LINA BO BARDI E O SESC POMPEIA
CIDADELA DA LIBERDADE
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Comemoração ao dia das crianças, 2012. Foto de Claudia Mifano
English version Citadel / citizen / citizenship The city is very beautiful, and grateful is its sociability. All cut by skillfully narrow streets [...] all astutely diminishing the space in a way that in these arteries there is no space for people. (Mario de Andrade, Macunaíma) The emergence of an urban-industrial society at the turn of the 20th century wove the movement of changes that spread through São Paulo, amid a progressive impulse. Among the results of this process is the loss of references by the population, in face of the reduction of living spaces. The experience of the city, then, became an obstacle to its inhabitants, a barrier that advances in technology and the world economy have not helped to overcome. In contemporary times, in which the transitional governs dissipation and speed, the city continues to discard its identities. In forgetfulness and ruins, which result from successive layers of erasure and reconstructions, one can perceive the intensity of carelessness and the significance of continuous palliative processes of modernization. The city, through human force, becomes a space of intolerance, fragmentation and forgetfulness. Due to the collapse of attempts of social equalization, which dominate politics in the 21st century, man is facing the aspects and the limits of omnipotent urban interventions, which merge, consuming gestures, looks and plays. In the subversion of so many breakdowns of urban time, a factory gate persists. But it opens to an interior street. Within this connection, on the one hand, there is the asphalt street, an expression of the felon tension which moves and creates distance. On the other, the cobbled street, which awakens the balance and welcomes visitors, under the frowned watch of Pirapora. The sheds that surround Sesc Pompeia street create a charm, irradiated by the attractive architecture of Lina Bo Bardi and also by possible dialogues that open themselves to urban space,
spilling with their old barrels the collective dimension of culture. It was with the development of social and educational activities in its surroundings that the cultural, sports and health center translated and extended the effects of cultural maturation. A movement that began in 1982, in the relations between the public, artists, producers and staff, giving new meaning to the preservation of architectural heritage. In the 1980s, São Paulo experienced a singular historical mobilization stimulated by humane values and the desire for social justice radiated from campaigns for direct elections in the country. The city aspired to become a living space that promotes civility. It aspired, above all, to a long-term development, having in mind the future, the continuity, the permanence, with a perspective of social change and citizenship. Sesc Pompeia is part today of Sesc São Paulo’s network of 32 cultural spaces, located in the capital, in the interior and in coastal cities. It continues thus inspiring new experiments that have roots in the valorization of life quality, in social relationships established by artistic, sports and physical activities, digital inclusion, leisure, recreation, nutrition and food security, health, dentistry, vacation and social tourism, environmental education, child and teenager development and senior citizens. This book, originated from the exhibition catalog Citadel of Freedom, traces the forging of Lina Bo Bardi’s project, involving the Brazilian culture in its symbolic vastness. As an amalgam, the publication reveals, through texts, drawings and photos, the timelessness of creative and educational practices adopted by Sesc, inserted in the poetic space of the architect’s lines, her arteries. The exposed arteries in which there is space for people, Macunaíma would say. There is space for people who continue to learn with others. There is space for people who use their city, their history, their identities. There is space for people who build doubts, transform thoughts, reinvent dreams. Danilo Santos de Miranda Regional Director of Sesc São Paulo
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The dream factory and the beginning of the end of the world Erivelto Busto Garcia* How to rediscover the subversion that this space seemed to rouse, as it was designed at the beginning? (Jean Baudrillard and Jean Nouvel, Les objets singuliers – Archictecture et philosophie)
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“[...] Pompeia is a virtuality, a becoming that will have the dimensions and forms of our imagination.” The quote is from an essay I wrote shortly before the inauguration of Sesc Pompeia in 1982, which aimed to translate the ideas, still very hazy, my fellow cultural promoters and I had about the future of what would become the most revered center of leisure and culture in the country. Qvo Vadis Pompeia? – that’s the title – was a contribution to the intense debate that then shook Sesc São Paulo in this regard, in a period of unique internal effervescence, or renewal of values and practices. Its epicenter was the arrival, though recent, of theories on leisure, hobbies and cultural activities, brought by the French sociologist Joffre Dumazedier in courses and seminars held here and at the Sorbonne, in Paris, for Sesc professionals. Pompeia would be the first space of this model to be inaugurated under the influence of new ideas. Where would it go?, we wondered then. “[...] how to ensure that it effectively fulfills its immense potential, that the results may reflect the richness of its inspiration?”, continued the text. The answer to this question was both pretentious and simple: do what has not yet been done, what no one has yet dared to do. Therefore, Sesc Pompeia should take cultural innovation as a core value, an innovation that should be protected against “the spontaneity in which anything goes, against the cultural elitism in which, conversely, almost nothing goes, and against the official bureaucracy which does not see its complexity and wants to put straitjackets on everything and everyone”. Innovation, at Sesc, was not something new, and “comprehending Pompeia factory as an unconventional leisure equipment, destined primarily for cultural innovation, has always been behind the development of the project”, both on the part of the institution – when it decided for the preservation of the old barrel factory, to transform it into a center for recreation and culture – as on the part of Lina Bo Bardi, who was responsible for developing
