Prestes Maia (Amparo SP 1896 - São Paulo SP 1965)
Prestes Maia was a civil engineer, architect and urban planner. He graduated as an Architect Engineer from the Escola Politécnica de São Paulo - POLI, in 1917. He began his professional career with a construction and real estate business. In 1918, he was appointed engineer at the Department of Transport and Public Works, and soon became Director of Public Works (DOP). In 1924, he was hired as an interim professor at Poli, where he taught geometric and freehand design, architectural design, natural sketch and perspective design, a discipline that was held by the architect Victor Dubugras (1868-1933).
In the municipal administration, Prestes Maia developed studies on the road and transport system of São Paulo, based on the irradiation perimeter project, proposed by the engineer Ulhôa Cintra (1887-1944) in 1924. It became Effective professor at Poli in 1927, but, due to the ban on the accumulation of public offices, he left the school in 1937, remaining at the Public Works Department. In 1930, he presented the study of an avenue plan for the city of São Paulo, known as the avenue plan, which was awarded at the 4th Pan-American Congress of Architects, held in Rio de Janeiro. In the same year, he founded the Instituto Paulista de Arquitetos, being its vice president in the first biennium (1930-1931). He also participated in the 1st Housing Congress of the Institute of Engineering in 1931 and, in 1933, gave an opinion on the Recife Plan, prepared by the Pernambuco architect Nestor de Figueiredo, later publishing the improvements in Recife. 1935, collaborated for the founding of the Friends of the City Society, becoming its first president. With the claim of this entity, in 1937, the City Plan Commission was created, which made it possible to implement, albeit partially, of the avenue plan, after its appointment as Mayor of São Paulo, in 1938, appointed by the intervener Adhemar Pereira de Barros (1901-1969). Prestes Maia remained in office until 1945, under the intervention of Fernando de Souza Costa (1886-1946), and carried out a series of works foreseen in the plan, such as Avenida Nove de Julho, Twenty-Thão de Maio and Radial Norte, after Called Prestes Maia, forming the Y system, which structured the growth of the city.
Stage the rectification of the Tietê River began and created the division of rivers and rainwater, authorizing the necessary expropriations for the works, including the execution of the Marginal avenue to the river. in 1939, in view of the non-renewal of the transport contract with Light & Power Company, created the Public Transport Studies Commission, which resulted in the creation of the Companhia Metropolitana de Transportes Coletivos (CMTC) in 1946. In 1941, still at the City Hall, it proposed changes to the Municipal Works Code in relation to the buildings in the central area. From 1941 to 1942, he was part of the board of the Institute of Engineering and, in 1945, he participated in the jury of ideas for the university city. In 1946, he returned to activities at the PDO and continued with his office, preparing plans for several cities, such as Santos, Campos do Jordão, Campinas and Recife. In 1950, he ran for the Government of the State of São Paulo for the National Democratic Union (UDN), taking last place. 1953. The following year, he tried again to apply for the state government, obtaining third place. In 1954, he participated in a commission created by the City Hall to study a metropolitan system of collective transport and, in 1956, he prepared, as a team, the draft for a rapid transport system for São Paulo, whose plan was rejected by the City Council. In 1957, he was a candidate for mayor, nominated by Jânio Quadros, but lost to Adhemar de Barros, who filed the draft of the metropolitan. In 1961, he was elected mayor again, with the support of Governor Carvalho Pinto (1910-1987). During this administration (1961-1965), he proposed measures to remedy the municipality's finances and resumed the Metropolitan project, creating a group to review the existing projects. In addition to his activities as an engineer in public administration, Prestes Maia collaborated with magazines such as Architecture and Constructions and Investigations, and presided over the Companhia Brasileira de Cemento Portland. urban planning in São Paulo. Its main project, the avenue plan, is considered a crucial document of Brazilian urbanism, defining patterns of expansion that prevail at least until the 1990s in the capital of São Paulo. Public Works of the Municipality, meets the engineer João Florence de Ulhôa Cintra (1887 - 1944), technician of the Municipal Works Directorate, who becomes his partner in conceptions and urban projects for a long period, in addition to a kind of professional mentor. It is from Cintra, for example, the first urban intervention proposal that goes beyond the limits of the central hill - the perimeter of irradiation, 1922 -, a ring of road circulation inspired by the studies of Eugène Hénard (1849 - 1923), the "Father of French Urbanism". A few years later the duo resumes this project by publishing a series of articles entitled A Current Problem. The great improvements of São Paulo, in the bulletin of the Institute of Engineering of São Paulo. These articles, according to scholars of São Paulo urbanism, contain the main ideas of the avenue plan, as the study of a avenue plan for the city of São Paulo is known, presented in 1930 in a luxurious volume of 356 pages, with numerous photos and illustrations. 17 colorful drawing boards.
