Sesc Pompeia | Leaflet History | English

“In an overcrowded and insulted city, a sliver of light may suddenly shine, or a breath of breeze arise. Thus Fábrica da Pompeia is there today, with its thousands of visitors, long lines for draught beer, its pleasant sun deck, and the sports complex: a little cheer in a sad city.” (Lina Bo Bardi)

Romulo Fialdini

OF BRICKS AND VALUES When does a space become a “place”? When exactly does a geographical location, destined for certain other purposes, start to signify a reality shaped by intertwining identities, expectations, and appropriations? In the case of Sesc Pompeia, the theme and ambience for this exhibition, its mission of becoming a “place” has been obvious since it first opened in 1982.

For more than three decades, it has been a catalyst for bringing people together: its employees coming together to keep the center running smoothly on a day-to-day basis; the energy of visitors whose hearts and minds fill the former factory; the multiple memories preserved by the Italian-born Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi and her team of coworkersinterlocutors; artists, philosophers, and other collaborators constantly instigating diversity.

Each new experience posed and felt by the people who have made Sesc Pompeia what it is serves to highlight its nature as a “place.” The tone of its programmatic proposal was shown from the outset: exhibitions mixing folk and high-brow productions, spaces for eating and concerts celebrating social interaction, creativity workshops in which the roles of “doers” and “watchers” are interchanged, a setting that challenges stagers and spectators, and learning processes that nurture citizenship.

The initiative that gave rise to Sesc Pompeia, and Sesc’s hallmark identity in São Paulo, emphasized the convergence of a broad-based notion of culture with a conscious educational effort. Over thirty years later, we may now see how much this “place” has fed back into all the institutional initiatives in the state of São Paulo—capital, coastal areas, and elsewhere—beyond the bricks and cobblestones that are part of the city’s sentimental heritage.

Danilo Santos de Miranda Sesc São Paulo Regional Director

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Photos 1, 2, 3 Hans Gßnter Flieg – Acervo Instituto Moreira Salles

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ARCHITECTURE FOR ALL In May 1982, a new place came into existence in São Paulo.

Sesc Pompeia was the outcome of long and dedicated work on a project that had started almost six years beforehand, when architect Lina Bo Bardi first visited the former Mauser Brothers steel-drum factory in the heart of Pompeia, a working-class district not far from downtown São Paulo.

Having owned the property for several years, Sesc planned to turn it into a new cultural and sports complex. Thus, Bo Bardi was commissioned to design this project that eventually would transform the cultural life of São Paulo and Brazil. The architect’s portfolio included the Museu de Arte Popular da Bahia, a folk art museum she housed in the Solar do Unhão, in Salvador, in the late 1950s, and Museu de Arte de São Paulo – Masp, on Avenida Paulista, in São Paulo.

Paris had just dedicated the Georges Pompidou Center at Beaubourg, in the Marais quarter, which still retained the characteristics of a city radically changed in the late 19th-century aftermath of the period’s major political and economic transformations.

Unlike that initiative of razing a few blocks to make way for the new center, Sesc decided to keep the old factory and reshape it for its new purpose, rather than demolish it to build a new complex.

Author unknown – Acervo Instituto Lina Bo e P. M. Bardi

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[1], [2], and [3] The factory buildings now occupied by Sesc Pompeia were erected by the German Mauser & Cia Ltda. company, in 1938. In 1945, a Brazilian steel-drum company called Embalagens Ibesa bought the site, later using the facilities to make Gelomatic kerosene refrigerators.

[4] Ad for Gelomatic refrigerators.

[5] Pompeia neighborhood, c. 1940.

So Lina set up her on-site office in 1977, and for the next nine years, architects, engineers, master craftsmen, foremen, and workers came together every day to try out different methods and finishes, their routine ranging from formulating an occupancy program to architectural solutions used to execute it.

Throughout her career, Bo Bardi had designed projects based on an ethical / ideological approach of constantly creating spaces for social interaction: a place for comprehension and disputes, a place for learning, where visitors could themselves work out the meaning of their lived experiences.