it. The text argued that Pompeia should constitute a “free space to house all the cultural trends and movements, in an innovative way”, incorporating “an audience of creators, promoters and future cultural promoters,” making the concept of culture production prevail over consumption. It advocated further that, there, the cultural field should have “a comprehensive and flexible conception” that could not “see Pompeia in the traditional way, tied to the institutional dejà-vu”. This was the essence of the small text. Today, thirty years later, to what extent have those aspirations been fulfilled? How to rediscover the subversion that this space seemed to rouse, as it was designed at the beginning?, says the epigraph above. It is possible that, in face of this question, someone will remember the punk festival “The Beginning of the End of the World”, an event that, according to the playwright Antonio Bivar, its organizer, caused a “scandalous” reverberation in the press, due to the explosive radicalism with which everything happened there. It was Sesc Pompeia’s baptism of fire, shortly after its inauguration. Others, perhaps, by analogy – it was also an old factory – might evoke the old “temporary” Sesc Belenzinho, an alternative, provocative and continuously transformable space where, more than people, the places moved along with the ideas. This provocative question, however, does not refer to Sesc Pompeia, nor to Sesc Belenzinho. It refers to Beaubourg and was made by Jean Nouvel, in a discussion with Jean Baudrillard, analyzing the changes which took place in the revolutionary (as considered at that time) “Georges Pompidou” Cultural Center by Renzo and Piano, more than two decades after its inauguration. The balance, according to Nouvel, was melancholic. “The most interesting aspect of the Beaubourg concept, in its origin, was the freedom inside, in the very space design. One would imagine that the machine to house art – or make art – it could be expected, would work.” But it did not work. Beaubourg was a support at first, but successive interventions there in order to make the space “functional” completely changed its original meaning. Its flexibility had become “very dangerous, too spontaneous”. This spatial distortion would have been due to its inability, as an institution, to manage its own flexibility. After all, asked Nouvel, “Can the institution accept subversion? Can it program the unknown, the unpredictable?”. Beaubourg failed. To discipline the space was the only way it found to survive, and that ended up killing it, according to Nouvel.
As to Sesc Pompeia, is it possible to establish a parallel in that sense? The answer is not simple. I am surprised to note today that the ideas of my text called precisely for Pompeia to aim at programming the unknown, the unpredictable! What would it mean, after all, to do what has not yet been done, what no one has yet dared to do? It was not an absurdity, though, a reverie of youth. More than my volunteerism, and of other young cultural promoters, this desire reflected Sesc’s already mature aspiration of surpassing itself, of inaugurating – beginning with Pompeia – a new era for the organization, building a new paradigm in the field of sociocultural action. Architecturally speaking, it is clear that Sesc Pompeia did not suffer any process of limitation in its spatial flexibility, as occurred at Beaubourg. In truth, the project itself already defined some very specific and limited functions, because of Sesc’s institutional programs and purposes. In these spaces, flexibility was little, sometimes almost nil. But there were, indeed, spaces of great flexibility, that very dangerous and too spontaneous flexibility, according to Jean Nouvel. The sociability area, for example, was itself a provocative innovation – “a place to do nothing” right in the center of an institution that was intended to be educational – where anything could happen. The exhibition shed was another important support, capable of hosting the most imaginative shows – as were the first ones, organized by Lina, and the many that followed – and the most lawless and extreme events. The internal street, the deck, the open spaces, all had great flexibility. Even the two-audience theater, which still challenges directors. This flexibility of spaces, potentially dangerous, was not reduced at all. No “disciplining” intervention was made there. On the contrary, Sesc has always sought to preserve Pompeia’s original conception. For functional adjustments, mainly those related to maintenance and new services that seemed necessary over time, they negotiated solutions, in order to avoid any distortion, in an ongoing dialogue with Marcelo Ferraz and André Vainer, Lina’s assistants during the project and, later, her successors. This also included respect for objects – especially the furniture – and structural and finishing details, preserving them as much as possible, or delegating to the architects, when necessary, the task of finding alternative solutions. This was a costly process and not always easy, but Sesc was always willing to finance it. You could say it was 27 years of an informal listing, avant la lettre, since the official government listing occurred only in May 2009.
