portuguese
(TRANS) FORMATIONS, BELO HORIZONTE, BRASIL
JOĆO DINIZ
Joćo Diniz Arquitetura Ltda.
International Federation of Young Architects, vice president Brasil
Brazilian Institute of Architects / Minas Gerais section, counselor
BAROQUE ORIGINS IN OURO PRETO, THE FIRST STATE CAPITAL
The dream of conquering the unknown made it happen, that at the end of the seventeenth century, a few pioneers should leave the Atlantic coast, westward, looking for new lands and riches.
The Brazilian interior was until then almost unknown and unoccupied. With the exploitation of "Brazil" wood and expanding sugar cane fields, there came the need of horizon amplification.
So caravans left Sao Paulo in the direction of the "Gerais", a great promising land.
The gold cycle formed the first settlements. The city of Ouro Preto, from 1693 onwards appeared as an important extractor of the metal. The region became significant in the colony economy.
In 1763, the Brazilian capital moved from Salvador to Rio de Janeiro so as to be closer to the riches exploited in Minas Gerais.
The city was practically established in fifty years, with no definite plan, on an extremely irregular topography, at an altitude of 1128 m.
Its isolated monuments, the churches and public edifications, articulated themselves naturally in the rich urban configuration, constructed on steep streets destined mainly to habitation.
In the middle of the eighteenth century the city lived a cultural apogee. The architect and sculptor Antonio Francisco Lisboa, Aleijadinho - "The Little Deficient", created new architectural models, entirely regional. In painting, Manoel da Costa Athaide, stood out. The poets Tomas Antonio Gonzaga, Claudio Manoel da Costa and Alvarenga Peixoto created a literary work which was fundamental.
The Minas Gerais baroque invented a way of its own of working diverse external influences, characteristic of a regional culture, integrated to its time.
In Ouro Preto, important insurrections favorable to Brazilian independence against the Portuguese crown, happened, such as the Felipe dos Santos revolt in 1720 and the "Inconfidencia Mineira" in 1789, leaded by Joaquim Jose da Silva Xavier, "Tiradentes" - the "Teethextractor".
Ouro Preto was declared a National Monument in 1933 and in 1980 it was the first Brazilian city to be declared Cultural Patrimony to Humanity, recognized by Unesco.
Amongst the main edifications of Ouro Preto are the N. Sra. da Conceicao church, N. Sra. do Rosario church, Sao Francisco de Assis church, the Municipal Theater, the School of Mines, the "Inconfidencia Mineira" Museum, the "Casa dos Contos" - "Counting House", and the Grande Hotel.
THE FOUNDING OF BELO HORIZONTE, A SALUTE TO THE XX CENTURY
Ouro Preto lived its importance to the end of the XVIII century, when the gold ore became scarce and gold gave way to cattle and agriculture, conforming new regional centers thus inaugurating a more ample state identity.
At the end of the XIX century a new cycle was started: the iron cycle. The black mountains that go from Ouro Preto to the "Curral del Rey" region form the "Iron Quadrilateral" with a reserve of 15 billion tons of iron.
Ouro Preto did not offer conditions necessary to be the capital in these new times.
In 1893 the president Afonso Pena passed through State Congress a law which established a term of four years for the construction and transferring of the capital to the place known as Curral del Rey, and then rebaptized Belo Horizonte..
The site offered ideal conditions: at the center of the Federal Union, 100 km from Ouro Preto, which would make transferring easier, access possible from all sides although surrounded by mountains, rich in water courses, excellent climate and positioned at an altitude of 800 m. The chosen area had the aspect of an enormous amphitheater carved between Curral and Contagem mountain ranges, with excellent climate conditions - protected from cold and humid south winds and from hot north winds and aerated by soft east currents coming from Piedade range and fertile west breezes coming from the Paraopeba river valley.
It was a large valley, surrounded by varied stone formations with a long and disturbed geological history, shallow and underdeveloped soils of many colors, with an age of 1 billion, 650 million years.
THE AARAO REIS PLAN AND THE DEFINITION OF THE CITY.
An efficient structure was installed to carry out the job in the foreseen time. Four names were in command: Afonso Pena and Bias Fortes assured political and economical conditions and the engineers Aarao Reis and Francisco Bicalho alternated in coordinating the Construction Committee, the organism created to build the city.
The city plan was conceived by Aarao Reis in 1894.
The design superimposed two rigid orthogonal schemes, with a 45 degree angle between them.
The first scheme was a basic network formed by straight lines cut by other perpendicular ones, forming square 100 m blocks.
This first scheme was completed by an ample diagonal avenue system, which formed a less closed but equally rigid network.
Thus, a dynamic system of lines and directions was invented. The plan proposed different feelings, sometimes dramatic, by uniting topography variation with a rigid grid. An ambiguous union of sensuality/nature with reason/project, which would in the future help define the character of the city.
