ELADIO DIESTE & HIS INNOVATION ON STRUCTURAL ART OR THE ABILITY TO SURPRISE By Thao Nguyen
INT 415: Latin American Architecture Professor Jose Bernardi
INTRODUCTION The idea of a unique Latin America architecture is not an interpretation of cultural influences from Europe or an alternative path of European design language imitated to another area, but an exchange and adaptation between different geographical locations and cultural realities. It is an innovative structural system using local materials and construction based on engineering and architectural problems that as a result, creating a beauty in its totality and rationality. In this essay, I will examine this innovation on structural art through the work of Eladio Dieste - one of the most famous architects whose work has been carefully studied throughout the years in Latin America.
ELADIO DIESTE Eladio Dieste is a Uruguayan engineer and an architect who designed emotionally moving spaces through solving engineering structural problems creatively using reinforced brick shells. During the transculturation in Latin America countries, whose architecture has undergone a strong influence from European design principles, Eladio Dieste understood that the elements to define Latin American architecture lie from its distinct national resources of regional materials and use of construction methods. His opinion that architecture is innovation and by the urge of creating its own image for Latin American architecture, he redefined a new use of technology in construction technique that is based on material articulation and workforce. He believes “The ones who invent are the ones who rule. It is not morally licit to disregard any field in life” motivated him to soon become known as a principled builder for his mastery of “reinforced masonry” inventing appropriate structural types that he exploited with daring (Eladio Dieste).
What sets Eladio Dieste’s work as an innovation in structural art is his ambition to deliver a new mechanical capacity that was little known in his days for local materials, in this case, bricks. A variety of complicated forms such as arches, curves, double curved surfaces, vaults, etc are created to prove that “it is possible to combine austerity and beauty and to understand local conditions while experimenting rigorously” (Bernardi, 362). Brick is a manmade material that is extremely accessible and affordable in Latin America. Dieste’s ability to surprise the audiences by creating a new characteristic for this solid, unbendable material into a movement of curvilinear, thus, enhancing how people experience the spaces. The use of local materials also highlights sustainable architecture from its long-lasting effects, moral familiarity to local people, and its flexibility to various natural conditions. Bricks “responded to deformations, sustained the test of time, and minimized maintenance […] offers excellent thermal insulation. It is also inexpensive, acoustically resilient, and easy to repair or modify” (Bernardi, 362). From using bricks, Dieste experimented the two principal structural types of Gaussa vault and self-supporting vault. The general concept is using a rectangular plane that folds up on one side, creating a series of caternary curves of varying rise with vertical plane moving along spring joints. In depth, his experiments in Gaussa vaults that rest on a minimal support require that the vaults can resist bending forces. “This Dieste accomplishes by introducing pre-stressing steel that pre-compresses the vault. In cross section, the vaults are given the most effective structural form – a catenary” (“Eladio Dieste: Innovation in Structural Art” 33).
Eladio Dieste’s most remarkable building is the Church of Christ the Worker in Atlantida, built in 1958-60 that emerges different structural qualities from proportions, economy and elegance of materials, construction details, and above all, enhances the play of lights applied to the building. The astonishing detail of this construction lies from the curvilinear side walls and the connection between them with the roof of the nave. A roof of Gaussian vault without glazing is self-supported, sitting directly on top of the sidewalls. “These two surfaces meet at the eaves, one undulating in a vertical plane and the other undulating in a horizontal plane. The wall and roof work together, in effect forming a two-pinned portal frame” (Anderson 2). In order to fit the structure to curvilinear form, the whole building is considered as a representation of structural action of complex collision of two curved surfaces, in which “one of traditionally laid brick and the other of shell constructing using prefabricated formwork” (Anderson 2). What makes the church a successful design also derives from the play of illumination and a sense of lightness within the interior. Canted brick in slanted placement grille with alabaster windows in shielding the skylight shining through the altar, creating an accent light source for spiritual activities. The floorplan is a rectangular with stunning curvilinear self-stabilizing walls carrying continuous double curvature vaults. The interior filters people in a sequence, enhancing complexity in an extremely simplistic manner.
Dieste’s major structural innovation is further demonstrated through the Gaussian double curvatures in Port Warehouse (Deposito Montevideo) 1977-1979, which are completely self-supporting by being made in successive transverse bands. An S-shape is configured to be lower and flatter on one side whereas bands of vaults are built next to one another supporting each other. One interesting fact about this structure is the dazzling long illumination between the edge beams across the building as well as from the simple steel framed windows that embody a sense of lightness. In Montevideo with a variant of Gaussian vault used in horizontal silos where a higher pitched vault reaches the ground, Dieste “absorbed the horizontal thrust in the floor or foundation” (“Eladio Dieste: Innovation in Structural Art 33).
CONCLUSION Latin American architecture is known not as an imitation of architectural methods and cultural influences from developed countries from Europe and North America, but using what has already been done in the past to reinvent to fit with the modern design language that is appropriate for Latin American countries. Eladio Dieste has accomplished in forming a new system of structural art by practicing with the idea of materiality and construction types economically, socially, and morally. He conveyed architecture as an effective mean to not only solves engineering problems but also gives birth to spaces that are enchantingly beautiful in a sophisticated humble manner. As architecture is art with complexity in all its rationality, thus felt as a poetic representation of a culture, Eladio Dieste’s methods have successfully proved the importance of cultural preservation, that historical culture is to be cherished and improved, as well as innovation from history experiences that enhance Uruguay or Latin America a distinct, unique image in the architectural world.
WORK CITED Dieste, Eladio, and Stanford Anderson. Eladio Dieste: Innovation in Structural Art. New York: Princeton Architectural, 2004. Print. "ArchitectureWeek - Culture - The Hyperbolic Brick of Eladio Dieste - 2004.0929."ArchitectureWeek - Culture The Hyperbolic Brick of Eladio Dieste - 2004.0929. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Oct. 2012. <http://www.architectureweek.com/2004/0929/culture_1-1.html>. Bernardi, Jose. “Eladio Dieste, entry at the Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century Architecture.” Print.