Técnica y suelo. Geografías artificiales en la obra de João Vilanova Artigas

Abstract

The concept of technique has dominated the architectural discourse since the origins of the discipline. Although the philosophical meaning that sees the human mark and erosion on the natural environment in technical processes is widely accepted, the canonical treatises on architecture have barely delved into the rectification of the soil as a true fundamental and foundational action of the habitat on the landscape. The manipulation of the ground zero level and the creation of the horizontal plane establish, as an artifice, an origin coordinate for both the architecture and the memory of the site. Hence the interest aroused by the underlying ideology in many of the works of the so-called Escola Paulista (decades from 1950 to 1970), and especially of the architect João Batista Vilanova Artigas (Curitiba, 1915-1985), analysed here as built geographies since the synthesis that the sections allow. The configuration of the soils in the Artigas spaces goes beyond the functional character of the program to achieve a greater, almost ideological purpose, of rooted in the urban and political reality of Brazil in the sixties. The sections of his exemplary projects, understood as plateaus, folded streets and expansive orographies, will be revealed as a kind of universal relief.

Keywords

• tekné
• artificial geography
• site
• mark
• relief
• horizontal
• joão vilanova artigas