BRAZIL BUILDS
ARCHITECTURE NEW AND OLD 1652-1942
Philip L. Goodwin
Philip L. Goodwin: BRAZIL BUILDS. ARCHITECTURE NEW AND OLD 1652-1942. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1943. Second edition, revised. Quarto. Text in Portuguese and English. Black embossed cloth decorated in green and yellow. 200 pp. 300 black and white illustrations. 4 color plates. Gene Federico’s inkstamp to front and rear pastedowns otherwise interior unmarked and very clean. Light spotting to rear. A very good or better copy.
8.75 x 11.25 hardcover book with 200 pages with 300 black and white illustrations and 4 color plates. Photographs by G.E. Kidder Smith. Very uncommon and important text in the history of international architecture, covering Brazil, 1652-1942. Well-illustrated and covering domestic, civil and industrial architecture. Black and white photos and sometimes plans and diagrams for all the structures as well as portrait photos of leading architects. BRAZIL BUILDS highlights the missionary zeal that the Museum of Modern Art bought to the evolving modernist dialogue in America during the closing days of World War II.
"It was to study and record Brazilian architecture, old and new, that the authors of this book were sent to Brazil in 1942 by the American Institute of Architects and the Museum of Modern Art .North American architects and engineers will be particularly interest in Brazilian experiments with the control of heat and light through external sun-breaks instead of artificial air-cooling."
Includes work by Rodrigo Mello Franco de Andrade, Pavalo Camargo Almeida, Saturnino Nunes de Brito, Roberto Burle-Marx, Atilio Correa Lima, Luico Costa, Carlos Frederico Ferreira, Dr. Nestor E. de Figueiredo, Carlos Leao, Rino Levi, Ademar Marinho, Henrique E. Mindlin, Jorge Moreira, Oscar Niemeyer, Jose Norberto, Jacques Pilon, Carlos Henrique de Oliveira Porto, Afonso Reidy, Marcelo Roberto, Milton Roberto, Bernard Rudofsky, Aldary Henriques Toledo, Alvaro Vital Brazil, and Gregori Warchavchik.
I don’t think the people at MoMA got the memo about war-time paper and cloth shortages, because BRAZIL BUILDS is an exceptionally lavish production, with full decorated cloth, glossy paper and even some 4-color reproductions. This book even cost $5.00 new in 1943 -- quite a sum in those days. BRAZIL BUILDS feels like as much of a diplomatic gesture as it does a contemporary architectural monograph. Highly recommended.
“The Brazilian Government leads all other national governments in the Western Hemisphere in its discriminating and active encouragement of modern architecture. This is the conclusion reached by Philip L. Goodwin, F.A.I.A., noted New York architect who spent several months in Brazil last summer making a survey of its architecture for the exhibition Brazil Builds, which opens at the Museum of Modern Art Wednesday, January 13. Commenting on the leadership which the Brazilian Government is taking in modern architecture in the Western Hemisphere (now, because of the war, this position is preeminent in the world), Mr. Goodwin said:
“Even before the advent of the Vargas government in 1930 there were Brazilian experiments in modern architecture. From modest beginnings the movement, happening to coincide with a building boom, spread like brushfire. Almost over- night it has changed the faces of the great cities, Rio and Sao Paulo, where it has had its most enthusiastic reception.
“The construction of impressive new buildings to house all government and public service departments is evidence of the realization of the Brazilian Government and its forty million citizens of the great importance of their country, third in area in the world. Rio de Janeiro has the most beautiful government building in the Western Hemisphere, the new Ministry of Education and Health. Snr. Gustavo Capanema, Minister of Education and Health, has given the most active and practical encouragement to progressive architecture. He has also recognized the important contribution well-related painting and sculpture can make to architecture. The Ministry of Education and Health boasts a gigantic mural in tile by Portinari, Brazil's leading modern painter.
“Other capital cities of the world lag far behind Rio de Janeiro In architectural design. While Federal classic in Washington, Royal Academy archeology in London, Nazi classic in Munich, and neo-imperial in Moscow are still triumphant, Brazil has had the courage to break away from safe and easy conservatism. Its fearless departure from the slavery of traditionalism has put a depth charge under the antiquated routine of governmental thought and has set free the spirit of creative design. The capitals of the world that will need rebuilding after the war can look to no finer models than the modern buildings of the capital city of Brazil."