But Aarao Reis did not want a city that would expand indefinitely. Between urban and natural landscapes, a suburban zone was planned for a softer and more informal transition. The two sectors would be articulated by a boulevard which would circle the entire city - the Contorno Avenue. A flexible line which integrated perfectly into the essential composition.
The plan conception blended North American and European urbanistic traditions of the nineteenth century. The first moment checkerboard design connected by the ample oblique avenues and empty spaces showed a constant preoccupation with monumental perspectives coming from the Old World, with marked influence from Haussmann.
Belo Horizonte appeared as an attempt to urban synthesis at the end of the XIX century. The objective of creating one of the greatest Brazilian cities of the XX century was achieved.
The Belo Horizonte plan belonged to its time. Although its concept was based on ideas coming from the century before; and although it was the end of a time more than the beginning of another, it showed a preoccupation with urbanistic, architectural and construction research exceptional for its time. Without doubt it indicated a promising tendency in Brazilian urbanism.
When inaugurated on December 12, 1897, Belo Horizonte already counted a population of 25000. The new constructions opposed themselves to the baroque colonial style, trying to erase memory of the past. Independent Brazil looked for its architectural style in the eclecticism of the time.
The first urban assemblages were defined:
The "Liberdade" (Liberty) Plaza appeared as a great city meeting space, with State executive buildings constructed around it, including the governor's residence.
The "Parque Municipal" (City Park), although modified in its original design, was set into the foreseen space.
The "Praca da Estacao" (Train Station Plaza), Santos Dumont Avenue, Bahia Street, Afonso Pena Avenue, bring us diverse images of a time and tell us of the evolution of the city.
In the thirties Belo Horizonte was already consolidated as a capital. Not free of criticism or praise. It was no more a urbanistic theory but a human conquest, something not to be only seen but also to be lived.
At that time it had a population of 120.000 and many occupational problems which brought up a public service deficiency crisis. Belo Horizonte needed a new plan for it to recuperate itself as a modern city.
At the beginning of the forties decade, the city had doubled its population, then well over the numbers considered by the original Construction Committee. It went then through a great modernization program.
Central area verticalization was consolidated. Plans were formulated to reorganize city expansion. New avenues were opened on bottom of valley planes.
An attempt of census was made, the habitation crisis was recognized as a serious social problem.
A few of the buildings that marked that time were the Brazil Movie House (l931), the Chagas Doria building (l934) by architect Alfredo Marestrof, Ibate building (1935) by Angelo Murgel, City Government building (1935) by Luis Signiorelli, Sulacap building (1941) by Roberto Capello with its interesting articulation with the Santa Teresa Viaduct, Acaiaca building (l943) by Luis Pinto Coelho, the Santa Casa Hospital (l946) and the Banco do Brazil building (1942), both by Raffaello Berti.
These edifications represented the first moment of modernism in the city. The twenties' eclecticism was abandoned for a seasoned rationalism with so called Art Deco and Bauhaus elements, or elements of indian origin as in the Acaiaca building.
In contradiction, Ouro Preto, the spontaneous city presented well defined urban continuity, while Belo Horizonte, the planned city articulated itself through isolated volumes.
NIEMEYER'S MODERNISM AND PAMPULHA AS A BRAZILIAN ARCHITECTURE MANIFESTO
In 1940 the mayor Jucelino Kubitschek invited the young architect Oscar Niemeyer to plan a series of buildings around the artificial lake - Pampulha.
The new area, in the city suburb, appeared as a new residential and public leisure area in a capital with a rapid rate of industrialization.
The Pampulha group of buildings is known worldwide and meant a vigorous first moment in Brazilian Modern Architecture.
The feeling and sensuality of Brazilian nature and people were united to European rationalism , with a very original result which influenced many modernists throughout the world, including the later work of master Le Corbusier.
Once more a times' concepts were reinterpreted and a local style of great force was created.
Niemeyer's buildings at Pampulha are the Casino, today the Museum of Modern Art; the Sao Francisco de Assis church, the Casa do Baile (Dance House) and the Iate Clube. A planned Hotel was not built. In 1996 the architect planned in the area a Memorial Building, commemorating Belo Horizonte's one hundred year anniversary.
Niemeyer planned other buildings in Belo Horizonte, notably the JK group (1951), the Niemeyer building (1954) and the Public Library building, both on Liberdade Plaza, the Sirio Libanes Club (1952), the BEMGE building (1953) on Sete de Setembro Plaza, Pampulha Iate Clube (l961), the State Primary School in Lourdes section and various others.
THE YOUNG METROPOLIS AND LANDSCAPE FRAGMENTATION
In the fifties, Belo Horizonte became a Metropolis. Neighboring towns such as Contagem, Betim and Venda Nova became part of a great Metropolitan area.
