beautiful structure, architecturally significant, original, and nobody altered it... The architectural design of Sesc Pompeia Factory Leisure Center came from the desire to build another reality. We included just a few things: some water, a fireplace. The initial idea of restoring this complex was that of “poor architecture”… not in the sense of poverty, but in the sense of handicraft expressing maximum communication and dignity through minor and humble means. After cynically considering exhausted the content and the human possibilities of the modern movement in architecture, a new idea arises in Europe: postmodernism, which can be defined as the retromania, the complex of impotence in face of the impossibility of leaving one of the most appalling human efforts in the West. The avant-garde in arts is always eating the remains of that great capital. The new slogan is “sucking up the principles of historical documentation which were reduced to consumption”. Retromania prevails, in Europe and in the United States, critically absolving the intruders of architecture, who, since the beginning of industrialization, reward the wealthier classes with spiritual recycling of the past. Mantels, doorways, gables, frontons, Roman, Gothic and Arab arches, large and small columns and domes have never ceased to accompany, like a soft, discreet and sinister choir, the brave march of the modern movement, which was brutally interrupted by World War II. It is old history. The arches and columns of Nazi-fascism are returning, history is seen as a monument and not as a document. (Michel Foucault: “L’Histoire est ce qui transforme des Documents en Monuments”. It’s exactly the opposite: History transforms monuments into documents. Of course, monuments not only refer to architectural work, but also to “collective actions” of large social thrusts). Conclusion: we are still under the gray sky from the postwar. “Tout est permis, Dieu n’existe pas”. But war really existed, and it still exists, and so does strong opposition. All this might be seen as an exaggerated premise for presenting a simple seat in a auditorium theater, but this previous note on the misconceptions of European postmodernism (the movement, born in the United States, has obtained international significance at the last Venice Biennale; reactionary and antipresent, it confuses the true meaning of history, with doubtful returns to historicism) is the hope that Brazil will not follow
again the same path of culturally bankrupt societies. As for the aforementioned small seat, made entirely of wood, with no upholstery, it should be noted: in the Middle Ages, plays were presented at plazas, to standing and walking audiences. GrecoRoman theaters had no upholstery; they were made of stone, they were outdoors, and spectators were exposed to rain, as they are today in soccer stadium stands, which have no upholstery either. Upholstery appeared in court theaters, in the 1700s, and they persist today as the “comfort” of consumer society. The wooden seat in Pompeia Theater is just an attempt to give back to theater its attribute of “distancing and engaging”, as opposed to only sitting. An underground gallery of “stormwater” (in fact, the famous Black Water stream), which occupies the bottom area of Pompeia Factory, turned almost all the land allocated to the sports zone into a non aedificandi area. Two “plots” of free land remained, one on the left, one on the right, near the “tower-chimney-water tank” – all quite complicated. But, as stated by the great American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, “difficulties are our best friends.” Reduced to two small plots of land, I thought of the wonderful architecture of Brazilian military “forts”, lost near the sea, or hidden throughout the country, in cities, in forests, in secluded deserts and wildernesses. This way, two “blocks” arose, one of the courts and swimming pools and one of the changing rooms. In the middle, the non aedificandi area. And... how to join these two “blocks”? There was only one solution: the “aerial” solution, in which the two “blocks” are united in an embrace through stressed concrete walkways. I see air-conditioning systems with the same horror as I see carpets. This is how the prehistoric cavemen “holes” appeared, without windows, without anything. These “holes” allow continuous cross ventilation. I named this whole area “Citadel”, a translation of the English word “goal”, perfect for a sports complex. For the non aedificandi area, I thought of a great boardwalk. It runs from one side to the other of the “forbidden ground”, in all its length; on the right, a “waterfall”, a kind of collective outdoor shower. My great friend Eduardo Subirats, philosopher and poet, says that the whole Pompeia complex has a powerful expressionist content.
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