The origins
On the Ilha de Marajo, burial mounds and the foundations of thousand-year-old villages have been unearthed... but according to archaeologists, Brazil's subsoil is home to many other pre-colonial treasures yet to be discovered! Increasingly threatened by deforestation, the Amazonian Indians have managed to preserve their traditions as best they can. Many tribes live in tabas or villages composed of malocas or okas, large community houses, generally located in clearings and protected by wooden fences. This is notably the case for the Yanomani and the Xingu. These large huts have a wooden structure covered with thatch. The huts are most often arranged in a circle around a large dirt square where the life of the community is organized. Living in harmony with nature, the Amazonian Indians see their habitat as temporary. When they leave a site, they destroy their huts, whose materials thus return to the land where they were born. On the banks of rivers, the Kaxinawa Indians have developed an ingenious stilt dwelling built of rot-proof wood and topped with palm fronds. This stilt housing is also used on the outskirts of cities when the Indians are forced to migrate and live in flood-prone areas, but the palm is then replaced by sheet metal. In the state of Maranhão, notably in Queimada dos Britos, you can also discover huts made of palm and clay. The palm tree is often associated with the earth. Some populations cover their walls with a cob called taipa, made of earth mixed with stones, while some houses are built using the pau-a-pique technique, a kind of rough brick made of soft earth or dung placed on a wooden structure. A vernacular richness that can be found in many pousadas (traditional Brazilian inns) that are ambassadors of a healthy ecotourism.
Colonial Brazil
Starting out as simple villages or pueblos, the Jesuit missions welcoming the Guarani Indians evolved into veritable towns, with a plan built around a large central square lined with Indian community houses, while a long central axis links the village to the church in a theatrical perspective. Not far away, the convent houses the monks, with the cloister lined with elegant covered galleries as its focal point. At the heart of these missions, the Guaranis have developed an astonishingly rich handicraft, particularly in woodcarving. The UNESCO-listed site of São Miguel Arcanjo illustrates the splendour of these missions. At the same time, colonization continued under the gold of the Baroque style. The exterior of the churches retains an astonishing sobriety of form and decoration. The interiors, on the other hand, feature all manner of decorative exuberance, with the talha - a polychrome wood carving covered in gilding - taking pride of place. The interior is organized around the capela-mor, the main chapel, and its high altar. Azulejos, gilding and paintings cover sculpted ceilings, twisted columns and pilasters in a setting designed to impress... and convert! Superb examples of this Baroque style include the Igreja da Ordem Terceira de Sao Francisco da Penitencia in Rio; Nossa Senhora dos Pazeres in Monte dos Guararapes; and the beautiful Nossa Senhora da Gloria in Rio. This religious Baroque reached its apogee in Minas Gerais, where the lay brotherhoods of bandeirantes, the gold-seeking adventurers, rivaled each other in the daring construction of their churches, whose abundant Baroque bordered on Rococo, as in the Capela Do O in Sabara. It was in Minas Gerais that the great master of the Baroque was to work: the architect and sculptor Antonio Francisco Lisboa, known as the Aleijadinho (the little cripple). The son of a Portuguese architect and a slave, and suffering from a degenerative disease, the Aleijadinho is the symbol of an art that enables the oppressed and disadvantaged to transcend their condition. His masterpieces include the Church of St. Francis of Assisi in Ouro Preto and, above all, the 12 sculpted prophets dominating the sanctuary of Congonhas. The Baroque colonial town is characterized by a tangle of narrow, steep streets, the ladeiras, paved with rounded stones known as pé-de-moleque, literally "boy's foot", because street children used to run along them barefoot. These streets are lined with one- or two-storey colonial mansions, or sobrados, usually organized around a patio, and recognizable by their pitched roofs covered with hollow tiles, and their noble floors decorated with wrought-iron balconies and sometimes moucharabiehs, all of which bear witness to Portuguese and Oriental stylistic influences. The two great landmarks of the colonial town are the church and the governor's palace, each with its own square where a fountain or chafariz often takes pride of place. Ouro Preto, Sao Luis, Diamantina, Recife and above all Salvador de Bahia boast sumptuous historic centers with a rich colonial heritage. This period was also one of unrest, which explains the presence of numerous forts along the coast. Among the most beautiful fortifications, don't miss the Forte Dos Reis Magos in Natal, with its star-shaped layout, and the Forte de Montserrat in Bahia... Forts designed to protect the country's resources, which were exploited in the engenhos, the large sugar estates. The Solar do Unhão site in Salvador de Bahia is one of the best preserved.