Architecture as agent for integration between people and the city in which they live, work, study, love, raise children, eat meals, engage in sports activities, and set limits for coexistence and citizenship. Over thirty years later, Sesc Pompeia is still one of the most important urban facilities in the city of São Paulo.

[1] LBB’s sketch for an extension to Sesc Pompeia (1983). [2] Lina Bo Bardi’s sketch for the totem signage for the pavilions (1981). [3] LBB’s sketch for the socializing area (1977).

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Acervo Instituto Lina Bo e P. M. Bardi

André Vainer and Marcelo C. Ferraz Architects who worked with Lina Bo Bardi to develop the project and build Sesc Fábrica da Pompeia

Acervo Instituto Lina Bo e P. M. Bardi, Acervo Instituto Lina Bo e P. M. Bardi

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“The first time I entered the then-derelict Pompeia steel-drum factory, in 1976, what stirred my curiosity, in relation to possibly reshaping the site as a leisure center, were those buildings laid out rationally like the English factories of the early period of industrialization in mid-19th-century Europe. But what fascinated me was the elegance of the novel concrete structure. Then, as I fondly recalled Hennebique, the pioneer [of these frame structures], I directly thought of my duty of preserving this work.

“The second time I visited the site was on a Saturday, and the atmosphere was different: no longer the elegant and solitary Hennebiquean structure, but a cheerful crowd of children, mothers, fathers, and seniors moving from one pavilion to another. I thought: all this must be kept just as it is, with all this cheerfulness.

“That was how the story of the Sesc Fábrica da Pompeia center began.” (LBB)

In Lina Bo Bardi’s design, the street on which trucks drove into the old drum factory became exclusively pedestrian territory as the central axis of the leisure center. The rainwater piping that lined both sides of the road was clad with pebbles—industrially produced to avoid environmental degradation—to fashion rivulets and bridges. These small details lend the complex its poetic character as a citadel.

From bottom to top: Marco Antonio, Leonardo Finotti, Leonardo Finotti

François Hennebique (1842–1921), engineer and builder who lived in France and was a pioneer of reinforced concrete, developed a new method for organizing structures and combining their horizontal and vertical components—beams and columns—into a single monolithic structural piece.

Many industrial buildings around the world use the technology he developed and patented. The structures used at Sesc Pompeia are possibly the only ones in Brazil to have used this method.

The collective tables took their inspiration from Europe’s old taverns and beer cellars, or beer gardens, where they favor people meeting people, making conversation, and interacting socially.

Tapestries lining part of the restaurant’s walls and beams were designed by the visual artist Edmar de Almeida and made by weavers from the Triângulo Mineiro region. They reveal the architect’s constant concern to appreciate and preserve traditional Brazilian techniques. While creating a pleasant setting, these colorful tapestries also serve the technical function of absorbing sound.

The object supporting the menu attached next to the entrance to the restaurant is Lina Bo Bardi’s tribute to the great Uruguayan painter Torres Garcia.

From bottom to top: Arnaldo Pappalardo, Leonardo Finotti, reproduction Tiago Wright, Leonardo Finotti

Tiles for the restaurant and pool were commissioned from Rubens Gerchman, a leading artist from Rio de Janeiro. They hark back to the Portuguese tradition of using tiles in buildings, inherited by Brazilian architecture. Tiles bearing Brazilian motifs—banana leaf in the kitchen and fish in the pool—were freely set and mixed with white tiles by onsite workers themselves.

Marco Antonio

“For me, architecture is seeing an elderly man or a child with a plate full of food elegantly crossing our restaurant looking for a place to sit at a collective table.� (LBB)

Leonardo Finotti

“Eating, sitting, talking, walking, lounging in the sun for a while‌ architecture is not only a utopia, but a means to reach certain collective outcomes. Culture as shared lived experience, free-choice, freedom for gatherings and meetings. People of all ages, elderly and children, all getting along well. All together. We took out the dividing walls to clear large poetic spaces for the community. We put in just a few things: some water, a hearth. The less clutter the better. Our effort was to dignify the human condition.â€? (LBB)

From bottom to top: Leonardo Finotti, Marco Antonio, Iñigo Bujedo Aguirre

Taking after Frank Lloyd Wright (USA) and Charles Mackintosh (UK), Lina Bo Bardi saw architecture as a totality, hence her concern with designing the entire ambiance, furnishings included.

