Gustavo Capanema Palace
Encyclopedia
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, Palácio Gustavo Capanema) is an office building in Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
that is one of the finest examples of Brazilian 1930s modernist architecture. It was designed by a team composed of Lucio Costa
Lúcio Costa
Lucio Costa was a Brazilian architect and urban planner.-Career:Costa was born in Toulon, France.Educated at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle upon Tyne, England and in Montreux until 1916, he graduated as an architect in 1924 from the School of Fine Art in Rio de Janeiro...
(future designer of the layout of Brazil's modernist capital Brasília
Brasília
Brasília is the capital city of Brazil. The name is commonly spelled Brasilia in English. The city and its District are located in the Central-West region of the country, along a plateau known as Planalto Central. It has a population of about 2,557,000 as of the 2008 IBGE estimate, making it the...
), along with Affonso Eduardo Reidy
Affonso Eduardo Reidy
Affonso Eduardo Reidy was a Brazilian architect. Among his projects was participation in the Gustavo Capanema Palace.-External links:...
, Ernani Vasconcellos, Carlos Leão and Jorge Machado Moreira. Oscar Niemeyer
Oscar Niemeyer
Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho is a Brazilian architect specializing in international modern architecture...
, who was to become Brazil's best-known architect, also took an important role in the design process, as an intern in Costa's office. The group invited Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...
to oversee the project, which was designed in 1935-1936. Construction was begun by the Getúlio Vargas
Getúlio Vargas
Getúlio Dornelles Vargas served as President of Brazil, first as dictator, from 1930 to 1945, and in a democratically elected term from 1951 until his suicide in 1954. Vargas led Brazil for 18 years, the most for any President, and second in Brazilian history to Emperor Pedro II...
government in 1939 and was completed in 1943, to house Brazil's new Ministry of Education and Health. In 1960 the national capital was moved to Brasília
Brasília
Brasília is the capital city of Brazil. The name is commonly spelled Brasilia in English. The city and its District are located in the Central-West region of the country, along a plateau known as Planalto Central. It has a population of about 2,557,000 as of the 2008 IBGE estimate, making it the...
, while the building became a Rio office for the ministry, which it remains today.
The building is named after author and educator Gustavo Capanema, who was the first Minister of Education of Brazil. It is located at Rua da Imprensa, 16, in the downtown Rio area of Castelo. Delighted with the shape of Guanabara Bay
Guanabara Bay
Guanabara Bay is an oceanic bay located in southeastern Brazil in the state of Rio de Janeiro. On its western shore lies the city of Rio de Janeiro, and on its eastern shore the cities of Niterói and São Gonçalo. Four other municipalities surround the bay's shores...
, Corbusier suggested that the building should be located next to the sea, instead of on an inner downtown street, but the government declined.
The project was extremely bold for the time. It was the first modernist
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
public building in the Americas, and on a much larger scale than anything Le Corbusier had built until then. Modernism as an aesthetic movement had a great impact in Brazil, and the building -- which housed the office charged with cultivating Brazilian formal culture -- included various elements of the movement. It employed local materials and techniques, like the blue and white ceramic tiles (azulejo
Azulejo
Azulejo from the Arabic word Zellige زليج is a form of Portuguese or Spanish painted, tin-glazed, ceramic tilework. They have become a typical aspect of Portuguese culture, having been produced without interruption for five centuries...
s) linked to the Portuguese tradition. Despite being a large office building, the structure has a distinct lightness to it, as it is raised on round colomns (pilotis) with access unobstructed from surrounding sidewalks and pedestrian areas. The building embraces bold colours and contrasts of right angles and flowing curves, such as the vitreous blue curving structures on the roof hiding the water tanks and elevator machinery. An internal concrete frame allowed the two broad sides of the building to be entirely of glass. Tropical sunshine on glass walls is controlled by Corbusian sun-shades (brises-soleil) made adjustable in a system that was the first of its kind in the world. Tropical gardens were laid out by the great landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx
Roberto Burle Marx
Roberto Burle Marx was a Brazilian landscape architect whose designs of parks and gardens made him world famous. He is accredited with having introduced modernist landscape architecture to Brazil...
; these included majestic Imperial Palms (roystonea oleraceæ) known as the Brazilian order. The building also included specially commissioned works of other Brazilian artists. Most notable are the mural tiles outside and large wall paintings inside by Cândido Portinari, Brazil's most famous painter.
