Crossing Texts, References and Images. A Survey of a City Planner’s Personal Library in São Paulo (1920-1960) (2/2) Images Representing Urban Ideas (original) (raw)
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Les Cahiers de la recherche architecturale urbaine et paysagère, 2023
The analysis of the intellectual path of an urban planner in São Paulo, Brazil, between the 1920s and the 1950s, is a subject that leads to little-studied issues in urban historiography: personal libraries, reference sources and appropriations. This is especially the case with visual representations of urban problems published in books and journals, particularly those from North America with broad international circulation during those years. A shared dimension of Les Cahiers de la recherche architecturale urbaine et paysagère , Matériaux de la recherche Crossing Texts, References and Images. A Survey of a City Planner’s Personal ... 22 textual and visual documents in the history of transnational town planning from this period emerges in original analyses developed in two articles, composing a Dossier . Further, the particularity of this work is that it crosses biographical and bibliographical frameworks in a moment central to this history. The connections studied go beyond the peculiar case study to allow for the understanding of a cross-cultural flow of references in this key period of planning studies and visual representations of its issues. This publication is the first part of a two-part series. The second article is entitled "Images Representing Urban Ideas".
Ebook - São Paulo: escrita-imagem em atravessamento estético-político
2018
Este ebook é resultado de pesquisa financiada pela PUC-SP, desenvolvida pelo Centro de Pesquisa Sociossemiótica – CPS e pelo Grupo de Estudos da Poética: Interconexões diacrônico-sincrônicas na poesia brasileira e portuguesa, respectivamente dos Programas de Estudos Pós-Graduados em Comunicação e Semiótica e Literatura e Crítica Literária da Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo. O ebook busca apreender a inscrição da “cidade periférica” – Grajaú – na cidade de São Paulo, em particular nas suas territorialidades centrais, assim como nas extensas vias de transporte que cruzam essa megalópole. A partir de manifestações estéticas parietais (pixo, pichação, mural, grafite, palavra-imagem, entre muitas mais), artistas intervencionistas urbanos ressignificam centro e periferia, marcando posição e assinatura de territorialidades excluídas, e a construção de uma voz sócio-político-artístico-cultural que quer ser ouvida no seu mostrar a diversidade da sociedade brasileira. Os estudos desses atravessamentos urbanos enredam análises e reflexões sobre as transformações que a cidade incorpora polifonicamente, assim como a ampla documentação fotográfica que, saltando das páginas, evidencia um universo de sentidos que não pode mais ser calado ou inviabilizado. É essa problemática complexa que este volume entrega aos leitores.
São Paulo: escrita-imagem em atravessamento estético-político
São Paulo: escrita-imagem em atravessamento estético-político, 2018
Este ebook é resultado de pesquisa financiada pela PUC-SP, desenvolvida pelo Centro de Pesquisa Sociossemiótica – CPS e pelo Grupo de Estudos da Poética: Interconexões diacrônico-sincrônicas na poesia brasileira e portuguesa, respectivamente dos Programas de Estudos Pós-Graduados em Comunicação e Semiótica e Literatura e Crítica Literária da Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo. O ebook busca apreender a inscrição da “cidade periférica” – Grajaú – na cidade de São Paulo, em particular nas suas territorialidades centrais, assim como nas extensas vias de transporte que cruzam essa megalópole. A partir de manifestações estéticas parietais (pixo, pichação, mural, grafite, palavra-imagem, entre muitas mais), artistas intervencionistas urbanos ressignificam centro e periferia, marcando posição e assinatura de territorialidades excluídas, e a construção de uma voz sócio-político-artístico-cultural que quer ser ouvida no seu mostrar a diversidade da sociedade brasileira. Os estudos desses atravessamentos urbanos enredam análises e reflexões sobre as transformações que a cidade incorpora polifonicamente, assim como a ampla documentação fotográfica que, saltando das páginas, evidencia um universo de sentidos que não pode mais ser calado ou inviabilizado. É essa problemática complexa que este volume entrega aos leitores.
Crossing histories: Brazilian planners of São Paulo and their transnational references (1910-1930)
urbe. Revista Brasileira de Gestão Urbana
This paper examines how some pioneering planners in the Brazilian state of São Paulo, Victor Freire, Prestes Maia, Ulhoa Cintra, and Anhaia Mello disseminated and appropriated the dominant principles of international urbanism in the period 1910-1930. The education in city planning is directly associated with the repertoire of engineering courses and professional associations. In this environment, where public debates on urban issues were intense, it is worth noting the presence of English urbanist Barry Parker, who lived for two years in São Paulo, implementing innovative projects and debating with local planners. The access to urban planning manuals and reviews, and the presence of these Brazilian professionals in international seminars, led to the dissemination of the international ideals and some resulting essays on the way these ideals could be applied in many fields: urban regulations, projects in downtown areas, housing, sanitation, town extension plans, city management, zonin...
