A poetic essay expressed in a manifesto style in which the author, Lúcio Costa, calls for a new kind of architecture derived from innovative construction techniques. He describes the current period as transitional and notes that while proletarian artists want to confine art to propaganda posters, there is also an aesthetically driven, selfless, and romantic attitude in the field. Costa believes that there is “integration” when there is stability in artistic advances, so that, during revolutionary times there is a predominance of “disintegration” and isolation of individual experimentation. In his opinion, the current crisis has been caused by the arrival of the machine and the subsequent industrial production. He compares the North Americans to the ancient Romans who advance in terms of technique but continue to use outdated forms. The Brazilian architect and urban planner understands that new technology demands a review of traditional artistic values; he sees that the self-supporting skeleton or frame changed the function of walls, which allowed greater freedom for the ground plan and the façade. The expression of the building, which is the result of an interplay between solids and voids and the reestablishment of the clarity of geometric lines and volumes, thus takes on artistic values that are not unlike those associated with pure art. Costa appeals to industry to supply the new elements that this new kind of architecture requires, keeping in mind that, if technique is the starting point, architecture has a substantial lead. Costa believes that painting and sculpture must work together, and states his full support for the internationalizing trend in new architecture that expresses a common truth in terms of laws that are both fundamental and universal.       

This essay was written as the base-program for the postgraduate course that was taught at the Instituto de Artes da Universidade do Distrito Federal (which was, at that time, in Rio de Janeiro). The painters Cândido Portinari and Alberto da Veiga Guignard were professors, and the course was directed by Celso Kelly. Lúcio Costa (1902–98), the Brazilian architect and urban planner, was the director at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes in 1930, when he proposed a number of changes in the art and architecture curriculum that allowed modern artists to show their work at the Salão Nacional de Belas Artes in 1931. Later, in 1934, he was invited to head the commission in charge of designing the building for the Ministério da Educação e Saúde in downtown Rio de Janeiro. The team consulted the Swiss architect, designer, and urban planner Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, 1887–1965) and asked for his technical advice, which he provided during the year when this article was published. Costa’s attitude, as expressed in this document, indicates his support for the ministry project which, over the course of time, became the first example of Brazilian modern architecture, designed according to the principles of the modern international style.