The Modern Architecture Collection (1947-1951)

Abstract

The worldwide consecration of a set of works carried out by practicing architects in the city of Rio de Janeiro, then federal capital, gathered around the architect Lúcio Costa, came to dominate, for several decades, the narrative about the introduction and diffusion of modern expressions in the architecture in Brazil. The manuals, as Nelci Tinem (2002) reminds us, enshrine this hegemonic reading of the complex and dynamic process of the circulation of ideas and the interpretation and realization of modern works in the national territory. It is from the 1980s that, more broadly, new perspectives have been cast on modern Brazilian architecture, in the wake of the expansion of postgraduate programs in architecture and urbanism and the investment of research development agencies in the qualification of professors and researchers , both in the country and abroad.
The Modern Architecture Collection in Bahia (1947-1951), by Nivaldo Vieira de Andrade Junior, professor at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Bahia, adds a cornerstone to this effort to understand the different dimensions of the modern experience in the country. It results from her doctoral study developed in the Post-Graduate Program in Architecture and Urbanism at the Federal University of Bahia, entitled Modern Architecture in Bahia, 1947-1951: a counterpelled story, supervised by professor Esterzila Berenstein de Azevedo and defended in 2012.