São Paulo Past and Present: Comparative Albums and Architectural Photography in Brazil
Bitácora, 2019
In an image-saturated world, what role does photography play in shaping architectural design and development? According to the historian Peter Blundell Jones, architecture since the modern period can be considered "photo-dependent, " because its ideal viewing conditions are not in situ, but isolated in photographs: framed, cropped and collaged to enhance symbolic and aesthetic value. 1 In this essay, I argue that Jones' s architectural "photo-dependency" is only half of a co-dependent relationship between photography and architecture that has developed since the former' s nascent years. Many of the first photographs taken by early experimenters with the medium featured architectural content, a pragmatic response to photography' s extended exposure times. Before it was considered an art form, photography' s utilitarian role in documenting historic structures afforded it a prominent place within the cultural dialogue. Even after exposure times decreased sufficiently to widen photography' s practical applications around the turn of the twentieth century, architectural photography remained a key genre well into the modern period. The infrastructural development of twentieth century São Paulo, Brazil offers a prime example of photography' s power to impact urban spaces and architectural style. At the beginning of the century, São Paulo was emphatically flat-and Paulistanos liked it that way. Brazil' s first skyscraper, the Neo-Renaissance Martinelli building, was built between 1929 and 1934. At 30 stories high, the building was not only the tallest in Brazil, but in all of South America. However, the Martinelli was also an elaborate exception that proved the rule of the city' s horizontality: the year of its completion was the first year that buildings of two stories or more made up at least 50% of all new construction. 2 For almost four hundred years, since its founding in 1554, São Paulo had been a sleepy village set in a swampy floodplain. Its emergence in the modern period as a global megacity was determined in part by technological innovations-like elevators and concrete construction-that allowed for its dramatic "verticalization" as skyscrapers took root in the city center, but also by the maturation of a photographic narrative that began almost a century prior. This article attempts to demonstrate the effect of circulated photographic images on São Paulo' s urban development through an examination of a particularly popular genre in the city: the comparative album. This format set historical views of the city alongside contemporary scenes taken from the same or similar vantage points in order to cultivate comparisons that illustrated how the city' s urban development manifested architecturally. Beginning in the late nineteenth century and culminating in the lead-up to the four hundredth anniversary of the city' s founding in 1954, comparative albums were an immensely popular form whose analysis in the present not only offers a visual voyage through São Paulo' s changing landscape, but also deconstructs how the narrative of architectural progress became a pillar of Paulistano identity. The central premise of comparative albums-documenting urban change over time-illustrated the city' s modernization and helped to concretize the idea of "progress" as one of its defining characteristics. By examining individual spreads within comparative photo albums and essays published over the course of seventy years, I will demonstrate how infrastructural and architectural development became the defining feature of Paulistano visual culture, and how photography helped to publicize and promote local construction. Abstract A principle feature of São Paulo photography is the predominance of comparative albums that illustrate modern progress by juxtaposing contemporary and past imagery. Within these comparative albums, paired architectural vistas became a primary means of demonstrating São Paulo's transformation into a modern city, especially as the city became increasingly "verticalized" in the mid-twentieth century. This paper employs the iconographic analysis of photographs in comparative albums and magazine spreads to show how photographic narratives of infrastructural progress helped to propel architectural trends and shift public opinion about the aesthetics and function of the city. In doing so, I demonstrate how architecture and photography operated as symbiotic practices in midcentury urban Brazil. Resumen Una característica principal de la fotografía en São Paulo es el predominio de álbumes comparativos que ilustran el progreso moderno con la yuxtaposición de imágenes contemporáneas y pasadas. Dentro de estos álbumes, las vistas arquitectónicas pareadas se convirtieron en el medio principal para demostrar la transformación de São Paulo en una ciudad moderna, especialmente cuando la ciudad empezó a hacerse cada vez más vertical, a mediados del siglo xx. Este artículo emplea el análisis iconográfico de fotografías en álbumes comparativos y revistas para mostrar cómo las narrativas fotográficas de progreso infraestructural ayudaron a impulsar las tendencias arquitectónicas y a cambiar la opinión pública sobre la estética y la función de la ciudad; con ello se demuestra que la arquitectura y la fotografía operaban como prácticas simbióticas en las zonas urbanas de Brasil a mediados de siglo.
Tempo Social, revista de sociologia da USP, v. 31, n. 1, 2019
The article seeks to investigate urban phenomena in São Paulo’s 19th and 20th centuries by utilizing Henri Lefebvre’s concept of appropriation. Thus, I focus on the relations between urban space(s) and its inhabitants, and the analysis of the city – usually perceived as space – becomes a spatio-temporal and relational analysis regarding dynamic practices, conflicts, etc. understood as urban phenomena. How did the inhabitants appropriate São Paulo? May we state special forms by comparing it to other Latin American cities of former times? How did the migrants arriving at the end of 19th century change old forms of living in the city? I conclude with remarks and critics on the potential of using the concept of appropriation in urban studies. Keywords: São Paulo; Appropriation; Henri Lefebvre; Spatio-temporalities; Urban studies.
Aesthetics of Gentrification
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