In Memoriam: o trabalho de Recuperação e atualização do passado em Obra já demolida — a casa Nordschild

In Memoriam: the process of recuperation and updating in the past of already demolished work – Nordschild house Many important works in the collection of Rio de Janeiro’s modern architecture were demolished throughout the years to make room for other buildings. Despite the importance they held within their era or their appeal to Brazilian architectural history, little was left of them in terms of documents. Being the case of the residence, which was the focus of our study: Nordschild house (Copacabana, 1930-1931), architect Gregori Warchavchik’s project. The relative absence of iconography left defining aspects of its architectonical project incognito, perplexing the work’s global comprehension and even the technical plants in the bibliography where the work was mentioned did not correspond to pictures of the period. Aiming at recovering the memory of such buildings this proposition, that we now present, accomplished inside Casas Brasileiras do Século XX (ProArq-FAU-UFRJ) field of research, founded an archeological study which focused on revealing the originally constructed projects of the residence. As we can see, the conclusive analyses are constructed based not only on acquired documentation and produced graphical analyses, but they are based, overall, on the work’s investigation by means of its reconstruction in three- dimensional models. In spite of being confident over the results it is necessary to remark that we understand this reconstructive process and its results as that of a translation which, as we know is also treason, and even more problematic in the case of these exemplars that no longer exist. However, and in its favor, we believe it must be understood that such an investigative operation institutes a re-architecture since it illuminates works hidden in erroneous and unstructured information regenerating them. Therefore, re-meriting and fencing these against amnesia, bringing back the quality they had lost and allowing their consistent and adequate usage in several disciplinary locus.