Historical reconstruction of the internacional Exhibition of the independence centenary and its evolution over time

Abstract

The International Exhibition of the Centenary of the Independence of Brazil took place between the dismantling of Morro do Castelo and the respective grounding of Praia de Santa Luzia, in Rio de Janeiro, in 1922/23. The official commemoration of the centenary, which is about to turn 100 years old, has been extensively studied by several disciplines and has already been the subject of publications in the area of ​​urban and architectural studies, with emphasis on the texts of Ângela Martins (1998), Ruth Levy (2010), Raquel Coutinho da Silva (2012), and Margareth Pereira (2013). However, having lasted 10 months, between September 1922 and July 1923, the exhibition grounds, with its street layout, landscaping, street furniture, and pavilions, cannot be considered a finished work as the maps and photographs suggest. published by Organs official bodies of the commemoration. The works carried out by Mayor Carlos Sampaio (KESSEL, 2001) and the considerable increase in the number of cars and visitors, the changes caused by nighttime public lighting, the custom of summer vacations and city events, such as Carnival, continually transformed the space of the exhibition, which never worked with all the pavilions in activity. Constant changes in guidelines and designs meant that the exhibition opened with only five pavilions open to the public and closed when five of the main pavilions were already empty. The same can be said about the free space of the event, in which no documentary representation is found.

The objective of this research is to reconstitute and analyze the exhibition space, in order to fill the gaps found. This analysis will be done through a temporal map, in order to recreate a document of the event. we believe we can, in this way, visualize the scenario of the celebrations in its true urban dimension