Architecture and Philosophy of the tragic: Brazilian late modernism as case study (original) (raw)

2022, Vision, Possibility, Virtuality

This paper aims to discuss the relationship between Brazilian late modernist architecture from 1960s, until early 1980s and the philosophy of the tragic, starting from Marshall Berman's suggestion about the “tragedy of development”, supported in Goethe's Faust. Indeed, the context of Brazilian late modernism is itself tragic in a Goethean regard - as suggested by Peter Szondi: the tragedy arises from the alliance of antagonistic forces around a common goal, in this case the constitution of a modern, developed, urban and industrialized nation. Such antagonistic forces were the far-right military regime that lasted from 1964 to 1985 and the architectural field, of libertarian and socialist orientation. Despite the political persecution of prominent figures such as Niemeyer, Vilanova Artigas and Mendes da Rocha, modernist architecture with brutalist aesthetics had great state support – like no other artistic avant-garde in the period. Modernism became a sort of official aesthetic, replicated in all regions of Brazil in large-scale works such as public offices, power plants, factories and stations - in this sense, closely aligned with the Faustian tragedy. The developmental efforts of the military regime - as a hypertrophied continuity of Plano de Metas (Plan of Goals) of the democratic Kubitschek government (1956 - 1960), head of Brasília’s construction (1960) - transformed Brazil into an urban and industrialized country, without however achieving the desired modern and developed condition. Through the contributions of the philosophy of the tragic, this paper seeks to discuss the effects of the tragedy of the development of the military regime (1964 - 1985), as well as to analyze possible reflections of tragic paradoxes in Brazilian late modernism, characterized by an anti-functionalist architecture, linked to tragic concepts such as chance and unpredictability. Likewise, the brutalist aesthetic dialogue with the technical limitations of an architecture that no longer intended itself as a technological vanguard, but sought to constitute a poetics of its own limitations, as represented so well by the Brazilian Pavilion at Expo 70 in Osaka designed by Paulo Mendes da Rocha, for example.