Luiz Nunes (Rio de Janeiro RJ 19091 - Idem 1937)
Architect and urban planner.
Luiz Carlos Nunes de Souza joined the National School of Fine Arts - ENBA, in Rio de Janeiro, in 1926. As president of the Academic Directory, he participates in the 1931 student strike, against the dismissal of the then director, Lucio Costa, and in favor of the reappointment of the teachers hired by him in the 1930 teaching reform. Nunes It graduates in 1933 and develops the project of two apartment buildings, which are considered by Lucio Costa precursors of the modern movement in the city. distinguishes it by the investment in programs of collective interest. Nunes initially works at the Department of Transport and Public Works and takes over the board of the Technical Section of Engineering and Architecture - STEA with the task of organizing the State's production. During this period, he designs the School of Abnormals, 1934, for the Mental Health Program led by psychiatrist Ulysses Pernambuco, the Milk Hygienizadora Plant, 1934, for the public health program developed by doctors Décio Parreiras and Josué de Castro, and the Hospital da Brigada Militar, 1934.
In August 1935, STEA is divided into specialized technical directorates, including the Directorate of Architecture and Constructions - DAC. Headed by Nunes, DAC deepens the initiatives to rationalize and modernize STEA's projects and constructive techniques, carrying out a series of works, including the Fishing Warehouse and Fish Market, 1935 (not built), the Popular Desmountable Restaurant, 1935, and Escola Rural Alberto Torres, 1935. In the same year, in Porto Alegre, it presents the Pernambuco State Pavilion in the exhibition commemorating the centenary of the Farroupilha Revolution, considered the first exhibition of modern architecture in Brazil.3
AS CAD activities are interrupted in November 1935 on suspicion of team involvement with the communist movement, but also because the introduction of working methods that encourage the participation of master-workers and workers in project decisions is disapproved by some members of the Government for threatening current hierarchies and powers.4 Away from the DAC, Nunes works as an autonomous architect in Rio de Janeiro and publishes two articles on the activities developed in Recife. Reconducted to the DAC for the claim of its technical staff, it restructures the body in order to extend its attributions to the elaboration of urban plans for cities in the interior of the state. Renamed the Directorate of Architecture and Urbanism - DAU, the agency carries out between 1936 and 1937 about 30 projects, of which the leprosary of Mirueira, the death verification pavilion and the water tank stand out. Olinda, and publishes the organization of administrative technical services,5 a kind of specifications for the construction of public buildings. In November 1937, Lima Cavalcanti is deposed by the Estado Novo and the DAU is practically extinct. Nunes returns to Rio de Janeiro with advanced tuberculosis, dying prematurely, at the age of 28.
Critical Comment
Luiz Nunes performs in Recife, between 1934 and 1937, a unique experience in the scenario Brazilian architectural. Embodying the original reforming utopia of the modern movement, he develops with the Government of the State of Pernambuco an architecture motivated by the desire for social transformation and the commitment to create a new world for a new man. In this sense, his performance is political and extrapolates the technical and aesthetic aspects of the profession.
The task of organizing the public works services that Nunes receives in 1934, when he assumed the position of architect of the Secretariat of Transport and Public Works, takes shape with the of the Directorate of Architecture and Constructions - DAC, 1934-1935. It is up to the Board of Directors to centralize all civil construction activities of the Government, from the development of projects and budgets to the construction, renovation and maintenance of state, municipal and private buildings, according to the request of the different instances of power and depending on the public interest, passing through the approval of all projects to be built with state funds. In his management, Nunes coordinates a series of integrated actions that aim to improve the architectural and constructive quality of state buildings and reduce public spending on civil construction. These actions range from the investment in the educational and technical improvement of local labor to the introduction of new methods, materials and techniques at the construction site, the constitution of a diversified technical team, formed by architects, engineers, designers, artists and workers to develop complete executive projects that They privilege technical-constructive rationality.
What draws the most attention in the architect's performance is the organization of the work of the DAC team, with the participation of master-workers and workers in project decisions, in order to incorporate the knowledge of empirical doing to the knowledge academic, that is, to recover the lost unity between theory and practice. In fact, if it is noticeable in the production of the DAC as the experience of the construction site illuminates the project, pointing out technical solutions, defining new designs and forms of representation, the improvement of the workforce is also remarkable, which starts to understand not only the technical language of architectural design. as well as the process of building the building as a whole. The commitments and activities developed at the DAC continue in the Architecture and Urbanism Board - DAU, although from an architectural point of view its creation, in 1936, marks the beginning of a new phase.
The works developed between 1934 and 1935 by the DAC, especially the school of abnormals, the Milk Hygienizing Plant, 1934, and the Hospital da Brigada Militar, 1934, are prismatic volumes composed of flat slabs, smooth surfaces without ornamentation and standardized horizontal openings, which respond to specific programmatic needs and reveal the inspiration of modern German architecture. The configuration of the school of abnormals in two large pavilions interconnected by balconies and marquees, for example, follows the precepts of the "École de Plein Air", which propose the integration between internal and external spaces of the building. The project, as indicated by the poet and engineer Joaquim Cardozo, refers to the Karl-Marx School Group, 1930/1933, by the French architect André Lurçat, built in Villejuif, France. The Military Brigade Hospital project, in turn, adopts the disposition of the program in blocks instead of pavilions, as was defended by the most advanced currents of medicine at the time. As in the Milk Hygienizing Plant, the reference to the Bauhaus is noticeable, especially the projects of the German architect Walter Gropius.
