The Paulist School: A Hypothesis for Critical Regionalism

Abstract

Since the early 1940s, Brazilian modernism has moved almost exclusively from Rio de Janeiro to São Paulo, if we exclude the period in Brasilia and the little that will happen in the remaining “architectural” cities of Brazil. In those years, João Batista Vilanova Artigas began his profession in São Paulo, a leading personality with a vision of idealist architecture with a social background to whom critics would recognize, perhaps later, the paternity of the so-called Paulist School. After the first Wrightian houses, Vilanova Artigas starts a theoretical-practical research starting from the legacy of that Modern Carioca born for a nation in search of identity. Vilanova Artigas, through his “critique of modernization”, will make the articulation of the structural form that dialogues with the topography of the place the distinctive feature of the Paulist School.

Keywords

• modernismo
• scuola paulista
• identità brasiliana