Hi! This is Lee Ann Custer. I am a PhD student in art history at the University of Pennsylvania, where I study the relationships between modern architecture, national identity, and the vernacular in the United States.
This summer (well, South American winter!) I am exploring like themes in the colonial and modern architecture of Brazil, thanks to the support of the Ailsa Mellon Bruce Predoctoral Fellowship for Historians of American Art to Travel Abroad from the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, for which I am truly grateful.
My project focuses on the ways in which twentieth-century Brazilians expressed ideas about progress and national character through immense projects of architecture, planning, and historic preservation.
A close study of the work of architect and planner Lucio Costa (1902-1998), the "grandfather of Brazilian modernism," frames my study. Costa’s adoption of the modernist principles of Le Corbusier ignited the thinking of a generation of architects, including Oscar Niemeyer and Affonso Eduardo Reidy. At the same time, his infusion of local building practices and materials is seductively original, site specific, and hopefully something I will be able to speak to in greater detail once I see his projects in person. Brazilian modernism is often said to incorporate the curvilinear forms of the local landscape, but the modification of Western European design to suit local needs and tastes is necessarily a complex phenomenon. I'll be checking out sites such as Costa’s city plan of Brasília, Niemeyer’s sinuously serpentine dance hall in Belo Horizonte, and Reidy’s more utilitarian low income housing complex in Rio de Janeiro -- just to name a few -- to reflect on how these twentieth-century works are as “national” as they are “international.”
This exploration has a flip side too, which looks backwards in time. Costa quoted elements of colonial architecture in his work, and he led the Brazilian historic preservation movement in the 1930s that embraced Portuguese colonial architecture as Brazil’s own vernacular legacy. I'll be visiting the colonial sites in Minas Gerais that Costa toured during his own “national heritage” pilgrimage in the 1920s, and the towns in which the government launched its initial preservation efforts -- Ouro Preto, Diamantina, Sabará -- with the hopes of examining this other aspect of the relationship between national identity and architecture.
Throughout my trip I'll be sharing my adventures here. Thanks for stopping by!
A close study of the work of architect and planner Lucio Costa (1902-1998), the "grandfather of Brazilian modernism," frames my study. Costa’s adoption of the modernist principles of Le Corbusier ignited the thinking of a generation of architects, including Oscar Niemeyer and Affonso Eduardo Reidy. At the same time, his infusion of local building practices and materials is seductively original, site specific, and hopefully something I will be able to speak to in greater detail once I see his projects in person. Brazilian modernism is often said to incorporate the curvilinear forms of the local landscape, but the modification of Western European design to suit local needs and tastes is necessarily a complex phenomenon. I'll be checking out sites such as Costa’s city plan of Brasília, Niemeyer’s sinuously serpentine dance hall in Belo Horizonte, and Reidy’s more utilitarian low income housing complex in Rio de Janeiro -- just to name a few -- to reflect on how these twentieth-century works are as “national” as they are “international.”
This exploration has a flip side too, which looks backwards in time. Costa quoted elements of colonial architecture in his work, and he led the Brazilian historic preservation movement in the 1930s that embraced Portuguese colonial architecture as Brazil’s own vernacular legacy. I'll be visiting the colonial sites in Minas Gerais that Costa toured during his own “national heritage” pilgrimage in the 1920s, and the towns in which the government launched its initial preservation efforts -- Ouro Preto, Diamantina, Sabará -- with the hopes of examining this other aspect of the relationship between national identity and architecture.
Throughout my trip I'll be sharing my adventures here. Thanks for stopping by!