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SASBE Journal

Date and Venue

SASBE2012 will be held in São Paulo, Brazil, between June 28^th and 29^th 2012, at the Architecture and Urban Planning Faculty [FAU Building] of the University of São Paulo.
Side activities will take place on June 27^th, and a technical tour is being planned for June 27^th | 30^th, according to availability and demand. Detailed program will be informed as soon as it is defined. The Preliminary program is available here.

FAU Building | History

The Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo - FAU [Architecture and Urban Planning Faculty] building on the campus of the Universidade de Sao Paulo - USP [University of Sao Paulo] was commissioned to Vilanova Artigas (1915 - 1985), who co-designed it with Carlos Cascaldi in 1961. A professor at the school of architecture of USP, Artigas executed a project for the faculty which bears witness to the guidelines of his conception of architecture, as well as his ideas on the training of architects. On the flat site of the University campus, he tested and perfected solutions already tried, e.g. in two state colleges in São Paulo, Itanhaem (1960-1961) and Guarulhos (1961), also executed in partnership with Cascaldi. The use of crude concrete, glass, the simplicity of its lines, as well as the emphasis on integrating the spaces characterized these economic, functional and artistically original buildings.

The FAU building (1966-1969) appeared from the outside as a large parallelepiped in concrete, supported by pillars in the form of double trapezia, lightly resting on the ground. The contrast between the light points of support and the weight of the volume that they supported was combined with the play between closed planes (on the upper part) and glass or open surfaces (on the lower part). The movement that the front proposed allowed a glimpse of the internal spaces of the building, also conceived on the basis of an alternation between high and low planes, full and empty volumes, straight and curved lines (employed on the spiral intended for the directors of the museum). The central proposal of the project lay in the idea of spatial continuity, made explicit by the large central void. The six floors, linked by broad ramps with gentle and variable slopes, give the sensation of a single plane. All of the spaces of the building are physically interlinked: the divisions used to separate them, do not actually separate them but merely indicate differences in uses and functions. The broad open spaces and the communication between the different sectors underline the need for coexistence and the ideal of a community way of life supported by the architecture of Artigas.

Given listed status by the Conselho de Defesa do Patrimônio Histórico, Artístico, Arqueológico e Turístico do Estado de São Paulo - Condephaat [São Paulo State Heritage Committee], the FAU/USP building is considered one of Artigas' master works, with him emerging in the 1950s and becoming one of the leading figures in architecture in Sao Paulo during the following decade. A committed teacher and left-wing militant, Artigas developed his own architectural language which sought a synthesis between the organic architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright (1867 - 1959), above all his Prairie houses, and the language of rationalist architecture of Le Corbusier (1887 - 1966), in vogue at the Rio school of Lucio Costa (1902 - 1998), Affonso Eduardo Reidy (1909 - 1964) and Oscar Niemeyer (1907). "Brutalism" was the term that some applied to the "Sao Paulo School" architecture style and Artigas itself, who allied themselves to the Anglo-American movement of the mid-1950s. Artigas vehemently refused such labels and comparisons in a series of articles written throughout his professional life. In any case, he located his inspirations and lessons in various tendencies: Wright, Le Corbusier, the Bauhaus.

Text extracted and edited from Enciclopedia ItauCultural

Conference focus

The conference will focus on Emerging economies, which creates a very fertile opportunity to also build upon discussions developed in the week before during the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development | Rio+20, scheduled for June 20^th and 22^nd in Rio de Janeiro. Rio+20 Conference will focus on two themes: (a) a green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication; and (b) the institutional framework for sustainable development.

The concept of green economy focuses primarily on the intersection between environment and economy. The UNEP report "Towards a green economy: pathways to sustainable development and poverty erradication" demonstrates that the greening of economies is not generally a drag on growth but rather a new engine of growth; that it is a net generator of decent jobs, and that it is also a vital strategy for the elimination of persistent poverty. In the report's Part II (Investing in energy and resource efficiency), two chapters were dedicated to sustainability of the built environment, namely to buildings and cities. The report also aimed at motivating policy makers to create the enabling conditions for increased investments in a transition to a green economy.

The discussion on Institutional Framework for Sustainable Development (IFSD) responds to the need addressed in Chapter XI of the 2002 Johannesburg Plan of Implementation (JPOI), and encompasses the role of institutions comprising the economic and social pillars, how to step up efforts to bridge the gap between the international financial institutions (IFIs) and the multilateral development banks (MDBs), and the UN agencies, programmes and funds, and enhance the integration of sustainable development in their activities.