Architecture as Civil Commitment: Lucio Costa's Modernist Project for Brazil

Architecture as Civil Commitment: Lucio Costa's Modernist Project for Brazil

Author: Gaia Piccarolo

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-11-04

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 1317179161

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Architecture as Civil Commitment analyses the many ways in which Lucio Costa shaped the discourse of Brazilian modern architecture, tracing the roots, developments, and counter-marches of a singular form of engagement that programmatically chose to act by cultural means rather than by political ones. Split into five chapters, the book addresses specific case-studies of Costa’s professional activity, pointing towards his multiple roles in the Brazilian federal government and focusing on passages of his work that are much less known outside of Brazil, such as his role inside Estado Novo bureaucracy, his leadership at SPHAN, and his participation in UNESCO’s headquarters project, all the way to the design of Brasilia. Digging deep into the original documents, the book crafts a powerful historical reconstruction that gives the international readership a detailed picture of one of the most fascinating architects of the 20th century, in all his contradictory geniality. It is an ideal read for those interested in Brazilian modernism, students and scholars of architectural and urban planning history, socio-cultural and political history, and visual arts.


Brazil Built

Brazil Built

Author: Zilah Quezado Deckker

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2013-09-13

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 1136363769

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Brazil Built is an examination of the architecture of the Modern Movement in Brazil. In the 1940s and 1950s, Brazil acquired unprecedented prestige in the world of Modern architecture. Brazil was regarded as the country which had inherited the progressive Modernism of the pre-war period in Europe, and which, furthermore, had initiated a new phase of the assimilation of cultural and environmental considerations. This book constitutes a unique presentation of the major Modern buildings in Brazil in a historical context. Prompted by the contemporary re-evaluation of Modernism, and renewed interest in Brazil, this book examines how these Modern buildings came into being, how they came to be so highly regarded and the changing reactions to them in Brazil and abroad.


The Taylorized Beauty of the Mechanical

The Taylorized Beauty of the Mechanical

Author: Mauro F. Guillén

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-11-10

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 0691221537

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The dream of scientific management was a rationalized machine world where life would approach the perfection of an assembly line. But since its early twentieth-century peak this dream has come to seem a dehumanizing nightmare. Henry Ford's assembly lines turned out a quarter of a million cars in 1914, but all of them were black. Forgotten has been the unparalleled new aesthetic beauty once seen in the ideas of Ford and scientific management pioneer Frederick Winslow Taylor. In The Taylorized Beauty of the Mechanical, Mauro Guillén recovers this history and retells the story of the emergence of modernist architecture as a romance with the ideas of scientific management--one that permanently reshaped the profession of architecture. Modernist architecture's pioneers, Guillén shows, found in scientific management the promise of a new, functional, machine-like--and beautiful--architecture, and the prospect of a new role for the architect as technical professional and social reformer. Taylor and Ford had a signal influence on Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius and on Le Corbusier and his Towards a New Architecture, the most important manifesto of modernist architecture. Architects were so enamored with the ideas of scientific management that they adopted them even when there was no functional advantage to do so. Not a traditional architectural history but rather a sociological study of the profession of architecture during its early modernist period, The Taylorized Beauty of the Mechanical provides a new understanding of the degree to which modernist architecture emerged from a tradition of engineering and industrial management.


Third World Modernism

Third World Modernism

Author: Duanfang Lu

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2010-11-02

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1136895485

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This set of essays challenge interpretations of the development of modernist architecture in Third World countries during the Cold War. The topics look at modernism’s part in the transnational development of building technologies and the construction of national and cultural identity.


Culture Wars in Brazil

Culture Wars in Brazil

Author: Daryle Williams

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2001-07-12

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 082238096X

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In Culture Wars in Brazil Daryle Williams analyzes the contentious politicking over the administration, meaning, and look of Brazilian culture that marked the first regime of president-dictator Getúlio Vargas (1883–1954). Examining a series of interconnected battles waged among bureaucrats, artists, intellectuals, critics, and everyday citizens over the state’s power to regulate and consecrate the field of cultural production, Williams argues that the high-stakes struggles over cultural management fought between the Revolution of 1930 and the fall of the Estado Novo dictatorship centered on the bragging rights to brasilidade—an intangible yet highly coveted sense of Brazilianness. Williams draws on a rich selection of textual, pictorial, and architectural sources in his exploration of the dynamic nature of educational film and radio, historical preservation, museum management, painting, public architecture, and national delegations organized for international expositions during the unsettled era in which modern Brazil’s cultural canon took definitive form. In his close reading of the tensions surrounding official policies of cultural management, Williams both updates the research of the pioneer generation of North American Brazilianists, who examined the politics of state building during the Vargas era, and engages today’s generation of Brazilianists, who locate the construction of national identity of modern Brazil in the Vargas era. By integrating Brazil into a growing body of literature on the cultural dimensions of nations and nationalism, Culture Wars in Brazil will be important reading for students and scholars of Latin American history, state formation, modernist art and architecture, and cultural studies.


