Architecture, Radical Criticism and Revolution in Brazil

• Autor(a) principal: Lira, José Tavares Correia de
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por; eng
• Título da fonte: arq.urb
• Texto Completo: https://revistaarqurb.com.br/arqurb/article/view/484
• topic: Mário Pedrosa; Sérgio Ferro; Modernidade; Crítica; Mário Pedrosa; Sérgio Ferro; Modernity; Criticism

Since the 1950s, it became a national commonplace to remark the misery of architectural criticism in Brazil, as if the international magnetism of local modern architecture would have blocked any possibility to evade either apologetic or admonitory perspectives. This article aims at sketching a genealogy of radical architectural criticism in the country by connecting a few intellectual and political challenges to the emergence, development and decline (or persistence) of modern architecture among us. In order to do so, I will return to two different critical projects: first, the writings on architecture by art critic Mario Pedrosa (1900-1981), whom, in the 1950s and 60s, was in search of a cultural framework to modern architecture in Brazil; secondly, a more professionally committed discourse raised from the 1960s to the 1970s by architect Sergio Ferro (1938-) to whom the socio-technical role of design should be tested in face of Brasilian material modernization. By doing so, I hope to be able to touch some of the contemporary critical dilemmas in face of the discipline, its history and its intellectual and political topicality.