Lina wanted Pompeia’s spaces to be made democratically accessible to everybody, made from tough materials with easy upkeep—like the outdoor concrete tables that embody the solid character of urban furniture for public spaces. Shaped like the “caxixi,” a handmade shaker toy from Bahia’s Recôncavo region, the furniture was made from reinforced concrete on fiberglass molds.

10. Self-service restaurant with capacity for 2,000 meals and draught beer hall (at night).

11. Industrial-scale kitchen.

12. Staff changing room and cafeteria (2 floors).

1. Sports complex pool, gym, and courts (5 two-level pavements).

2. Cafeteria, changing rooms, and rooms for gymnastics, wrestling, and dancing (11 floors).

3. Water tower.

13. Common space for lounge and games, shows and exhibitions, equipped with large hearth and reflecting pool.

14. Leisure library, open areas for reading, and video library.

15. Exhibition building.

16. The center’s administrative offices (2 floors).

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Rua Clélia 16 15 14

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Rua Barão do Bananal

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Rua Turiaรงu

Av. Pompeia

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4. Large deck / solarium, with reflecting pool and waterfall.

5. Inventory room and maintenance workshops.

6. Studios for pottery, painting, woodworking, tapestry making, engraving, and typography.

7. Photography lab, music studio, dance hall, and changing room (3 floors).

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8. 760-seat theater.

9. Covered theater foyer for concerts.

7 1 5 10m

The colorful ceramic shards covering restroom floors at Sesc Pompeia followed a Brazilian tradition of recycling and reusing discarded materials. Lina Bo Bardi appreciated traditional Brazilian materials. She used Goiás stone for the floor in the lounge and social area, and hardwood (cabreúva [Myrocarpus frondosus]) for gates and trellises on windows, as in the Arabic heritage of the moucharaby, introduced in Brazil by the Portuguese.

From bottom to top: Marcelo Ferraz, Leonardo Finotti, Leonardo Finotti

The tallest building in the complex was chosen to house the theater. Yet, it was still a relatively small space for this purpose, so Lina Bo Bardi placed the stage in the middle, like an arena, with two audience seating areas facing each other. Furthermore, she designed side galleries after the 16th-century Elizabethan theaters and the 19thcentury architect Victor Horta’s Maison du Peuple, in Brussels—both of which spaces that prompted considerable audience participation.

“Theater is life, and in the absence of ‘predetermined’ givens, an open and unassuming set design lets viewers be creative and ‘participate’ in the existential act of a theatrical spectacle. As for the all-wooden seating with no upholstery, note that medieval mysteries or morality plays were staged on streets or in squares, where the audience stood or walked around them. Greco-Roman theaters were in the open air, no upholstery, just bare stone.

Audiences got soaked, just like the bleachers at soccer stadiums today, which also lack upholstery.

“The Pompeia theater has wooden seating in an attempt to give back the playhouse its power of ‘estranging and engaging,’ rather than have people just sit there.” (LBB)

Nelson Kon

As in many industrial buildings and facilities, the large air-conditioning ducts and other fixtures seen throughout Sesc Pompeia are colorcoded for different purposes: green tubes for water; red for fire-fighting and sewage; blue for electricity; yellow and orange for telephone lines and the sound system.

Marco Antonio

“People will come here and have to feel good with certain basic givens, namely solidarity and poetry.

There is no need for refinement. We want to create a human atmosphere of congeniality.� (LBB)

Nelson Kon

From bottom to top: Marco Antonio, Paquito - Acervo GEDES/ Sesc Memórias

“All restoration work used industrial components, heavy-duty and durable materials (floors, large wooden gates, hardwood laminate furniture), so that people can make use of them as freely as possible in all [Sesc] facilities.

