Mentions of erudite tradition: the role of precedent in Lucio Costa's architectural conception

Résumé

This article carefully examines various texts published by the architect and urban planner Lucio Costa over time, in which reference to the erudite tradition is evident, intending to analyse them critically. To this end, hypotheses will be raised that seek to clarify the focus of this theme, centred on understanding the reasons for the tradition that justify indications of the leading role attributed by Costa to the use of precedent as the foundation of his architectural conception. The reviews here begin by analysing the theoretical framework that eventually founded modern architecture in Brazil, entitled "Razões da nova arquitetura" (Reasons for the new architecture), from 1934. The selected texts cover the period from the thirties to the fifties, and their contents do not exhaust the theme of this article, but they do represent an essential sample in terms of the focus revered here, that is, verifying how Costa's thinking shapes the discourse that validates the architect's operative option. It is, therefore, in the set of arguments introduced by Lucio Costa in his written work that we will seek to interpret the reasons that led the Brazilian master to value the classical-academic erudite tradition and not to leave it aside (or hide it), as many modern architects did. This latter attitude ended up leading, at least in the most superficial discourse, to the characterisation of modern architecture as an instrument for breaking with the past: the condition of modernity, in this case, would imply creating unprecedented works based on technological and pragmatic issues from which would emanate an original aesthetic - an international style - detached from time and place. In contrast, Costa, as has already been mentioned, takes on a unique role in this context of modern architecture precisely because he never shies away from the explicit study of precedents rooted both in the erudite production of the past and the popular traditions underlying it.