On Curupira's Steps:
Lina Bo Bardi in Vila Velha
Essay published on Cornell Journal of Architecture Issue 12: After.
Edittor in-Chief: Val Warke
Managing Editors: Hallie Black and Todd Petrie
Submission Editors: Gracie Meek and Rabei Bhatti
[1] Vladimir Kozák, Vila Velha’s geological formations, undated, Kodachrome slide, 50x50mm. MUPA – Museu Paranaense.
In Brazilian indigenous folklore, one of the most known myths is that of the Curupira, his most remarkable characteristic being the fact that his feet are turned backwards. Hence, although Curupira moves forward, his feet — responsible for his movements — keep pointing to the place where he came from. Adapted in such a way to mislead hunters following him, Curupira’s dynamics result in a non-linearity in which beforeand after overlap and blend each other continuously. Once the Curupira becomes aware of its contradictory condition and uses it as a favorable value, the myth becomes an anthropophagic[1] reading of Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History. The angel figure is described, through the image of Paul Klee’s painting Angelus Novus, in Benjamin’s famous essay Thesis on the Philosophy of History:
"[…] His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”[2]
Benjamin’s scene depicts the angel’s despair over its complete inability to rebuild the ruins that keep multiplying under his feet. The scene suggests a tense and eternal moment where the angel figure is doomed to a condition marked by the impossibility to constructively connect with past events. As will be seen, although the physical condition of both characters simultaneously faces an idea of before and after, Curupira’s metaphor shows that through the embracing of this condition — apparently adverse — one is capable of not only transiting freely between these two instances of time but also creating new possibilities in the present by using the condition as a favorable value.
A non-linear dynamic — similar to that of the myth — can be found in Lina Bo Bardi’s design for the Chame-Chame House, built in Salvador in 1958, and its here proposed relationship to her trip to the geological site of Vila Velha, in the same year. After analyzing its 300 million years old geological structures, characterized by its naturally sculpted ruin-form shapes, Lina establishes architecture as an expression of the natural environment. She embraces non-linearity as a narrative to design and presents the possibility of moving forward — on Curupira’s steps — while questioning the concept of after as a unidirectional idea of progress.
Throughout her career, Lina’s built and theoretical work was structured by her thoughts on a flexible idea of time, as shown beautifully in its full complexity by Olivia de Oliveira's work Lina Bo Bardi: Sutis Substâncias da Arquitetura[3]. As Oliveira states, Lina’s architecture acts as a time condenser, for example, through the constant use of spirals such as the ones represented by large stairs that create secondary spaces within themselves, she designs structures not only of passing but also of permanence. These structures then cease to be unidirectional and progressive, and become a hurricane with an abundance of things happening at the same time. Through the use of specific forms, symbolisms, connective elements, and by proposing alternative user paths in space, Lina's architecture can then be seen as permeated by "devices to collapse time"[4]. She would later even state that “linear time is a Western invention, time is not linear, it is a wonderful tangle where, at any moment, points can be chosen and solutions invented, without beginning or end”[5].Time can be perceived as a wonderful tangle where one could transit free and consciously as shown by the influence that the ancient geological structures at Vila Velha’s site had on the design of the Chame-Chame House.
Lina's commission for the Chame-Chame House coincided with an invitation to teach at the architecture program at Universidade Federal da Bahia, starting a period of intense research in Bahia that would last from 1958 to 1964[6]. At the beginning of 1958, Lina traveled to Salvador to visit the chosen site for the house, which she immediately praised due to the presence of a large Jaqueira (jackfruit)[7]. Shortly after, she developed a first study for the house, which refers, conceptually and spatially, to the design of her own Glass House. Chame-Chame’s early design is characterized by an orthogonal plan distributed in three different floors resulting in a rigid block located on the top of the site’s hill. The façade is defined by a continuous balcony that connects interior and exterior spaces, a variation of the belvedere-house exemplified by the unbound relation between the great salon and the tropical forest at the Glass House.[8]
As pointed out by Zeuler Lima, one of the first perspective drawings she sketched seems to match perfectly — in all its proportions and structural elements such as slabs and columns — with a famous photograph, taken by Peter Scheier, of the Glass House “standing as the Acropolis on the hill soon after it was built”[9]. Although the drawings suggest a complex natural environment at the site which interacts with the house at certain moments, the house assumes the position of being placed in nature. Lina later defines this inorganic approach to architecture as "relating to nature with a certain reserve, which is its reserve to the irrational.”[10]This relation is also illustrated by the presence of a dendroid (tree-shaped) column on the entrance façade that dialogues directly with the Jaqueira situated at its side[11]. Within this context, the column seems to represent a statement that, once within the boundaries of the building's footprint, the natural and organic automatically transforms according to architectonic terms. The design was approved with enthusiasm by the clients, but shortly after, and without their request, Lina collected the drawings and changed the design completely[12]. Lina’s discomfort with the approved design and its subsequent action cannot be underestimated. More than just a formal decision, this decisive moment can represent a complex reflection on her own idea of architecture and its relation to nature and time.