Rick Steves Barcelona

Rick Steves Barcelona

Author: Rick Steves

Publisher: Rick Steves

Published: 2024-05-28

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 1641716061

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Ramble down Las Ramblas, relax on Mediterranean beaches, and marvel at the sweeping curves of Gaudí's architecture with Rick Steves! Inside Rick Steves Barcelona you'll find: Comprehensive coverage for spending a week or more exploring Barcelona Rick's strategic advice on how to get the most out of your time and money, with rankings of his must-see favorites Top sights and hidden gems, from Gaudí's mind-bending Sagrada Família and the colorful Picasso museum to cozy bars with vermouth on tap How to connect with local culture: Join hands with locals in a traditional sardana dance, chat with fans about the latest fútbol match, or meander down winding streets in search of the best tapas Beat the crowds, skip the lines, and avoid tourist traps with Rick's candid, humorous insight The best places to eat, sleep, and relax with a glass of cava Self-guided walking tours of lively neighborhoods, museums, and historic sites Detailed neighborhood maps and a fold-out city map for exploring on the go Useful resources including a packing list, Spanish and Catalan phrase books, a historical overview, and recommended reading Over 300 bible-thin pages include everything worth seeing without weighing you down Complete, up-to-date information on Las Ramblas, Barri Gòtic, El Born, Eixample, Montjuïc, and more, as well as day trips to Montserrat, Figueres, Cadaqués, and Sitges Make the most of every day and every dollar with Rick Steves Barcelona. Spending just a few days in the city? Try Rick Steves Pocket Barcelona.


Elizabeth Bishop's Brazil

Elizabeth Bishop's Brazil

Author: Bethany Hicok

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2016-04-29

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0813938554

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When the American poet Elizabeth Bishop arrived in Brazil in 1951 at the age of forty, she had not planned to stay, but her love affair with the Brazilian aristocrat Lota de Macedo Soares and with the country itself set her on another course, and Brazil became her home for nearly two decades. In this groundbreaking new study, Bethany Hicok offers Bishop’s readers the most comprehensive study to date on the transformative impact of Brazil on the poet’s life and art. Based on extensive archival research and travel, Elizabeth Bishop’s Brazil argues that the whole shape of Bishop’s writing career shifted in response to Brazil, taking on historical, political, linguistic, and cultural dimensions that would have been inconceivable without her immersion in this vibrant South American culture. Hicok reveals the mid-century Brazil that Bishop encountered--its extremes of wealth and poverty, its spectacular topography, its language, literature, and people--and examines the Brazilian class structures that placed Bishop and Macedo Soares at the center of the country’s political and cultural power brokers. We watch Bishop develop a political poetry of engagement against the backdrop of America’s Cold War policies and Brazil’s political revolutions. Hicok also offers the first comprehensive evaluation of Bishop’s translations of Brazilian writers and their influence on her own work. Drawing on archival sources that include Bishop’s unpublished travel writings and providing provocative new readings of the poetry, Elizabeth Bishop’s Brazil is a long-overdue exploration of a pivotal phase in this great poet’s life and work.


Depositions

Depositions

Author: Catherine Seavitt Nordenson

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2018-05-01

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 147731573X

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“Burle Marx created a new and modern grammar for international landscape design.” —Lauro Cavalcanti, quoted in the New York Times “The real creator of the modern garden.” —American Institute of Architects Roberto Burle Marx (1909–1994) is internationally known as one of the preeminent modernist landscape architects. He designed renowned public landscapes in Brazil, beginning with small plazas in Recife in the 1930s and culminating with large public parks in the early 1960s, most significantly the Parque do Flamengo in Rio de Janeiro. Depositions explores a pivotal moment in Burle Marx’s career—the years in which he served as a member of the Federal Cultural Council created by the military dictatorship in the mid-1960s. Despite the inherent conflict and risk in working with the military regime, Burle Marx boldly used his position to advocate for the protection of the unique Brazilian landscape, becoming a prophetic voice of caution against the regime’s policies of rapid development and resource exploitation. Depositions presents the first English translation of eighteen environmental position pieces that Burle Marx wrote for the journal Cultura , a publication of the Brazilian Ministry of Education and Culture, from 1967 through 1973. Catherine Seavitt Nordenson introduces and contextualizes the depositions by analyzing their historical and political contexts, as well as by presenting pertinent examples of Burle Marx’s earlier public projects, which enables a comprehensive reading of the texts. Addressing deforestation, the establishment of national parks, the place of commemorative sculpture, and the unique history of the Brazilian cultural landscape, Depositions offers new insight into Burle Marx’s outstanding landscape oeuvre and elucidates his transition from prolific designer to prescient counselor.