The Cidade Industrial (Industry City) area in Contagem County was occupied.
The new automobiles and newly founded automobile industry era defined a new type of public way occupation and verticalization reached residential sections near city center.
On some avenues of the capital a great number of fully grown bordering trees were cut, to make way to car traffic. The city landscape was fragmented with the demolition of great parts of the initial town construction configuration.
At that time a few of the city's architects produced meaningful buildings such as the IPSEMG building (1950) by architect Raphael Hardy Filho, the National Bank building (1952) by Raul Cirne and Raul Santiago, the IAPI Assemblage (1948) by White Lirio da Silva, the Clemente de Faria building (1950) by Alvaro Vital Brazil, the DCE headquarters building (1953) by Silvio de Vasconcelos, the UFMG headquarters building (1957) by Eduardo Mendes Guimaraes and Gaspar Pezzuti, among others.
Some of these buildings helped create a repertory of approach to the 45 degree corners for which no legislation existed. A typical site of the city plan, where the avenues intercept the streets, they are situated in the landscape in a very marking way.
The sixties and the seventies decades came as difficult years for the evolution of the city.
The Brazilian military government and Brazilian "economical miracle" ideology imposed a new authoritarian development model.
Urban population explosion brought greater difficulties yet.
The most important intellectuals, including the more participant architects suffered cultural and political censure.
A very large number of people lived in slums or marginal settlements around the city.
Complex and not well planned car traffic brought chaos to main ways and a good part of central city was taken up as parking area.
Denser and denser population numbers consolidated verticalization which in principle used the International Style in the main buildings of the time, with totally non adapted glass walls.
An authoritarian architecture marked the period, not integrated to climate or culture, showing exhaustion of modernist canons.
At that time, the city was mutilated of one of it's main symbols, the Curral Mountain Range, with the alteration of the outline, caused by exploitation of iron ore. The city saw, adding to the destruction of a good part of its cultural-historical memory, the destruction of its main postcard, its natural visual limit, its horizon.
Very few buildings of value were constructed in the city at that time.
Examples are the BDMG building (1969) by Humberto Serpa, William Abdala, Marcos Meyer and Marcio Pinto, the Palacio das Artes (Palace of Arts) (1966) by Helio Ferreira Pinto, the State Legislature building (1964) by Ricardo Kohn and Paul Liberman, the Usiminas building (1972) by Raphael Hardy Filho, Alvaro Hardy and Istvan Farkasvolgi, the Dalva Simao Plaza (1973) by Roberto Burle Marx, the Barca do Sol building (1976) by Eolo Maia and Marcio Lima, the Izabela building (1979) by Cid Horta and the Eduardo building (1979) by Cid Horta and Paulo Greco.
CONTEMPORARY CULTURE AND THE NEW PROPOSALS, A SALUTE TO THE XXI CENTURY
With the arrival of the eighties and the recuperation of the democratic way of government, a series of modifications occurred in the city panorama. A new posture could be observed, from the way politicians acted, with greater concern to population problems, to various levels of the population itself, wishful to participate in the construction of their own future.
The city problems required from organizations responsible for urban planning a clearer and more objective way of doing things. Architecture perceived the high environmental and energy costs of its models.
A new change of values, based on ecology and citizenship began to happen.
That period saw the birth of the architectural magazine Vao Livre which immediately became the Pampulha magazine. Pampulha was a fundamental reference point to the national discussion of "Post Brasilia" and "post miracle" architecture. Organized by architects Alvaro Hardy, Eolo Maia, Silvio Podesta, Paulo Laender and others, it was edited between 1979 and 1983 in 12 numbers.
Conscious architects started to question old solutions, re-analyzing materials and concepts. An important reflection, for it was necessary to separate the positive side of the baroque and modern experience, not deny technological advances and propose buildings, images or ideas.
The International Style was questioned. Critical regionalism was debated together with modernism. These began to represent the contemporary integrated into universal and local values.
There was also a strong pressure to build and an enormous lack of fundamental spaces such as habitation, schools, public spaces.
Here was a fluctuating land market which produced commercial and services areas, controlled habitation and in a way, was responsible for changes in the urban landscape.
Public and private sectors perceived the need of integration so as to respond to economic, political, informative and cultural internationalization.
Some initiatives were important in making conscious the need of a better quality of life goal in enterprises public and private. Government and private companies got together to try to solve difficult problems.
A good moment in the discussion about Belo Horizonte was the BH Centro competition (Belo Horizonte Center). Ideas for the central area were studied by the city government in 1989, when competition proposals were opened. These came from many multi-disciplinary offices all over the country.
Three groups were winners - two from Belo Horizonte, coordinated respectively by Mauricio Andres Ribeiro and by Maria Elisa Baptista.
Today, some of the plans coming from those discussions have been implanted and others, accepted at the time wait their turn.