The change is radical. Where once there was a rational grid guiding the position of walls, columns, slabs and stairs, now one can only see an organic form that dialogs — through curves, voids, and bended shapes— with the site’s topography and its natural elements, especially the Jaqueira, which continues as one of the only reminiscent references from the previous design. During the first sequences of the new studies, the plan is defined by two inverted “C-shape” volumes that originate, in their voids, two courtyards with specific symbolisms: an oratory and a fireplace[13]. Protected by the curved walls, both voids represent, more than enclosed spaces, recesses caused by a sort of erosion that made it possible to connect these two cores with its surroundings[14]. This was the first time that such free forms appeared in Lina’s work, and it would follow her designs from this point onwards. But what stimulated this point of inflection towards a more organic approach to architecture? On a lecture held at Salvador that same year, Lina mentions this transition:
“ […] Organic architecture, close to nature, seeks to identify with it, surrenders without showing resistance, without wishing to dominate it, accepts it and loves it, takes from it the taste for the prime and rustic materials, and besides all doesn’t want to be forgotten and wants to remember every time its laws [that of the nature], into the dynamism of its shapes, on the not completed, on the endless shapes. […] This acceptance of nature the way it is presented to us, on the spectacle of the continuous mutation, we perceived through the photographs that we made in Vila Velha, near Ponta Grossa, in the state of Paraná.”[15]
[2] Lina Bo Bardi, Ground floor plan, 1958, Pencil on tracing paper, 347x502mm. Instituto Lina Bo e P. M. Bardi.
Between constant flights from São Paulo to Salvador in 1958, Lina decided to visit the geological site of Vila Velha, located in the south of Brazil, with a group of staff members from MASP[16]. Vila Velha consists of a large group of sandstone formations sculpted by the action of water and wind during several geological eras. The history of these lavish natural sculptures can be divided in two different stages. First, the formation of the sandstone itself and second, its erosion which is responsible for the creation of its forms. Somehow, to understand this geological formation's history and to put it face to face with Lina’s design, is to go through this “wonderful tangle” and to pick common points, overlapping even though millions of years apart.
The sandstone that constitutes Vila Velha’s geological park is of a specific type called fluvioglacial sandstone. This means that its formation is a direct result of millions of years of self-assembling through sedimentation and compaction caused by the action of glaciers movements back when the south of Brazil was attached to Africa and partially covered with ice[17]. The geological history is seen through the recording of specific characteristics on the stones’ surface, such as the constant presence of pebbles inclusions and exfoliation forms, making it available to trace its faraway past[18]. These pebble inclusions were created through the flow of defrosted water within the sandstone over millions of years. By visually analyzing the angles created by the inclusions, it’s even possible to understand the directions of the continental ice sheet’s movement[19]. But these geological memories are not made only from inorganic matter: Vila Velha’s area also hosts a significant and large collection of fossil sites. Records of an underwater living past and rock paintings present on the wall’s surfaces reveal an archaeological trace of ancient human presence. It is inevitable to relate this geological history, which Lina documented in a variety of scales through photographs, with the design for the Chame-Chame House. The external surface treatment applied to its walls is defined by a textured masonry surface covered with gravel, pebbles, ceramic shards (initially representing marine elements[20]) algae, ivy, tropical plants, and even plastic doll’s parts, such as arms, legs, and heads[21]. The result is the creation of a living wall — built upon both inanimate and living memories — which Oliveira calls muros-relatos (narrative walls).[22]
[3]
Reinhard Maack, Glacial
material propelled in Vila Velha’s sandstone surface as proof of its
fluvioglacial origin, 1946, photo. MUPA – Museu Paranaense.
[4]
Detail of the sandstone’s
surface documented during Lina Bo Bardi’s trip to Vila Velha in 1958.
Attributed to
Luiz Hossaka. Instituto Lina Bo e
P. M. Bardi.
[5]
Chame-Chame
House, Salvador, 1958-1964, view from the upper terrace. Photograph by Hugo
Segawa.