I am sure it was the preservation of this flexibility that allowed much of what had been placed in that little text, as a collective aspiration, to be fulfilled. And indeed, many things happened. The list is huge, and it is unnecessary to recall it. Memorable concerts, events, exhibitions and plays, many of which became part of the history of Brazilian culture, some carried out on the razor’s edge. In this respect – and we are already outside the context of architecture – it is difficult to determine how much the entity stretched the rope of possibilities. After all, can the institution accept subversion? Obviously, subversion is never within the institution itself, in any one – it would be nonsense – since institutions are conservative by nature. Nor radicalism or transgression. They are within the creators and the society. Institutions – this is what they do – reflect them. Sometimes as a mirror, reflecting them; sometimes allowing a slow penetration in them, to renew themselves. I am pretty sure that Sesc chose the second path. The punk festival “The Beginning of the End of the World”, which also happened 30 years ago, is a symbol of this type of relationship. Maybe it was a boundary point, a milestone of how far the citadel of freedom could go in the administration of its flexibility – architectural and administrative – and in doing what has not yet been done, what no one has yet dared to do. Milestones, however, exist to be overcome. It was not without reason that Joffre Dumazedier, who had his feet firmly on the ground – being an empirical thinker – quite appropriately called Sesc Pompeia a “dream factory”. Better than anyone, he knew that one can not program the unknown, the unpredictable. But it’s always worth trying.1 1. J. Dumazedier developed his decision theory in order to reduce uncertainties and achieve greater efficiency in planning and in the results of sociocultural actions.
* Erivelto Busto Garcia is a sociologist and poet. He was a cultural promoter and superintendent of planning at Sesc São Paulo.
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Thirteen years later André Vainer and Marcelo Ferraz
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In 1999 we organized an exhibition at Sesc Pompeia, during the IV International Biennale of Architecture in São Paulo, called “Citadel of Freedom”. At that time, besides addressing Lina Bo Bardi’s design and architectural work, we aimed at highlighting certain concepts that compose one of the noblest functions of architecture: providing and constructing a space for coexistence. In this case, the ingredient was the space of Pompeia Factory, its architecture and design impregnated with the memory of its industrial past, with tactile feelings of the materials used, with experiences of totally contrasting scales and with freely chosen pathways. The old factory, restored and transformed, was then a privileged space for intensively thinking and experiencing all these issues. We named this exhibition “Sesc Pompeia – Citadel of Freedom”, a combination of words meaning bastion of defense (the citadel) which watches over one of the most important human values: freedom. A bright spot in the heart of the Brazilian metropolis, this small city without cars congregates and shelters people wishing to celebrate life. Freedom is a common feeling to the vast and varied audience that has attended this highly democratic cultural and leisure center. Today, thirteen years later and thirty years after the inauguration of Pompeia, we are once more discussing the project, reviewing and expanding the exhibition catalog of 1999 and turning it into a book. From the original, we kept the title, the drawings, the images and the texts, which, displayed in a new order, have been expanded to include more images and texts, providing new perspectives and connections. It should now become an important source of research and inspiration to many scholars worldwide who focus on such a unique work. The vital signs of the citadel are still vigorous, enduring the necessary changes in use and programming, which are natural contemporary demands. Everything there seems made in fair measure of space and structure. The secret, or recipe, as Lina would say, is not very complicated: “a little water, a little fire, children, teenagers and old people, all together and free to do whatever they want ... and there it is” – that is the raw material of her architecture. This seems to be the reason behind the success of
this urban shelter, something so rare and desired in our harsh cities. There, in Pompeia, the citadel still stands, with no signs of tiredness, defending the coexistence of all people, similar or different.