From the Empire to the Republic
Imperial Brazil turned to neoclassical rigor. Under the impetus of Dom João VI, Rio was transformed into a true European capital. It must be said that the king, now emperor, surrounded himself with numerous European artists, particularly French ones, including the architect Grandjean de Montigny. The Casa França-Brasil in Rio was one of his great achievements. The court also had many palaces and summer residences built, such as the Imperial Palace, whose superb gardens, now Boa Vista Park, were designed by the French landscape architect Auguste Glaziou, who also designed the very elegant Campo de Santana with its pools, grottoes and bridges. At the same time, the country saw a proliferation of fazendas, large rural estates associated with the exploitation of coffee. In the center, the Casa Grande, the master's house, is located. Its ground floor is used for warehouses, while the houses are on the upper floor. Columns, pilasters and neoclassical pediments decorate these large houses, which overlook a garden with a ceramic pool. Around the house are the chapel, the kitchen, the warehouses, the terreiros - a large terrace paved with stone or ceramic tiles where the coffee beans are dried - and the slave quarters called senzala. Wealthy landowners also built superb mansions in the city, the placetes, which can be seen on Paulista Avenue in São Paulo. The turn of the century was accompanied by a great urban effervescence, as shown by the new city of Belo Horizonte. Inspired by Washington, the city, a symbol of the new Republican motto "Order and Progress", is organized in a checkerboard pattern, while wide wooded avenues with public infrastructure and community facilities run diagonally across it. Rio was also transformed from a colonial city to a Haussmann-style city under the impetus of Francisco Pereira Passos, nicknamed the builder-mayor. Large avenues were built, like the famous Avenida Central, streets were widened and new buildings appeared, reflecting the stylistic evolution of the time, which gave pride of place to eclecticism, as shown by the city's Municipal Theatre, whose contours are reminiscent of those of the Garnier Opera House. At the end of the 19th century, two theatres had already made a name for themselves for their eclectic decorative exuberance and their materials imported entirely from Europe (Portuguese mosaics, Italian marble, Alsatian tiles, etc.): the Amazonas Theatre in Manaus and the Da Paz Theatre in Belém. At the same time, an astonishing metallic architecture is developing, which was announced by the Elevador in Salvador de Bahia, the first urban elevator in the world. Often associated with the curves of Art Nouveau and its elegant glass roofs, this metallic architecture can be found in urban markets, such as the Mercado Municipal in Manaus; in railway stations, such as the Estaçao da Luz in São Paulo; or on bridges, such as the Hercilio Luz Bridge in Florianopolis. The beginning of the 20th century also saw the development of seaside resorts. Copacabana is a good example. Many of the villas on its Avenida Atlântica were adorned with the geometric and pure lines of Art Deco. A modernity that was also announced by the great exhibition organized in Rio in 1922.
