Shadows study of the Artigas House
Video showing the evolution of the shadows along the day over the Artigas House:
Short biographic video
Here we leave the link of a short video we made about the architect:
The Paulista School
In the late 50’s a group of brazilian architects based in São Paulo led by João Vilanova Artigas and made up of professionals like Rino Levi, Lina Bo Bardi and Paulo Mendes da Rocha, founded the basis of the Paulista School.
This architectural movement fought against the smoother curvy surfaces of the Rio (Carioca) School, so they searched for an objective, ethic, scientific and even marxist architecture where structure and concrete were the main characters.
The scale of the American territory encouraged the desire of building a common space between territory and people in order to humanize the nature. Its formal expression was marked by elementary geometry and abstraction.
The vast and special American territory encouraged the desire of building an active void that was given by two independent elements in dialogic relationship: floor and ceiling. So the important thing was the emptiness, not the material.
This group based the movement in four points: topography, unit volume, spacial structure and void.
-They had to change the topography to make kinder the nature, so they built an interior space opened to exterior landscape and in touch with the rectified topography which conformed a continuos line between terrain and architecture.
-They projected buildings which were single volumes where roof and façade were the same thing. This buldings were big and heavy because they wanted to fuse it with the ground.
-These architects bounded to São Paulo decided to project big buldings with large spans using complex structures because in this city the school of arquitecture was linked to engineering.
-The void allowed a free-flowing space. They liked to use ramps to transmit the idea of an urban space into a closed one. Also big concrete beams allowed to create a free first floor which symbolized the main door of the buildings
The School defined an architecture located in a specific territory to orientate the citiziens and an architecture where it is posible to observe the exterior from the interior. They projected new geographies where they built compact volumes wich defined new physique and social horizons.
Biography
João Batista Vilanova Artigas was born in Curitiba, Brasil, in 1915. In 1921, his father died, so the family decided to move to Teixeira Soares, where her mother started to work as a primary teacher. In 1926, Artigas goes back to Curitiba to take the admission exams for the paranaense boarding school, which is changing its way of teaching just at the time he entries. Later on, he moves to his grandfather’s house and his mother goes back to Curitiba with his younger brother.
In 1932, Artigas starts studying engineering in the Parana school and in 1933, he changes to the Polytechnic School in São Paulo to study engineering and architecture.
In 1936, he starts working with Oswaldo Bratke and asists to the Free Course of Design at the Fine Arts School in São Paulo. A year later, he gets his diploma in Engineering and Architecture. In 1938, with the help of Duilio Marone, he founds Marone&Artigas, a building company.
In 1939, João Batista is working at the Warchavchick study, where he meets Jacob Rutchi, who is going to become a very good friend of him and who is going to help him study the Frank Lloyd Wright career. This last architect will have a great influence in the Artigas work.
It is in 1940 when he begins his teaching career in the Polytechnic School. At this time, the architect is introducing himself into politics and shows his communist ideas. For this reason, he publishes different kinds of articles about modern architecture in magazines.
He is fired from the Architecture and Urbanism Faculty (FAU), in 1954, for travelling to the URSS, so he just continues teaching at the Polytechnic School. Anyway, in 1955, thanks to different organisations of students, he is hired again at the Faculty.
The next years his life is full of instability. He moves, he is prisoner, he is fired and hired…
In 1969, he starts a new company with the architect Marlene Yurgel, so the study loses the Atelier characteristic and gets a new organisation, but he continues getting in troubles the next years.
In 1980 he is accepted again as a teacher in the FAU and in 1981 he prepares a little exposition about his career and creates designs of cars, planes and ships with the help of his grandchildren.
From now on, his political life stops, and he dedicates himself to the teaching area until 1985, when he dies in São Paulo. After, he receives the Auguste Perret Prize for his wole career and life.
Welcome!
This is our wordpress about the Artigas House of João Batista Vilanova Artigas. Here we are going to expose all the information and process of the analysis of this architectural element, trying to explain the context, characteristics and the architect’s evolution.
In the following weeks, we will be uploading posts with the info we are collecting. At the end of the process, we will post a link to the finished project.
artigas house-vilanova artigas 