During the construction, the Military Brigade Hospital project is quite modified, the final character of the building distances itself from this group of projects and approaches the Alberto Torres Rural School, 1935/1936, which is marked by the prominence given to the reinforced concrete structure. Following the same precepts of integrating school environments with the external spaces employed in the school of abnormals, this building does not have a harmonious composition, due to the articulation between the rectangular main block and the set of circulation ramps suspended by fixed rods in arches Reinforced concrete parabolics reminiscent of the projects of the French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier for the Palace of the Soviets in Moscow, 1931, and that of Lucio Costa for the Auditorium of the University of Brazil, 1936. Building The structural system employed is composed of independent structure and flat slabs of reinforced concrete, in previous projects it is characterized by the simultaneous use of masonry of clay bricks bearing, pillars and reinforced concrete slabs, indicating the need to adapt the precepts of the architecture modern to the local technical and economic possibilities.
The projects of the police stations and the Popular Restaurant are still from this first phase, whose interest is justified, in the first case by the attempt to develop a less rigid and monotonous standardization, but which guarantees identity and at the same time economy in the construction of standardization of environments and constructive elements and, in the second case, for the development of a demountable building made with wood and zinc tile, technology and materials available at the time.
The projects developed by the DAU, 1936-1937, escape the Hard programmatic, technical and economic determinations of the first phase of the board, gaining greater plastic expressiveness. This clear change of orientation is explained on the one hand by the stay of Nunes in Rio de Janeiro, the same year that Le Corbusier was in the country due to the projects for the University of Brazil and the Ministry of Education and Health - MES, 1936/1945, and for Incorporation of two new collaborators, architects João Correia Lima, Fernando Saturnino de Brito, graduated from the National School of Fine Arts - ENBA. If the Corbusian postulates of modern architecture - independent structure, free plan, pilotis, garden ceiling - are visible in the leprosary of Mirueira, in the death pavilion of the Faculty of Medicine and in the Olinda water tank, no less present are made the references Lucio Costa, more direct in the leprosário, whose buildings follow the same party adopted by the architect in the contest for Vila Operária Monlevade, Minas Gerais, 1934, indirect in the pavilion and in the Olinda reservoir, but perceptible in the adaptation of the precepts of that architect to the local technical and climatic characteristics. In the Olinda water tank, as in the project to expand the Public Security Secretariat, 1934, the problem of intervention in historical sites appears, solved in both cases with the construction of modern buildings with very sober lines, which emphasize their uniqueness in the context, in a A solution very different from that of Oscar Niemeyer (1907 - 2012) at the Hotel de Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, 1940.
The experience of the architectural directors directed by Nunes is not interrupted by the DAU's extinction by the State new, not even with the architect's premature death. Many of the architects, engineers and designers who work there continue the work, contributing to the dissemination of modern architecture in the country, highlighting the role of Joaquim Cardozo, by the landscape architect Burle Marx and the engineer and urban planner Antônio Bezerra Baltar.
Notes
1 The date and place of birth of the architect are controversial. There are authors, such as historians of architecture Alberto Xavier, Hugo Segawa and Guilah Naslavsky, who claim that the architect was born in 1908 in Belo Horizonte. Architect Rita de Cássia Alves Vaz, however, in her master's degree states that the architect was born in Rio de Janeiro on July 31, 1909, the information being confirmed by the architect's birth certificate.
2  Costa, Lucio. Testimony of a carioca architect. In: XAVIER, Alberto (Org.). Lucio Costa: About Architecture. Porto Alegre: University Students Center for Architecture, 1962. p. 169-201.
3 CARDOZO, Joaquim. testimony of sociocultural aspects. (preface). In: BARROS, Souza. the 20's in Pernambuco. Rio de Janeiro: Gráfica Editora Acadêmico Ltda, 1972. p. 144.
4  NUNES, Luiz. school for abnormals. Magazine of the Engineering Directorate. Rio de Janeiro, PDF, v. 3, no. 1, Jan. 1936; NUNES, Luiz. an architecture director. Magazine of the Engineering Directorate. Rio de Janeiro, PDF, n.3, sea. 1936. p. 55-60.
5  organization of technical-administrative services. Directorate of Architecture and Urbanism, Department of Public Works Transport of the State of Pernambuco. Recife: Official Press, 1937.
Posthetic exhibitions
2000 - Valencia (Spain) - From La Anthropophagia to Brasilía: Brazil 1920-1950, at Ivam. Center Julio Gonzáles
2002 - São Paulo SP - From Anthropophagia to Brasília: Brazil 1920-1950, at MAB-FAAP
Source: Itaú Cultural