The building is especially important in the architectural history of Brazil. Modernism there gained great momentum as an aesthetic turning of the page against the "old" Brazil, rural, undeveloped, conservative, and poor. Members of the design group developed a modern architectural vocabulary creating a style that became virtually official and predominant in the country into the 1980s. Beside Costa, Niemeyer, and Burle Marx, who respectively were responsible in the late 1950s and early 1960s for the architecture, layout, and landscaping of the new national capital, Affonso Eduardo Reidy and Burle Marx also worked in the 1950s on Rio's grand, modernist bay-side park, the Aterro do Flamengo, in which Reidy designed the Museum of Modern Art.
The Capanema Palace is also interesting and contradictory in political history. Le Corbusier and the European modernist architects formed various leftist schools of thought, and the Brazilian modernist movement was also left-leaning, with some of its proponents, such as Oscar Niemeyer, active in the Communist Party of Brazil. Yet the ministry building was commissioned by a government that had taken power by force in 1930 and moved further right into outright dictatorship in 1937. Vargas jailed leftists and copied elements of Italian fascism in his attempted re-founding of Brazil as an "Estado Novo," or "New State." This was just as fascism and dictatorship were reaching peak power in Europe, and Vargas dabbled with loyalty to the Axis. Brazil, however, ultimately sided with the US and its Allies, and the Gustavo Capanema Palace was finished in mid-World War II as Brazilian soldiers were being sent to Italy to fight against fascism.
Film
There is a footage of the setting of the first stone of the building, supposedly shot by Humberto MauroHumberto Mauro
Humberto Duarte Mauro was a Brazilian film director. His best known work is Ganga Bruta. He is often considered the greatest director of early Brazilian cinema.-Career:...
, the most important Brazilian filmmaker of the time. In those scenes, minister Gustavo Capanema is shown delivering a speech. Also visible are modernist poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade
Carlos Drummond de Andrade
Carlos Drummond de Andrade was perhaps the most influential Brazilian poet of the 20th century. He has become something of a national poet; his poem "Canção Amiga" was printed on the 50 cruzados note...
, aide to Capanema, and the intellectual Roquette Pinto, among others. The footage is currently kept at the CTAv - Centro Técnico Audiovisual (Audiovisual Technical Center) archive, in Rio de Janeiro. It was included in the feature length documentary Pampulha ou a invenção do mar de Minas, directed by Oswaldo Caldeira.
Books
- BRUAND, Yves; Arquitetura contemporânea no Brasil; São Paulo: Editora Perspectiva, 1981, ISBN 8527301148
- CAVALCANTI, Lauro. Quando o Brasil era moderno : guia de arquitetura 1928-1960. Rio de Janeiro: Aeroplano, 2001.
- COMAS, Carlos Eduardo Dias. Precisões Brasileiras. Paris: Tese de Doutorado, 2002.
- COMAS, Carlos Eduardo Dias. Protótipo e monumento, um ministério, o ministério. Projeto. ago. 1987, n. 102: p. 136-149.
- COSTA, Lucio. Lucio Costa: registro de uma vivencia. São Paulo: Editora UNB/Empresa das Artes, 1995.
- COSTA, Lucio. Edificio do Ministério da Educação e Saude. AU-Arquitetura e Urbanismo. Rio de Janeiro. jul./ago. 1939: p. 543-551.
- COSTA, Lucio. Ministério, da participação de Baumgart à revelação de Niemeyer. Projeto. ago. 1987, n. 102: p. 158-160.
- GOODWIN, Philip L. "Brazil Builds: Architecture New and Old, 1652 - 1942," The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1943, pp. 84-86, and 106-107.
- HARRIS, Elizabeth D. Le Corbusier: Riscos Brasileiros. São Paulo: Nobel, 1987.
- LISSOVSKY, Maurício e Paulo Sérgio Moraes de Sá (organizadores). Colunas da educação: a construção do Ministério da Educação e Saúde(1935–1945). Rio de Janeiro: MINC/IPHAN, 1996.
- MINDLIN, Henrique Ephim. Arquitetura moderna no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Aeroplano Editora, 2000.
- Revista PDF Concurso de ante-projetos para o Ministério d Educação e Saúde Pública. Revista da Diretoria de Engenharia (PDF). set. 1935: p. 510.
- VASCONCELLOS, Juliano Caldas de. Concreto Armado, Arquitetura Moderna, Escola Carioca: levantamentos e notas. Dissertação (Mestrado em Arquitetura) - Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (PROPAR), 2004 313p.
- XAVIER, Alberto. Arquitetura Moderna no Rio de Janeiro. São Paulo: Pini: Fundação Vilanova Artigas, 1991.