“The initial idea for refurbishing involved architectural ‘arte povera’—not in the ‘impoverished’ sense of the term, but the craftsmanship that conveys a sense of maximum communication and dignity through the littlest and most unpretentious means.” (LBB) The dividing walls separating the studios from the workshop building were made from concrete blocks to mark the difference between the factory’s original clay-brick architecture and today’s interventions. They were made low to encourage a certain communication between different working groups and interaction across arts and crafts.

For the studios, Lina Bo Bardi laid concrete blocks with exposed mortar honoring the Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck (Sonsbeek Sculpture Pavilion).

The reference is to what architects call ‘truth of materials,’ meaning that a structure’s final appearance should faithfully portray materials used and the process of its construction.

The plan for the deck reflected contingencies posed by the ground surface and legislation. It is a kind of holding area for excess rainwater. It now joins the old factory to the sports complex and São Paulo locals use it as a beach on sunny days.

In place of the old factory chimney, which had already been demolished, Lina Bo Bardi designed a 70-meter tower for the center’s water tank. She wanted a marker on the landscape, with its own personality. Pieces of tow sack used when concreting were imprinted on the water tank like ‘lacework or embroidery.’ “It’s to honor Luis Barragán and his Satellite Towers in Mexico City,” the architect said.

From bottom to top: Leonardo Finotti, Leonardo Finotti, Nelson Kon

Windows shaped as irregular openings—recalling prehistoric caves— afford different views of the cityscape while letting through constant cross ventilation, thus avoiding the need for air-conditioning.

“An underground storm-water runoff (watercourse known as Águas Pretas) in the back of the Fábrica da Pompeia site ruled out building on most of the area intended for sports. Two areas remained, one to the left, the other to the right, all somewhat complicated.

“However, as the great architect Frank Lloyd Wright said, ‘difficulties are our best friends.’ Reduced to two pieces of ground, I thought of the wonderful architecture of Brazilian military forts in remote places near the ocean, or hidden away all around the country. That was how the two blocks emerged, one for sports courts and pools, the other for changing rooms. So… how could they be joined? The only solution was overhead, the two blocks hugging each other through concrete walkways.

“To get to the changing rooms, people have to cross the walkways. If it’s raining, they break into a trot. After all, outdoor sports too depend on changeable weather, don’t they?” (LBB)

Bob Wolfenson

“The huge success of this first experience at Fábrica da Pompeia clearly brings out the validity of the initial architectural design.… We have made a socialist experiment here.” (LBB)

SERVIÇO SOCIAL DO COMÉRCIO — SESC Regional Administration — State of São Paulo REGIONAL COUNCIL PRESIDENT Abram Szajman REGIONAL DEPARTMENT DIRECTOR Danilo Santos de Miranda ASSISTANT DIRECTORS Technical Social Joel Naimayer Padula Social Communication Ivan Giannini Administration Deoclécio Luiz M. Galina Technical Assistance and Planning Sérgio Battistelli MANAGEMENT Cultural Action Manager Rosana Paulo da Cunha Deputy Manager Flavia Carvalho Assistants Juliana Braga, Julieta Machado, Kelly Teixeira, and Nilva Luz Graphic Design Manager Hélcio Magalhães Deputy Manager Karina Musumeci Research & Development Manager Marta Colabone Deputy Manager Andréa Nogueira Sesc Pompeia Manager Elisa Maria Americano Saintive Deputy Manager Cecília Pasteur Coordinators Ana Carolina Rovai, Carlo Alessandro, Fernando Oliveira, Ilona Hertel, Luis Antonio Botecchia Teixeira, Marcelo Coscarella, Nelson Soares da Fonseca, Ricardo Herculano, and Roberta Della Noce

Sesc Pompeia Rua Clélia, 93 - São Paulo/SP CEP 05042-000 Tel. +55 11 3871-7700 sescsp.org.br/pompeia

print: 2013