It is the union of City and State governments with private companies that is realizing plans such as the remodeling of the Parque Municipal (City Park) by architects Maria Elisa Baptista and Ana Schmidt, of the Liberdade Plaza by architect Jo Vasconcelos and of the State Legislature Plaza by architects Mariza M. Coelho and Alvaro Hardy.
Architectural discourse shows itself pluralist, open to various influences such as the colonial heritage, the modernist experience, technological possibilities opened with the growth of the steel industry and a large contemporary mosaic of references coming from other arts.
There is not a more important name, a school, or a definite image. The result of projects produced with quality varies between historicism, minimalism and expressionism. A mixed culture, sometimes apparently contradictory.
Belo Horizonte has three Architecture Schools, an ample number of private offices and various governmental planning organizations working in many fields.
Private building companies today also have a different outlook. Some of the young companies recognize the environmental importance of the plans. This makes possible buildings that requalify the city's architecture, inaugurating a new contemporary way.
The following buildings can be cited: the Guignard Art School and Academia Mineira de Letras buildings (l995) by architect Gustavo Pena, Raja Gabaglia Enterprise Center building and Officenter building (1989) and the Fashion Center building (1993) by Eolo Maia and Jo Vasconcelos, the Omni Center building (1994) and the Capri building (1992) by Joao Diniz, the TENCO, the Nashville and the Jules Rian buildings (1992) by Flavio Almada, Center of Tourist Support (1991) by Eolo Maia and Sķlvio Podesta, the Wall Street and the Greenwich Village buildings (1988) by Julio Teixeira and Alberto Davila and the Buritis residential building (1987) by Silvio Podesta.
Architecture of Interiors and Design came to be an important part of the work of some offices. In this way, names such as Freuza Zechmeister, Carico Dumont, Porfirio Valadares, Eraldo Pinheiro, Angela Roldao, Graca Moura, Izabella Vechi, Mįrcio Pita, Eduardo Lamassa, Benedito Fernando Moreira, Luis Chiari, Dijon de Morais and Gracia Mendes detach themselves.
The editorial experience of the Pampulha magazine was taken up by Silvio Podesta and Gabi Aragao in the AP Cultural, an editing organization which has published various books and releases the AP Magazine, having as its main subjects local architecture, design, art and culture.
Belo Horizonte, capital of Minas Gerais has in 1996 a population of 3.5 million people, in its metropolitan area and is the third Brazilian city in importance and population.
Minas Gerais is 500 km from the Atlantic coast eastward, has an area of 587.172 km2 and a total population of 18 million people, living in different habitats ranging from western "serrados" to Atlantic rainforests, from massive iron ore deposits to precious stone exploration sites, from great rural areas to densely urbanized spaces.
Minas Gerais economy is divided between iron production, metallurgy, diverse industrial sectors and tourism. The main cities of the State are Juiz de Fora, Uberlandia, Governador Valadares, Montes Claros.
With its 100 year anniversary coming up, more than ever Belo Horizonte questions and discusses itself. The city in (trans) formation wants to know itself, wants to analyze its errors, integrate itself to its time as its importance grows in relation to the region and to the country.
The problems of a XX century metropolis are present and must be faced with all possible participation by professionals in different areas of knowledge. Architecture and urbanism are two of the forces in this transformation.
The experience of each group of people is more valuable when it is made known, opening itself to discussion and dialogue with other cultures.
The people of Belo Horizonte want to maintain the pioneer spirit shown in 1897 in the possibility of constructing a city of the present and of the future.
It is necessary to build the city of the next 100 years.
English Version: David A. Peterson, architect
Bibliography:
Minas Gerais, Hans Mann; Kosmos edition, 1961.
Ouro Preto; Henrique B. S. Cabral, 1969.
Arquitetura Contemporanea no Brasil; Yves Bruand, Perspectiva edition, 1981.
Cenas de um Belo Horizonte; Belo Horizonte City Government, 1994.
Belo Horizonte , A Cidade Revelada; Newton Silva and Antonio Augusto D'Aguiar, Odebrecht S. A., 1989.
Belo Horizonte, Memoria Historica e Descritiva; Abilio Barreto, Joao Pinheiro Foundation, 1995.
Historia da Arquitetura; Joao Boltshauser, EAUFMG, 1969
Arquitetura Vertical; Carlos A. Brandao, Jomar Braganca and Gaby Aragao, AP Cultural, 1992.
Oscar Niemeyer; Josep Ma. Botey, Gustavo Gilli edition, 1996.
Belo Horizonte, Itinerario da Arquitetura Moderna; Alberto Xavier, Claudia Lage, Flavio Grillo, Regina Costa, Pini edition, 1985
INTERNET/ information about Minas Gerais and Belo Horizonte
jodin@acesso.com.br (Joćo Diniz)