Ilustración de Lucio Costa (1938). Documentação necessária . Colección Casa Lucio Costa. Image of Lucio Costa (1938). Required documentation. Casa Lucio Costa Collection.
Costa begins mounting his historiographical weaponry with clarity, carving a space for the new architecture in Brazilian cultural history: the only coherent and acceptable demonstration in the process of forming the country in the early twentieth century. 5 Modernity is born in Brazil as a historical sequence of architectural styles, a chain as logical as acknowledged by the following generations of architects, who for decades had no arguments even to question its validity 6 . In other words, Lucio Costa made sure the new architecture remained beyond criticism for many years, floating in a kind of collective certainty that it was the only possible architecture. Modernity in Brazil was considered congenital 7 , filling the gaps in a culture in development and taking root in the nationalist imaginary - an essential factor in the evolution of architecture - with the support of traditional references. This last aspect, also led by Lucio Costa, deserves to be emphasized. The rapprochement between modern teachings and traditional construction is expressed systematically, and contaminates the formal purity of the modern radicalism of the early days. Understanding that contemporary art and the experiences of the past are part of the same historical process broke hierarchies, allowing the methodological exchange. “Good architecture of a given period will always go well along with any previous period. What does not go well with anything is the lack of architecture. In the same way that a good fan and a telephone on a XVI or XVIII century style table cannot be an embarrassment for true lovers of old things...” 8 This phrase reveals the position of Costa against the notion of heritage 9 , anticipating ideas which in the following decades would be widely accepted: on the one hand, to recognize the value of existing elements; on the other, to raise the new architecture to the same level of significance. Moving away from the excesses of early modern radicalism, Costa puts modernity as the current chapter of a historical process, without advocating the denial of past achievements. On the contrary, he puts them in opposition to demonstrate their logic. With this approach, he is able to operate freely with tradition and contemporary styles, linking them in various ways: recovering techniques or obsolete architectural programs, proposing additions to historic sites or building modern buildings with structural elements representative of other times.
The consolidation of modern architecture in Brazil occurred in terms that surprise those who make a cursory reading. It is structured in the early 1940s on a financial commitment by the state, as an organized movement deeply rooted in culture: the modern movement has been recognized as an integral part of national culture. Not without reason, Lucio Costa uses the term miracle¹ to describe the speed with which it reached maturity and unprecedented success. In less than two decades a modern architectural movement of national character was established², based on the interpretation of the elements of authentic cultural traditions of a region with social and productive conditions radically different from those of the Central European countries that catalyzed the establishment of modernity. The Brazilian experience was widely disseminated by the press, especially after the publication of the book Brazil Builds by Philip Goodwin, which gathered the works presented at the exhibition of the same name at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1943.³ Brazil, like many of its Latin American peers, encountered several political transitions during the first decades of the twentieth century, alternating between authoritarian and centralizing systems and the limited success of revolutionary movements. The question that surfaced is the reason why modernity settled in this context, and its unanimous and wide acceptance among different production agents after overcoming political differences and technological difficulties. 4 The figure of Lucio Costa is fundamental to the understanding of this phenomenon. Author of some of the initial examples of the Modern Movement in the country, he was also its main theoretical advocate from the start. The depth of aesthetic research of modernity in Brazilian architecture owes much to the equation he formulated, combining art and history as essential factors. For Costa, technique is the representation of a human activity in a particular historical moment, but it is also the result of a continuous process of intellectual achievements and should be understood as “the basis on which, invariably, you set the starting point”. Therefore, technique is the basis of its constructive logic and the factor controlling the sequence of decisions in the design process. This premise carries the weight of time, accepting that “we, modern architects, can learn from the experience of over three hundred years, otherwise, we would be reproducing an aspect already dead.” By denying “the dead aspect” (brought by non-modern architectural experiences), Lucio
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