Technique and ground Artificial geograhies in the work of João Vilanova Artigas

Abstract

The concept of technique has dominated architectural discourse since the origins of the discipline. Although the philosophical meaning that sees technical processes as the human footprint and erosion on the natural environment is widely accepted, canonical architectural treatises have barely delved into the alteration of the soil as a truly fundamental and foundational action of the habitat on the landscape. The manipulation of the ground level and the creation of the horizontal plane establish, as an artifice, a coordinate of origin for both 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 (1950s to 1970s), and especially by the architect João Batista Vilanova Artigas (Curitiba, 1915-1985), analyzed here as geographies constructed from the synthesis allowed by the sections. The configuration of the floors in Artigas' spaces goes beyond the functional character of the program to achieve a greater, almost ideological purpose of rooting 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 reveal themselves as a kind of universal relief.