After millions of years of sedimentation and compaction, the sandstone surface started to suffer from natural erosion, resulting in the unique forms of this geological archipelago. In ancient times, the whole area of the geological site was a large sandstone plateau that protected the lower layers made of a softer mineral. Through the constant exposure to water, initially from the glacial defrost and later from rain, this monolithic plateau was subdivided into large blocks. With this constant flow of water scouring straight lines on the rocks, valleys similar to streets were created between the larger structures which are now sculpted in a variety of shapes. This resulted in Vila Velha giving the impression of being a “fossil city” as defined by pioneer researcher Reinhard Maack in 1946[23]. This slow and natural process is directly related to Lina’s design. Viewing from the outside, the house is characterized by a set of overlapping rounded shape volumes that seem to have been outcropped from the site itself. Thus, to walk around the house and to ascend to its upper levels is to walk “on a mountain path”[24]exacerbated by the almost symbiotic relationship between the house and its natural surroundings, the house itself becomes nature[25].
[6]
Vila Velha’s
sandstone sculptures documented during Lina Bo Bardi’s trip to Vila Velha in
1958.Attributed to
Luiz Hossaka. Instituto Lina Bo e
P. M. Bardi.
[7]
Chame-Chame House,
Salvador, 1958-1964, view from the western side. Photograph by Hugo Segawa.
It’s almost as if the house was a product of natural interaction, shaped by water and wind just as much as by the hands of a craftsman. Erosion slowly revealed memories originating within the walls, excavated the imagined courtyards, and directed the rainwater through a series of gargoyles distributed all around the house. The design process characterizes a “condensation of time” through an endless shape that synthesizes millions of years of geological transformations and memories, represented by the surfaces seen on Vila Velha, in one act.
The design’s condensation of time can be seen as a back and forth action occurring in a single movement, like Curupira’s steps. The house is transported to a place faraway in the past and borrows patiently crafted memories to design and build a structure at the present. The structure seemed to always have been there, just waiting to be inhabited. Lina’s own personality represented a non-linear backwards rush as she once declared that “I never wanted to be young. What I wanted was to have history. When 25 I desired to write my memories, but didn’t have enough material”[26]. And why not a desire to design her own archaeological discovery? Just as Vila-Velha’s sculptural shapes are defined precisely by its disappearance — a return to its original state — it is almost as if, from this moment, Lina’s architecture starts to have its form defined by its erosion, more than to its sedimentation. The design is a creation act tied to its own condition of finitude, working with what is left.
[8] Vila Velha’s
sandstone sculptures documented during Lina Bo Bardi’s trip to Vila Velha in
1958. Attributed to
Luiz Hossaka. Instituto Lina Bo e
P. M. Bardi.
[9]
Chame-Chame
House, Salvador, 1958-1964, view of the front façade. Photograph by Rubem
R. Nogueira Jr.
Lina’s understanding of the relation between nature and architecture is attached with several time references: to be forgotten, to remember, on the not completed, on the endless shapes, and continuous mutation. Time is precisely the prime element that connects, conciliates, and even equates her architecture with nature. Borrowing de Landa’s reflections on the idea of a non-linear history[27], it is possible to understand the creation of both inorganic and organic memories responsible for the formation of Vila Velha’s sculptures and the design of the Chame-Chame House. Their creation was not a result of the idea of a linear progress, but of a constant dynamic of self-assembling and phase change which makes it possible to condense millions of years in one overlapping moment. The idea of before and after can be dissolved to see both natural and human-made manifestations as different ways in which nature’s matter-energy, not to say time, expresses itself[28]. In other words, before and after resulting in forms of the same value, overlapping points on a “wonderful tangle”, to walk freely —and to design— on the spectacle of the continuous mutation. What differs mostly between these two expressions would be precisely the speed of the recycling and changing of this constantly flowing reality[29]: several more millions of years for the conclusion of Vila Velha’s erosion and the mutation of its memories (which already happened before) or—unfortunately—less than 30 years for the Chame-Chame House[30].
The result is a house-manifesto that implies a critique of the current idea of progress, with its destructive wind that constantly leaves ruins to erosion while simultaneously preventing one from touching, addressing and rebuilding them; a condition well represented by Benjamin’s angel. It is a critique to an after characterized by the complete disintegration of memories, cultural homogenization, and the creation of a future without a past[31]. The alternative would be to fulfill the present with memories — to “consider the past as historical-present”[32]. In other words, to tangle a linear concept of time and to embrace this non-linear dynamic by, just as Lina, walking on Curupira’s steps while questioning the idea of progress as an after, after all.
