Paradoxes of Brazilian “national identity” in the architectural speeches of Lucio Costa and Sylvio de Vasconcellos

Abstract

n the debate about the period and the architectural style that represented the national identity in the historiography of Brazilian architecture, in the first decades of the twentieth century, different agents took place in the consolidation of the architectural heritage idea. Important characters in cultural preservation policies, such as Rodrigo Melo Franco de Andrade and Mário de Andrade, integrated the public space emphasizing their positions of organic intellectuals in cultural policies. Given this fact, this article focuses on the consolidation in the social imaginary of eighteenth-century architecture as an effective representation of national architecture, consolidating itself as a style/period with the largest number of buildings listed until 1970. Understanding the different subjects involved in this process, this article focuses on the effective political action of Lucio Costa and Sylvio Vasconcellos on the defense of colonial heritage, based on texts and interventions in the overturned cities throughout Brazil, shaping and consolidating their strategies around an ideology of heritage and nation. In addition, we seek to understand the direct relationship established by both agents between the “elected” national heritage architecture and the precepts of the new architectural practice linked to the Modern Movement, to which they were adherents. Justifying the new from the primitive, in a perfect relationship where everything can be explained and fitted, the eclectic architecture was treated as a copy of styles, exacerbation of ornaments and link to foreignism, in opposition at the claimed nation project. We should always review concepts and guidelines, dealing more truthfully and fairly with our eclectic heritage, and consequently with our architectural historiography.