The Pompeia factory Lina Bo Bardi, 1986 In 1976, entering for the first time the abandoned Pompeia Barrel Factory, what struck me, in view of a possible restoration to transform the site into a leisure center, were those rationally distributed sheds built according to British design from the early European industrial period, in the mid-19th century. However, what fascinated me was the elegant and precursory structure of concrete. Cordially recalling the pioneer Hennebique, I immediately thought of my duty to preserve that construction. Thus was my first encounter with that architecture which has produced so many stories in my life, and as a natural consequence it was a passionate work. The second time I was there, on a Saturday, the atmosphere was different: no longer the elegant and solitary Hennebiquean structure, but a joyful audience of children, parents and elders passing from a pavilion to another. Children ran, teenagers played soccer in the rain that fell from cracked roofs, laughing and kicking the ball in the water. Mothers prepared barbecue and sandwiches at the entrance, in Clélia St.; a puppet show was being played nearby, full of kids watching. I thought that everything should remain like that, with all that joy. I returned many times there, on Saturdays and Sundays, until those joyous and popular scenes were clearly established in my mind. This is where the story of the construction of Sesc Pompeia Factory center begins. There are “beautiful souls”, and less beautiful souls. In general, the former accomplish few things, the latter accomplish more. This is the case of the Art Museum of São Paulo (MASP). There are open societies and societies; America is an open society with flowery meadows and a wind that cleans and helps. Thus, in an obstructed and offended city, a sliver of light, a puff of wind may suddenly emerge. And here we have today Pompeia Factory, with its thousands of visitors, its crowded pub, the “Indian Solarium” in the deck, the sports block, the continuing joy of a roofless factory: scant joy in a sad city. Nobody changed anything. We came across a factory with a very
beautiful structure, architecturally significant, original, and nobody altered it... The architectural design of Sesc Pompeia Factory Leisure Center came from the desire to build another reality. We included just a few things: some water, a fireplace. The initial idea of restoring this complex was that of “poor architecture”… not in the sense of poverty, but in the sense of handicraft expressing maximum communication and dignity through minor and humble means. After cynically considering exhausted the content and the human possibilities of the modern movement in architecture, a new idea arises in Europe: postmodernism, which can be defined as the retromania, the complex of impotence in face of the impossibility of leaving one of the most appalling human efforts in the West. The avant-garde in arts is always eating the remains of that great capital. The new slogan is “sucking up the principles of historical documentation which were reduced to consumption”. Retromania prevails, in Europe and in the United States, critically absolving the intruders of architecture, who, since the beginning of industrialization, reward the wealthier classes with spiritual recycling of the past. Mantels, doorways, gables, frontons, Roman, Gothic and Arab arches, large and small columns and domes have never ceased to accompany, like a soft, discreet and sinister choir, the brave march of the modern movement, which was brutally interrupted by World War II. It is old history. The arches and columns of Nazi-fascism are returning, history is seen as a monument and not as a document. (Michel Foucault: “L’Histoire est ce qui transforme des Documents en Monuments”. It’s exactly the opposite: History transforms monuments into documents. Of course, monuments not only refer to architectural work, but also to “collective actions” of large social thrusts). Conclusion: we are still under the gray sky from the postwar. “Tout est permis, Dieu n’existe pas”. But war really existed, and it still exists, and so does strong opposition. All this might be seen as an exaggerated premise for presenting a simple seat in a auditorium theater, but this previous note on the misconceptions of European postmodernism (the movement, born in the United States, has obtained international significance at the last Venice Biennale; reactionary and antipresent, it confuses the true meaning of history, with doubtful returns to historicism) is the hope that Brazil will not follow
again the same path of culturally bankrupt societies. As for the aforementioned small seat, made entirely of wood, with no upholstery, it should be noted: in the Middle Ages, plays were presented at plazas, to standing and walking audiences. GrecoRoman theaters had no upholstery; they were made of stone, they were outdoors, and spectators were exposed to rain, as they are today in soccer stadium stands, which have no upholstery either. Upholstery appeared in court theaters, in the 1700s, and they persist today as the “comfort” of consumer society. The wooden seat in Pompeia Theater is just an attempt to give back to theater its attribute of “distancing and engaging”, as opposed to only sitting. An underground gallery of “stormwater” (in fact, the famous Black Water stream), which occupies the bottom area of Pompeia Factory, turned almost all the land allocated to the sports zone into a non aedificandi area. Two “plots” of free land remained, one on the left, one on the right, near the “tower-chimney-water tank” – all quite complicated. But, as stated by the great American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, “difficulties are our best friends.” Reduced to two small plots of land, I thought of the wonderful architecture of Brazilian military “forts”, lost near the sea, or hidden throughout the country, in cities, in forests, in secluded deserts and wildernesses. This way, two “blocks” arose, one of the courts and swimming pools and one of the changing rooms. In the middle, the non aedificandi area. And... how to join these two “blocks”? There was only one solution: the “aerial” solution, in which the two “blocks” are united in an embrace through stressed concrete walkways. I see air-conditioning systems with the same horror as I see carpets. This is how the prehistoric cavemen “holes” appeared, without windows, without anything. These “holes” allow continuous cross ventilation. I named this whole area “Citadel”, a translation of the English word “goal”, perfect for a sports complex. For the non aedificandi area, I thought of a great boardwalk. It runs from one side to the other of the “forbidden ground”, in all its length; on the right, a “waterfall”, a kind of collective outdoor shower. My great friend Eduardo Subirats, philosopher and poet, says that the whole Pompeia complex has a powerful expressionist content.
