|
|
Pampulha, Brazil, South America |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Pampulha is an extension of Belo Horizonte and therefore is not a new town. It was included in this database because the plan for Pampulha is an important link in the development of Brazilian capital new towns as Brasilia. Belo Horizonte, the new town of the late 19th century grew fast under the influence of the development of new industries. The local government decided that the city needed an extension in the 1940s to prevent future housing shortage. The mayor of Belo Horizonte, Juscelino Kubitscheck met the young architect Oscar Niemeyer who had just completed his architectural education at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes of the federal university in Rio de Janeiro. Although the plan for the extension originated in the forseen population growth, Oscar Niemeyer convinced the local government to make Pampulha into a leisure nucleus. He used the shore of the artificial lake of Pampulha as a concentrationpoint for leisure activities and he transferred the plan for the casino of Belo Horizonte to Pampulha. Furthermore, he designed a tennis club, a dancing school, an art museum and a church. To discharge the growth pressure of Belo Horizonte Niemeyer did plan the relocation of administrative functions from the centre of Belo Horizonte to Pampulha and the creation of residential neighbourhoods. Pampulha became especially important as an experiment of modern planning and architecture, setting the example for Brasilia and other expressions of Rio de Janeiro based modernist Brazilian architecture. Oscar Niemeyer's opinion on modernism differed from the European modernist line of thought in that he did not agree with the goal to make a uniform architectral style, an architecture without topographical distinction or a connection with the location. Pampulha, says Niemeyer, offered him the opportunity to 'challenge the monotony of contemporary architecture, the wave of misinterpreted functionalism that hindered it, and the dogmas of form and function that had emerged, counteracting the plastic freedom that reinforced concrete introduced.(1) The result was a spatial and sculptural architecture with large spans and curves in the facades and roofs. Oscar Niemeyer established a connection between the landscape of Minas Gerais and the forms of his buildings. (2) This experiment has been important for the design of the new town Brasilia that Niemeyer designed in the same fashion.
source: (1) Niemeyer, Oscar, 2000, The Curves of Time: The Memoirs of Oscar Niemeyer
(2) Borges Lemos, Celina and Jackson, Elizabeth; The Modernization of Brazilian Urban Space as a Political Symbol of the Republic; 1995 In: The journal of decorative and propaganda artsArticle Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1504140
Ellen van Holstein 8-3-2011 |
|
2008 - 2024 disclaimer
|
