildings in
Germany and Turkey; Harrison & Abramovitz designed the United Interests Section in Havana, Cuba,1953. lACs international work focused on the Middle East but also included projects in China, Mali,
Germany, Argentina and Greece (not all built)
First published in Artigas. 'Consideracoes sobre Arquitetura Brasilelre'. AD Arquitetura e oecoreceo
7, year 2 (September-October 1954),
'The ease with which these organisations penetrate our economic structure has disastrous
reflections in our culture. In the competition of the market, they have the tendency to devalue the
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
"
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Designing dissent
national contribution - a cultural contribution - presenting their own expressions as more legitimate,
based on cultural models strange to ours.' Artigas. 'A os formandos da FAU USP,' Discurso de
peraninfo na cotecac de grau dos erquitetos formandos pela FAUUSPem 1958, Acropote 244, year
21 (February 1959), 125, in Artigas, 2004, p. 72.
11 For a history of the Sao PauloPolytechnic, see Picher,2005; and Pereira,2009, pp. 9-40,
12 Comissao de Peestruturaceo. composed by Rino levi, Artigas, Abelardo de Souza and Helie de
Queiroz Duarte (Pereira,2009, p. 226).
13 The report also contrasted the successful introduction of this course in other schools in South
America, particularly in Uruguay and Chile, The objectives of the atelier course are described as the
development of graphic expression. creative sensibilities, and relating education with the realities of
practice.
14 In 1973, a 'Report on the Teachingof Architecture in Brazil'was done for UIA-UNESCO.produced by
the FAU-USP,based on the texts of ProfessorsVilanovaArtigas and Havlo Motta. This report includes
valuable insights on the alignment of the 1962 Reform with a modern curriculum. See Artigas, 1993,
144-55
15 This structure was complemented with the creation of a library, a laboratory of graphic arts and
photography. and a models office or workshop, a museum. and a school union (the GFAU- these
last two were closed in 1964)
16 Paulo Freire's pedagogical work in Brazil at the time was later summarised in his canonical text.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1968). His work was influential in the development of art andpedagogy throughout South America, in particular in Brazil and in Chile, where he resided for a
period in the late 19605.17 Artists Helie Oiticica and Lygia Clark were part of the neo-concretlsts. a group focused on haptic
experience and perception founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1959 in opposition to the more abstract.
formal emphasis of the Sao Paulo Concretists. My analysis of Clark's work in the context of the
uncertain politics of late 1960s Brazilcan be found in Le6n, 2011,
18 For a description of the cultural and political environment between the military coup and the
consolidation of the dictatorship, see Schwarz, 1992,19 See Associacao dos Docentes da Universidade de Sao Pauloor ADUSP,1979. For details on the
formation of the internal commission, see ADUSP,1979, pp. 14-15; for a description of Artrqas'
arrest, see pp. 26-27
20 See Cunha, 2009, in particular 'As escolas'. pp, 114-123, Artigas also wrote a text 'Sobre escolas'I'On schools'). synthesising the history of Brazilianschools (o. 122)
21 Ferroand Lefevre started teaching at FAU-USPin 1962; Imperio started in the Visual Communication
department. Ferro was admitted as professor of History of Arts and Aesthetics, Lefevre taught
History of Contemporary Architecture, and was transferred to Project in 1969,
22 Forthe complete exchange see Artiqas. 1965: Imperio, Lefevreand Ferro 1965; Lefevre, 1966; Ferro,
1967.
23 Originally in Artigas, 'a Disenbo'. March 1967.
24 'Depoimento na FAU-USP',October 1968.25 He worked in various health projects for the architecture department of the Brazilian engineering
firm Hioroservice. and died in a car accident in Guinee-Bissau,in 1984
26 Cunha's dissertation focuses on Artigas' production during this time period (Cunha, 2009).
27 On April 1969, a decree resolved to forcibly retire 42 people working in the Federal Public
Administration, including various intellectuals and three professors including Artigas. More were
added later. The 1969 reform was led by the regime (ADUSP,1979).28 The text was published after VilanovaArtigas' death. A note states: 'This document was approved in
a meeting of the UNESCOCommission on Superior Education in Zurich. 1974',
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