Priscila Lena Farias / Anna Calvera Marcos da Costa ... - Blucher

NOBRE, Ana Luiza
Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (best known by
its Latin American acronym, CEPAL). In one way or another, there
seemed to be a common central issue: the need to establish a
development strategy for Brazil, both in economic, social and
cultural terms. Even if the means to do so were different, and
many times antagonic.
It might be helpful in this regard to refer to the pivotal role assumed
by Italian-born architect Lina Bo Bardi (1914-1992) between
the end of the 1950’s and the beggining of the 1960’s,
when she engaged herself in a broad cultural program in the
northeastern part of the country, and came to be an influential
voice in denouncing industrial design as “the weapon of a system”
(Bardi 1994). Indeed, after moving from São Paulo (the
major industrial and economic powerhouse of the country) to
Bahia (a peripheral and impoverished state, then facing chronic
droughts), Lina radically reviewed her own conception of design,
earlier so instrumental in introducing the work of Max Bill (HfG’s
first rector) in Brazil. Rather than supporting the german idealist
and rationalist view of design, she would then claim that the
canonical lineage linking Bauhaus to Ulm – and soon, to Esdi -,
was actually synonymous with an authoritarism that privileged
capitalist forms of production and could only be overcomed by
social and political revolution in a country such as Brazil, still
under preindustrial conditions of production.
The fact that Brazilian cultural scene beared these confrontations
indicates a maturation process which proved to be very
fertile to the field of design. In this process, not only Esdi was
considered emblematic, but design itself an inevitable battleground,
where designers, intellectuals, economists and politicians
intersected and interwove with sociopolitical ideas and
ideals. So while Lina Bo Bardi focused on the persistence of poverty
– clearly identifying herself with a larger plan to stimulate
the overcome of the Brazilian underdevelopment – Lacerda kept
on rejecting the characterization of Brazil as an underdeveloped
country and preferred, instead, to consider it “an unequally developed
country, where people start to understand they have
rights to the benefits of civilization and technics”. Consequently,
in face of the growing social demands during João Goulart government
(1961-1964), and shortly after the inauguration of Esdi,
he felt encouraged to state once more his beliefs, claiming that
Brazil needed not a “social revolution”, but a “technological” one
(Lacerda 1965: 137). Adding a couple of weeks later, immediatly
after the President’s overthrow: “Technology will do for us what
Karl Marx wanted to do for the world”. (Lacerda 1965: 149). A
strange prophecy that shows no awareness of the limits that design
– and architecture - would face in Brazil in the years ahead,
finding in Brasilia its greatest expression.
References
Bardi, L.B. 1994. Tempos de Grossura: o Design no Impasse. São Paulo:
Instituto Lina Bo e P.M.Bardi.
Bielchowsky, R. 2000. Pensamento econômico brasileiro: o ciclo ide-
ológico do desenvolvimentismo. Rio de Janeiro: Contraponto.
Gama Lima Filho, F. 1962. Letter to Mario Henrique Simonsen (Esdi Archive).
Harvey, D. 2007. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Lacerda, C. 1962. Letter to the Chamber of Deputies. (Esdi Achive)
Lacerda, C. 1965. Palavras e Ação. Rio de Janeiro: Record.
Nobre, A. L. 2008. Fios Cortantes. Projeto e Produto, Arquitetura e Design
no Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: PUC-Rio. (PhD Thesis Manuscript)
Schumpeter, J. 1961. Capitalismo, socialismo e democracia. Rio de Janeiro:
Fundo de Cultura.
Spitz, R. 2002. HfG Ulm: the view behind the foreground: the political
history of the Ulm School of Design, 1953-1968. Stuttgart, Axel Mengels,
2002.
Ventura, Z. 1994. Esdi 30. Rio de Janeiro: Jornal do Brasil, 5. 15. 1994.
About the author
Ana Luiza Nobre is Architect (UFRJ) and PhD in History (PUC-
Rio). She teaches Architectural and Design History at PUC-Rio/
Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro.
Design Frontiers: Territiories, Concepts, Technologies 109