VIGÉSIMO LIVRO
TEMPORARY TOWERS, SLABS AND SLICES OF STREET FACE
Every architect conceives an imaginary city of his own. The buildings in that city are his and those of his peers. He often makes both kinds. He marks down each building he does on his city plan which is like a score card. These twenty slices of street face, slabs and temporary towers are some of the buildings I have invented which belong in the denser areas of my own imaginary city. They are the shops, offices and apartments of that city.
| The Prédio lsauro Lopes is the first of the big pillared, large span buildings. It consists of many tiny apartments, a few larger ones, offices, a service station, a garage and workshops. |  |
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The Associaçâo dos Naturais Clubhouse was to be a machine for raising and mixing cultures and for languid tropical delights, all on a small site bound by many town planning commandments. This heap was to roar and mumble, laugh and whisper, with the voices and ideas of ten thousand people: in the loud metallic café on the street side; in the steep intellectual auditorium; in the pin-balling, ping-pong-tabled youth branch; in the double storied library swot boxes; in the committed class rooms; in the clattering newspaper offices; in the back to front, stained, printing room; in the quiet soft floored hostel's corridors. A naked grey raw concrete house with bright visceral mauve red and pink insides; round eyed, much slitted many nozzled. A building swarming with people, with faces looking out at windows, nattering, watching and living. We did not manage to make a beginning even later, when we attempted to make a start from the back. |
| The Prédio Spence e Lemos is an office building on a corner site facing north west and north east. The problem of the façades was to screen the windows from too much sun throughout the day and conceal the air conditioning units. |  |
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The Jose da Costa Building stopped at the second floor but was all set to take on another five at the drop of a loan. |
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The Octavio Lobo Building is a narrow slice of offices, a building for hire, a carcass to be stuffed with business. The street face is screened from the late afternoon's low diagonal sun by vertical translucent marble discs - the other sheltered from the high angled noon sun by horizontal marble bands.
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The Prédio Spanos was to have housed many companies run by a local family, all their shops and sales rooms, printing presses and offices. Elements hang out of the facade to screen the windows from direct sunlight. |
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The Prédio Abreu Santos e Rocha began as a soft building of many purposes. It was later conceived as two apartment boxes over double - storied shops. The first stage was to be two floors of apartments over the shops. When it was finished it was offices a few shops and a large service station instead. It had by then changed faces considerably. Later it went up another five floors of offices. The two pebble murals grew up with the five new floors. |
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