LOCATION: Av Valdemar Ferreira, 130, Sao Paulo – SP, Brazil
ARCHITECT: Paulo Mendes da Rocha & Metro Arquitetos
DATES: 2011
NOTES: This project is a reconstruction a 2004 structure of the same program built just two blocks away. The original gallery was demolished in late 2011.
Site Visit: Mon Mar 24 2014
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In my quest for concrete buildings, São Paulo does not disappoint-in fact there has been a near overwhelming abundance. Most remarkable is the number of recent concrete buildings; almost as if Brutalism never faded away here…
This rather recent project by Paulo Mendes da Rocha (with Metro Arquitetos) is a curious example of one these contemporary (“neo-brutalist”?) concrete buildings. Curious both in its own rite, but curious too in the tale of its construction.
Completed in 2011, Novo (“New”) Galeria Leme has the rare distinction of having been built once before. Galeria Leme was initially opened in 2004 at a site just two blocks away. In a turn of events quite common to São Paulo, a real estate development company bought out the original site (along with the full block of surrounding lots).
Upon selection of the new and nearby site, the decision was made to reconstruct the original design:
From many options, it was decided that the best solution was to remake the same project. Besides being a strong characteristic of the gallery, the idea of keeping the building as it was before was an opportunity to put up for discussion the ideas of preservation of the architectural patrimony, the prevalence of the project over the constructed object and to create a possibility of an unexpected spatial experience: considering that the demolishment took place after the conclusion of the new building, it was possible to visit both galleries, one after the other only two blocks apart. Having in mind that both buildings were so characteristic in their physical attributes, a curious deja-vu effect naturally happened.
This strange same but not-same dynamic and even the creative structure of the project (a collaboration between Paulo Mendes da Rocha, of the older generation of Brazil’s modernists and Metro Arquitetos, a younger up-and-coming firm) seems to echo Brutalism’s legacy in São Paulo. There is a persistence, a lasting shadow, of the Paulista school concrete modernism that was so powerful in the 1960s and 1970s.
Yet when compared with da Rocha’s MuBE (and many other of São Paulo’s earlier concrete buildings), the finish work here feels flatter, almost duller; the concrete blander. In fact, the entire project feels much more restrained, in its massing, in its tone and in its textures. Is this Brutalism matured?
Of course, the one glaring – smack you in the face – aspect is the graffiti. Which, if one refers to the professional photographs of the gallery (those images that freeze a building with its best foot forward) is notably absent. Without the rough rawness so vibrant in the earlier concrete work, the graffiti leaves the building looking a bit bullied. If this is indeed Brutalism grown up, it seems rather to have lost its edge.
Finish Detail
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