The avenue plan is the main urban proposal for São Paulo until that period, as it is the first time that the city is thought of as a whole, in an intervention and spatial organization project that aims not only at the central area, but to a real general plan. Although the name, avenue plan, can refer to a strict view of interventions - concentrated on the problem of circulation -, Prestes Maia himself is responsible for clarifying the breadth of his concerns, saying that "any street project involves, implicit or Explicitly, a conception of the city, its structure, its development. Resuming previous works and revealing familiarity with the best bibliography of the time, Prestes Maia proves to be a kind of virtuoso of modern urbanism, seeking to unite diverse influences and varied proposals, using examples from more than twenty cities, to finally build a formal model that would adapt to the structure existing in São Paulo, derived from its radiocentric conformation.
The urban planner divides his plan into ten chapters and in the introduction, a kind of justification, explains that it is planned for the future and for the whole city. Maia seeks in the royal city the guidelines that can guide growth and ensure the proper functioning, unlike, for example, of the proposals of Le Corbusier (1887 - 1965), which are on the horizon of modern urbanism at that time and propose the destruction of the existing for the creation of a new city and, why not say, society. On the contrary, the engineer "searched for the construction of an urban model that would allow finding a term of coexistence between the archaic city, the pre-industrial space, and the metropolis that was configured", as the architect Samuel Kruchin explains, in a project "eminently conciliatory" whose objective "is the fair balance between the old ideology that has already made its time, and the new one, who has not yet done his tests", in the words of Maia himself. Thus, the ten chapters are divided between "legislation", "road solutions", "transports" and "complements" different, trying to account for the multiplicity of the real city.
The main part of the plan is undoubtedly the one dedicated to road solutions, and the order presentation reflects the author's priorities. First, the "irradiation perimeter" appears, taken from the proposal of Cintra: a circuit of new and wide avenues and viaducts around the historic hill and a new center in the Praça da República region, intending to be at the same time a road solution and beautifying intervention. This circuit receives the flow of "radial routes" before they reach the center, preventing congestion from it. The main radials include existing and other avenues open to perform the function, linked not only to the radiating perimeter, but by two other perimeter supplementary circuits, one internal (passing through Avenida Paulista) and another external (origin of future marginal avenues). of the Tietê and Pinheiros rivers), concentric to the first.
Another important point of the road system developed in the plan is the so-called Y system, which actually defines and guides the growth of São Paulo from that moment on: an avenue that, unlike the other radials, crosses the Center in the north-south direction and forks on two valley avenues in the south slope (nine of July and the twenty-third of May) - a solution, by the way, which is established in São Paulo and will guide the opening of new avenues.
The revolution of 1930 changes the political situation and the project presented to the Chamber has to wait a few years until it is resumed. It is only in 1938, when Prestes Maia was appointed mayor by the intervener Adhemar Pereira de Barros (1901 - 1969), that the plan is partially executed, in a management that is notable for the search for more efficiency of the administrative machine through the balance of finances and the Appreciation of the technical staff. remaining in office for two terms, until 1945, Prestes Maia carried out a series of works foreseen in the plan, defining the profile of the growth of São Paulo.
In the 1950s, the engineer clearly symbolizes a line of urban intervention that is linked to the Idea of unlimited expansion and searching in great urban works the solutions for the city, opposing another important urban planner from São Paulo, Luís Inácio de Anhaia Mello (1891 - 1974) - defender of the idea of control of urban growth through a green ring in around the city - and the French Dominican priest Joseph-Louis Lebret, also a fundamental name for local urbanism, which would create, based on the economy and humanism movement, a line of urban planning essentially linked to the social question. Maia becomes mayor once again, in 1961, when he again proposes measures to remedy the municipality's finances and resumes the project for a metropolitan transport system that he elaborates in 1956, as head of the City Hall Commission, but which is only executed in the 1990s. 1970.
Source: Itaú Cultural