In Praise of Modernism
In the 1930s, Rio changed its appearance under the impetus of French urban planner Alfred Agache, who designed the wide avenues of the Castelo district, buildings with parking lots, and vast sidewalks topped by buildings on stilts. This was also the advent of skyscrapers. TheEdificio Martinelli, with its 30-storey Art Nouveau residence, and theBanespa building, whose Art Deco lines are reminiscent of those of the Empire State Building, are São Paulo's two most famous towers. But it was Le Corbusier who definitively introduced modernism to Brazil. With a passion for the city of Rio, he designed the Palacio Capanema, whose stilts, brise-soleils and landscaped offices are reminiscent of his Cités Radieuses. Among the architects assisting Le Corbusier was the undisputed master of Brazilian modernism: Oscar Niemeyer, who developed a highly personal style in which the curve reigns supreme. The Church of St. Francis of Assisi in Pampulha, with its three naves of parabolic arches, and theEdificio Copan in São Paulo, with its S-shape, are good examples of this undulating architecture. But Niemeyer's most famous achievements are to be found in Brasilia, a city designed by the architect in collaboration with urban planner Lucio Costa, at the request of President Kubitschek, who wanted to give the country a new capital. Built ex nihilo, the city allows for all manner of architectural and urbanistic "follies". The master plan was inspired by the design of an airplane, making the city a symbol of the country's prosperity. The importance of symbolism is reflected in Niemeyer's buildings: the shell of the Chamber of Deputies is reminiscent of an urn designed to receive the people's vote, while the closed shape of the Senate dome symbolizes the concentration required for decision-making; similarly, the structure of the army headquarters recalls the shape of a sword defending the city. Other not-to-be-missed buildings include the Metropolitana Cathedral with its curved pillars forming a circle bathed in light, the concrete pyramid of the National Theatre and the Parque da Cidade designed by another key figure of modernism, Roberto Burle Marx. Alongside these buildings of power, the city also boasts imposing residential districts built of superquadras, blocks of housing on stilts. Innovative, the city turned out to be a failure... centered on the all-car, designed for a small population and therefore unsuited to the massive rural exodus that saw shantytowns multiply on the outskirts, and isolated from the rest of the country, Brasilia has the defects of its modernity. Other great figures of modernism include Alfonso Reidy, who designed Rio's astonishing Museum of Modern Art, with its two gigantic levels supported by a series of reinforced concrete arches; while Paulo Mendes da Rocha transformed São Paulo with his refined, elegant brutalism, combining glass and concrete in a skilful interplay of openness to nature, as exemplified by the superb Casa Butanta. After Oscar Niemeyer, Paulo Mendes da Rocha is the second Brazilian architect to be awarded the prestigious Pritzker Prize, the Nobel Prize for architecture!
Contemporary Brazil
In the 1980s, industrial São Paulo was adorned with a forest of skyscrapers, while traffic lanes were built one on top of the other to relieve congestion in the city center. On the outskirts, working-class neighborhoods organized in circles or checkerboard patterns rub shoulders with luxury villas, while favelas are multiplying further out. No city escapes the emergence of these makeshift neighborhoods, which have become veritable cities within cities, where the first shacks made of wooden planks and palm-tree roofs have given way to concrete constructions. Faced with the favelas, the condominiums or gated communities are veritable concrete fortresses. Fortunately, contemporary Brazil has another face, that of astonishing achievements more in keeping with its history, such as Rio's great Sambodrome designed by Oscar Niemeyer, São Paulo's MUBE by Paulo Mendes da Rocha or the Instituto Inhotim, the world's largest open-air contemporary art center, whose gardens were designed by Roberto Burle Marx. This period also marked the beginning of a reflection on environmental issues. In 1992, Curitiba even received the UN's Scroll of Honour-Habitat award for its system of collecting and recycling garbage bought from the most disadvantaged, creating a virtuous economy. José Zanine Caldas, a self-taught architect who developed an architecture with exposed raw wood structures, has also been involved in this ecological reflection. At the same time, Brazil has continued to be enriched by fine contemporary achievements. Oscar Niemeyer designed the saucer-like Museum of Contemporary Art in Niteroi and the superb auditorium in São Paulo; Paulo Mendes de la Rocha was awarded the Mies Van der Rohe Latin America Prize for his renovation of the Pinacoteca Estatal in São Paulo and designed the Cais des Artes in Vitoria, all lightness and transparency; Alvaro Siza designed the Museo Iberê Camargo in Porto Alegre, with its luminous white concrete structure; and the Franco-Brazilian Elizabeth de Portzamparc designed the Marina da Gloria redevelopment project in Rio, with its wide, Land Art-like planted promenades. While the Olympic Games put the spotlight on Rio and its cultural wealth, with Santiago Calatrava's futuristic, elegantly white Museu do Amanha at its heart, it has to be said that most of the infrastructures put in place were ultimately abandoned... A striking contrast with the sustainable architecture being developed today. Engineer Helio Olga continues to push the boundaries of wood architecture, inspired by the success of his project in collaboration with Marcos Acayaba: the São Paulo tower house, a prototype of industrialized construction harmoniously blending wood and cement. It may well have inspired Jean Nouvel's Torre Rosewood, a veritable landscape building conceived as an extension of São Paulo's Matarazzo Park. Added to this are numerous ecological projects that represent a real return to our roots!