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It’s true, and it comes from my European formation. But I never forget the surrealism of the Brazilian people, their inventions, their pleasure in getting together to dance and sing. So I dedicated my work in Pompeia to teenagers, to children, to elders: all together. Everything the highly developed Western countries – including the United States – have sought and seek, Brazil already has, it is a minimal part of its culture. But the holder of this total freedom of the body, of this noninstitutionalization, is the people; this is the Brazilian people’s way of being, whereas in highly developed Western countries it is the middle class (including a certain kind of intellectual) who distressingly seeks an exit from a hypocritical and castrated world, whose liberties they themselves have destroyed centuries ago. To Brazil, importing that feeling of sterile and anguished seeking is an offense which can lead to total castration. In the great Far East civilizations, such as Japan and China, a cultural attitude of the body (body as “mind”) and physical exercise coexist. In Brazil, they also coexist, but not in the middle class, and the real problem is an action for self-knowledge from the bottom up, not top down. Regarding Pompeia Center, the Sports Center is the Sports Center, Physical, especially dedicated to the teenagers from the bakeries, butcheries, greengroceries, supermarkets, shops and stores that formerly attended there, as I saw them in 1976 and 1977, and who today feel cheated. For men and women, the physical domain has age limits. The same goes for children, who may occupy the space already defined as “Lecture” in the “Study” NOBLE Space, in the Latin meaning of the word, a space also dedicated to parties, meetings and dancing. The spaces of an architectural design condition man, but the opposite is not true, and a severe error in the determination and use of these spaces may condemn an entire structure to failure. The enormous success of this first experience in Pompeia Factory clearly indicates the validity of the initial “architectural design”.
Factory of signs Bruno Zevi Having arrived in Brazil in 1947, Lina Bo Bardi manifested her combative temperament in innumerous works, among which the vibrant Art Museum of São Paulo (MASP) stands out. In the same city, she has just finished an exceptional job, the “Pompeia Factory”, which, according to Ruth Verde Zein, represents “a possible therapy” against the crisis of modern movement. The aim was to insert a complex of sociocultural services within an urban mechanism of 10 million inhabitants, having the connotation of a chaotic mixture of signs in perpetual and tumultuous mutation. In this scenario, where “talking of contextualism is almost unreal”, the “void” to be used consisted in the spaces of an old and apparently insignificant structure. Bo Bardi refused to demolish it, thus deciding to face a challenge: to keep the existing volume intact, yet reconfigure it in order to transform the introverted structures into extroverted bright spaces. The access is through streets-passages that penetrate the ancient body: here, she designed the restaurant, several workshops intended to encourage creativity, the theater, the library and the sports gymnasiums. The pavilions of brick, concrete and glass, invested with new functions, come to life thanks to a courageous and inventive restoration. And they come boldly close to the “fortress” of sports: a monolithic block that resembles ancient marine walls, connected through asymmetrically arranged walkways to the “tower of circulation”, which stands near the tall water tank tower. The large reinforced concrete surfaces are perforated with irregular “holes”, replacing windows, ensuring at the same time the unity of the walls and a “magical” lighting for the five double floors. Rough details, “pop” inserts, tiles fragments “a collage” merge to “reinforce differences, without mercy”. “You do not make a city by denying it”, observes Verde Zein. Well, in this case, the involvement of urban magma is total, rejecting the rigidity of abstraction to taint itself with unadorned and contradictory simultaneities. The goal is not a mundane “inclusiveness”, but a clash between matrix events and an expressive charge which are heterogeneous. Despite the ideological assumptions of the
