This text by Lucio Costa discusses the “unpredictable” nature of Brazilian architecture. In it, Costa develops a far-reaching theory of modern art and architecture to which the visual form is the sine qua non. The visual-formal component of modern art and architecture is closely bound to the legitimate authenticity of its intentions. After providing a definition of architecture in which “form” and “historicity” are tightly linked, Costa systemizes a morphology of history by means of a dualism where the organic-functional takes precedence over the visual-functional. He demonstrates this theory with examples taken from history. In Costa’s text, architecture and the visual arts are associated through an irreversible dualism in which they partake of an antithesis where the visual-ideal opposes the organic-functional. Costa asserts that modern art is bound to the fact that modern man is overrun and saturated by experiences, to the artificial nature of the conflict between figurative and abstract artists, and to the belief that “art for art’s sake” will be capable of legitimizing a new social function in art.

In 1930, as the director of the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes, French-born Brazilian architect and urban planner Lúcio Costa (1902­–1998) proposed certain changes to the art and architecture curriculum in order to facilitate the access of modern artists to the 1931 Salão Nacional de Belas Artes. In 1934, he was invited to head the commission that would design the building to house the Ministério da Educação e Saúde (MES) located in downtown Rio de Janeiro. The commission would consult Swiss architect, designer, and urban planner Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, 1887–1965) on technical matters. A groundbreaking figure in Brazil, Costa left a cultural legacy owing to his tenure at the Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional. Costa was subject to controversy because beyond the context of Brazilian modern architecture, he was more inclined to the Portuguese colonial tradition than to the architecture of any other period or ethnic group. Costa worked with other major figures in Brazilian architecture, among them Oscar Niemeyer (1907–2012), Affonso Eduardo Reidy, and Roberto Burle Marx. He gained international recognition for his design of the layout of the future capital of Brazil, which was in the shape of a bird with open wings; the seats of the three branches of government were located at the base of the bird’s spine. In the layout of the rest of the city, he developed his idea of the SQ [Super Blocks]

In “A crise da arte contemporânea,” a lecture from the fifties, Costa first establishes what would be an ongoing concern with the fusion and/or integration antinomy [(see ICAA digital archive doc. no. 1110342)]. He formulates a similar tension, this time between integration and disintegration, in his “Razões da nova architectura” (doc. no. 1110344). His stance in that document documents his position regarding the Ministério de Educação e Saúde (MES) project (1937), a building designed in keeping with the principles of international modernism that would become the first major work of modern Brazilian architecture.