Gustavo Capanema Palace
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The Gustavo Capanema Palace (in Portuguese, Palácio Gustavo Capanema) is an office building in Rio de Janeiro that is one of the finest examples of Brazilian modernist architecture. It was designed by a team composed of Lucio Costa (future designer of the layout of Brazil's modernist capital Brasília), along with Affonso Eduardo Reidy, Ernani Vasconcellos, Carlos Leão and Jorge Machado Moreira. Oscar Niemeyer, who was to become Brazil's best-known architect also took an important role in the design process, as an intern ain Costa's office. The design team invited the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier to oversee the project, which was designed in 1935-1936. Construction was begun by the Getúlio Vargas government in 1939 and was completed in 1943, to house Brazil's new Ministry of Education and Health. In 1960 the national capital was moved to Brasília, while the building became a Rio office for the ministry, which it remains today.
The building is named after author and educator Gustavo Capanema, who was the first Minister of Education of Brazil. It is located at Rua da Imprensa, 16, in the downtown Rio area of Castelo. Delighted with the shape of Guanabara Bay, Corbusier suggested that the building should be located next to the sea, instead of on an inner downtown street, but the government declined.
The project was extremely bold for the time. It was the first modernist public building in the Americas, and on a much larger scale than anything Le Corbusier had built until then. Modernism as an aesthetic movement had a great impact in Brazil, and the building -- which housed the office charged with cultivating Brazilian formal culture -- included various elements of the movement. It employed local materials and techniques, like the azulejos linked to the Portuguese tradition; the revolutionised Corbusian brises-soleil, made adjustable and related to the Moorish shading devices of colonial architecture; bold colours; the tropical gardens of Roberto Burle Marx; the Imperial Palm (roystonea oleraceæ), known as the Brazilian order; further allusions to the icons of the Brazilian landscape; and the integrated, specially commissioned works of Brazilian artists.
Film
There is a footage of the setting of the first stone of the building, supposedly shot by Humberto Mauro, the most important Brazilian filmmaker of the time and the first Brazilian to use sound in film. In those scenes, minister Gustavo Capanema is shown delivering a speech with a synchronized sound. Also can be seen poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade, intellectual Roquette Pinto, among others. The footage is currently kept at the CTAv - Centro Técnico Audiovisual (Audiovisual Technical Center) archive, in Rio de Janeiro. They were included in the feature length documentary Pampulha ou a invenção do mar de Minas, directed by Oswaldo Caldeira.
Books
- BRUAND, Yves; Arquitetura contemporânea no Brasil; São Paulo: Editora Perspectiva, 1981, ISBN 8527301148
- CAVALCANTI, Lauro. Quando o Brasil era moderno : guia de arquitetura 1928-1960. Rio de Janeiro: Aeroplano, 2001.
- COMAS, Carlos Eduardo Dias. Precisões Brasileiras. Paris: Tese de Doutorado, 2002.
- COMAS, Carlos Eduardo Dias. Protótipo e monumento, um ministério, o ministério. Projeto. ago. 1987, n. 102: p. 136-149.
- COSTA, Lucio. Lucio Costa: registro de uma vivencia. São Paulo: Editora UNB/Empresa das Artes, 1995.
- COSTA, Lucio. Edificio do Ministério da Educação e Saude. AU-Arquitetura e Urbanismo. Rio de Janeiro. jul./ago. 1939: p. 543-551.
- COSTA, Lucio. Ministério, da participação de Baumgart à revelação de Niemeyer. Projeto. ago. 1987, n. 102: p. 158-160.
- HARRIS, Elizabeth D. Le Corbusier: Riscos Brasileiros. São Paulo: Nobel, 1987.
- LISSOVSKY, Maurício e Paulo Sérgio Moraes de Sá (organizadores). Colunas da educação: a construção do Ministério da Educação e Saúde(1935–1945). Rio de Janeiro: MINC/IPHAN, 1996.
- MINDLIN, Henrique Ephim. Arquitetura moderna no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Aeroplano Editora, 2000.
- Revista PDF Concurso de ante-projetos para o Ministério d Educação e Saúde Pública. Revista da Diretoria de Engenharia (PDF). set. 1935: p. 510.
- VASCONCELLOS, Juliano Caldas de. Concreto Armado, Arquitetura Moderna, Escola Carioca: levantamentos e notas. Dissertação (Mestrado em Arquitetura) - Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (PROPAR), 2004 313p.
- XAVIER, Alberto. Arquitetura Moderna no Rio de Janeiro. São Paulo: Pini: Fundação Vilanova Artigas, 1991.