aesthetics of shock, “an almost perfect balance” emerges. Bo Bardi masterfully used the linguistic ingredients at her disposal: a flexible 19th century planimetry, the neighborhood vernacular, the multicolored etymon of emigrated peasants, the avant-garde codes, besides quoting Sant’Elia, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Viennese “Hofe”. It is an extraordinary assembly of fragments, which virtuously avoids any kitsch feature. Openly renouncing the mythology of classic beauty, this sociocultural center in São Paulo plays the card of dissonance with boldness and spontaneity. Without intellectualism, it provides a desirable model of environment, full of humanity and poetic fantasy. Moreover, it reflects its author’s personality: her background in Milanese design, and then her tenacious and tough dive into the enigmatic Brazilian world. L’Expresso Magazine. Rome, May 1987
Architecture and poetry Eduardo Subirats An exciting gold string involves the artistic biography of Lina Bo Bardi in Brazil. On the one hand, she is probably one of the Latin American personalities who most originally embody this double exile, personal and as a transformative project, from the historical European avant-garde, as well as her revival in America, under poetic and social dimensions simply unknown and never crystallized in Europe. On the other hand, Lina is a person who, throughout her life, has very coherently articulated the object of architecture with the defense of popular and historical cultures, of the traditions that unite the American society today and its past ways of life, African, pre-Columbian and also Asian. Lina was born in Rome. She graduated and began working as an architect and in advertising in the years of fascism and war. She fought in the resistance. Of the period immediately following the war, she writes: “1946 – The old ghosts come back, the old names return, the Christian Democrats take control”.1 In this same year, 1946, Lina leaves Italy, due to the disappointing political scene of post-fascism in Europe. Destination: South America. “Arrival in Rio. The Ministry of Education and Health sails like a large white and blue ship against the sky. Welcomed at the IAB in Rio: Lúcio, Oscar, Rocha Miranda, Marcos and many others. Dazzled by the intelligent simplicity and personal
capacity, dazzled by an unimaginable country, which had no middle class, but only two great aristocracies: that of the land, with coffee, sugarcane and... that of the people.”2 In 1951, Lina became a Brazilian citizen and never returned to Europe. I also want to mention, as an introduction, only one work of Lina Bo Bardi, this architect and muse. A work that has the same significance as that of the collective project of Brasília, an intellectual key to Brazilian modern culture and other American cultures. It is the Museum of Modern Art of Bahia, founded in January 1960 in Salvador and closed by the Army four years later. “A different museum, a prospective museum”, according to Antônio Risério.3 The architect herself clearly exposed the goal of that center: “It is not a museum in the traditional sense: given the state of misery, little could be ‘saved’; its activities were aimed at creating a cultural movement that, assuming the values of a historically poor (in the courtly sense) culture, could lucidly overcome the ‘culturalist’ and ‘historicist’ phases of the West, relying on a popular experience (strictly distinct from folklore), enter the world of real modern culture, with technical tools, as method and with the strength of a new humanism (and not humanitarianism, neither ‘umanesimo’)”.4 A prospective museum: not the imperial conception of a museum as a place of trophies, today desecrated in its mercantilist and sometimes academic form, but the conception of a museum as a place for muses: memory, creativity, freedom; and the conception of a museum as a place of integration and popular resistance. “Lina was right”, said the Brazilian critic Antônio Risério. “Think of the years 1965-1968 and see what the youth from Bahia that breathed this air brought to the Brazilian scene, from Glauber to Caetano. Lina was essential for the formation of this generation.”5 In the fork coming out of the Tietê riverside avenue toward the neighborhood of Pompeia, the city of São Paulo presents us with a vast and confusing landscape. The signs of an imposing grandeur visually combine with those of aesthetic destruction, which in classical terms could be defined as magnificent or sublime. A modern ambiguity. And a conflict that defines the American city. Overpasses, factories, skyscrapers, the feverish movement of masses and machines grant to this region a heavy futuristic dimension. The architectural and human masses collide, overstepping each other and crisscrossing in a chaotic and aggressive polyphony of strident volumetric forces. The acute
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