Arquiteturas efêmeras: dois momentos de Modernidade na arquitetura gaúcha

If we can say that architecture, as an axpression of buildings contingencies, keep a solid relationn to the concrete object, the building; then it's possible to say that it's not always that the building exists as corporeal material. There is a variety of buildings which the temporary character of its existence was not enough to wash them way from memory, and yet created permanente references as the German Pavilion, de Mies van der Rohe, which took place of the Universal Exposition in 1929 in Barcelona. It was originally conceived as a temporary construction, rebuilt on the 80's of the 20th century, highlighting its iconic relevance to the Modern Movement. At the same time and at the same place, a Josep Lluís Sert' project, the Sapanish Pavilion of the International Exposition of Paris of 1937, was constructed. Located in a similar ground to its original, the Sapanish Pavilion rebuilding pursuit to transcent the memories of the past, materializing its artistic and political anxieties of a significant historical Spanish moment, which was brutal interrupted by the civil war. The urban imaginary history of Porto Alegre, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul – Brazil, does not exist without the presence of two moments of modernity that clearly reflected the "pavilion culture". The first moment was expressed through the pavilions that composed "Mostra Centenário Farroupilha" in 1935, a great exposition that took place in the old "Varzea da Redenção" and inaugurated the bases of the actual "Parque Farroupilha". Yet, this first moment allegorically formalized the ingress of a spring, ecletic and renovating modernity in this state. Twenty five years later, another pavilion, isolated this time, repeats the condition of designating and catalyzing a new modernizing trend. The "Pavilhão do Rio Grande do Sul", populary called "mata-borrão", is a Marcos David Heckman's project of 1931 (which theme is the exposition named "Panorama de uma administração"; what expresses the administration of the stated by that time) and was conceived as an expositor place of the public state works created during the engineer Leonel Brisola's government. Since its inauguration it was identified, in Rio Grande do Sul, as a manifestation of modernity and received the first prize of "Salão de Arquitetura do Rio Grande do Sul" that is promoted by IAB-RS (the local institute of architects of Brazil). This text searches for a reflection on the aspects of this context, where "Pavilhão das Exposições", in a essencially ephemeral condition, operates as a laboratory to express its singular character, trying to imprint limits that are not allowed by other functional conditions. This pavilion is a place of exception, of the original and of representation and, at the same time, is a especially intense place of passage. The pavilion history and its imaginary, both of brief permanency, are usually revived by some local chronics; vacant memories of a visitor; rare and dispersed images of plants and drawing and also few photographs found almost by chance in a familiar album or a file. But then, it's in collective memory that the permanency of the fugacious building is established; when the transitory transforms itself in permanent.