Although the emphasis is on modern building in Brazil, most of it erected in the last decade, the older architecture has not been neglected, for the exhibition embraces a period of almost three centuries, from 1652 to 1942. Brazil's beautiful old buildings, its early churches with their elaborate gold-encrusted interiors and the picturesque fazendos comprise almost a third of the exhibition. It has been installed in several galleries and the main hall of the first floor of the Museum and is composed of enlarged photographs, architectural renderings, drawings, plans, maps, and continuous screen projection of forty-eight color slides. Three models will also be shown.
“When he made his survey of Brazilian architecture, Mr. Goodwin was accompanied by G. E. Kidder Smith, A. I. A., who is well known as an architectural photographer. The 300 pictures in the exhibition have been selected largely from the thousand or more black-and-white and color photographs made by Mr. Smith in Brazil. Mr. Goodwin and Mr. Smith undertook this survey of Brazilian architecture under the joint auspices of the Museum and the American Institute of Architects, The Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs assisted the project in every way possible.
“The installation for the exhibition has been designed by Alice M. Carson, Acting Curator of the Museum's Department of Architecture. Mr. Goodwin wrote the introduction of the 200-page book with 300 illustrations, four in full color, which will be published by the Museum in conjunction with the exhibition. Mrs. Elizabeth Mock assisted in editing and in the design for the layout of the book. The book jacket is by E. McKnight Kauffer.
“At the entrance to the exhibition a wooden map of Brazil is superimposed on an outline of South America painted on the wall.
“In his introduction to the book Mr. Goodwin writes on this subject of sun control as follows: “Brazil's great original contribution to modern architecture is the control of heat and glare on glass surfaces by means of external blinds. North America has blandly ignored the entire question. Faced with summer' s fierce Western sun, the average office building in the United States is like a hot-house, its double-hung windows half closed and unprotected. The miserable office workers either roast or hide behind airless awnings or depend on the feeble protection of venetian blinds--feeble because they do nothing to keep the sun from heating the glass. It was our curiosity to see how the Brazilians had handled this very important problem that really instigated our expedition. As early as 1933, Le Corbusier had used movable outside sunshades in his unexecuted project for Barcelona, but it was the Brazilians who first put theory into practice.
“As developed by the modern architects' of Brazil, these external blinds are sometimes horizontal, sometimes vertical, sometimes movable', sometimes fixed. They are called quebra sol in Portuguese, but the French term brise-soleil is more generally used.
“In no case has the sunshade been more successfully Integrated with the architecture than in the Ministry of Education and Health. The cool south side exposes its wall of double-hung sash without protection. On the north, however, (remember that in Brazil the sun comes from the north), the floors, reduced to thin concrete slabs, are cantilevered out to about four feet in front of the window face. Similar vertical divisions, spaced four feet apart, divide the facade into a gigantic egg-crate of rectangular shapes. The upper part of each rectangle contains three horizontal louvers of asbestos in steel frames — all three regulated by a crank inside the building. The blue-painted louvers can be turned with the movement of the sun, admitting plenty of air yet keeping out all direct sunlight and reducing the glare to the most desirable amount of reflected light. As the small blue planes are moved to various angles in different parts of the building, there is a charming variety of light and shade. A similar example of the horizontal blind is found in Correa Lima’s Coastal Boat Passenger Station in Rio.
“At the Pampulha Yacht Club in Bel Horizonte, Niemeyer has repeated the vertical, adjustable type of sunshade first used by him at the Obra do Bergo in Rio. There a bank of tall louvers some six feet high by one wide, can be worked by one of the nuns with no more trouble than it takes to turn a door handle. "The brothers Roberto have used a very different kind of vertical blind on the A. B. I. building. The two hot sides of the building are faced with rows of diagonally fixed concrete slabs, each thirty-two inches deep and two and three- quarters inches thick, opening on a narrow continuous passage. Some of the rooms have glass on the inner side of the passage; others are left open." — from the Museum of Modern Art press release titled BRAZILIAN GOVERNMENT LEADS WESTERN HEMISPHERE IN ENCOURAGING MODERN ARCHITECTURE, EXHIBITION OF BRAZILIAN ARCHITECTURE OPENS AT MUSEUM OF MODERN ART