Brutalismo na pradaria: o Clube do Professor Gaúcho (CPG) em Porto Alegre — 1966

The Brazilian Modern Architecture disseminated in the south, mainly from the half of the 1940s to the mid- 1970s - in which a evident connection is observed with the architecture produced in the middle region of the country, in particular that of Rio De Janeiro in the 1930´s and São Paulo in the late 1950´s and 1960´s – acquired specific characteristics which are not enough to differentiate it from the European and North American schools, differently from the Rio De Janeiro and São Paulo ones, that respectively present qualities belonging to certain specific architectural expressions, even if they were only observed recently. The absence of compromise with the representative load of the federal capital, in that time located in Rio De Janeiro, and with the large scale determined by the national economical center, at that time located in São Paulo, associated with other idiosyncratic, economic, political and mesological differences, plus the proximity with the Latin-America southern region, in particular with Uruguay, have - instead of regionalizing the representative modern architecture in Rio Grande do Sul – endowed it with additional connections with the Modern Movement in more abstract and universal ways then with its Brazilian counterparts, as well as with more austerity and frugality. Both the architecture and the urbanism in the south, incorporate themselves in the ordinary architecture of the capital and with its urban evolution, with particular consistency of the formal qualities associated with rationality and constructive rigor. Porto Alegre´s brutalism, that had some penetration among architects of various generations, like Léo Bondard, Marcos David Hekman, Jorge D. Debiage, César Dorfamn, Ivan Mizoguchi and Cairo Abuquerque da Silva that have in the works of the Sede Campestre do SESC, from Moojen and Vallandro, iniciated and finished during the 1960s, and in Fayet´s Evangelical Center, in 1959, some of its precursors. The designs in Porto Alegren however, have a sense of accommodation within the urban contextual scale and a landscape that helps its incorporation in the tissue or the environment. In that sense, the Clube do Professor Gaucho, from Moacyr Moojen Marques and João José Vallandro, the produce of the herculean effort of the state professors in creating a country club for its members, has created the opportunity for a design in a plain terrain, regular and of monumental dimensions: seventy meters wide and five hundred meters long, in front of a river and with striking natural landscape, and just like the palaces in Brasília positioned transversely in relation to the terrain, with a removal of one hundred and fifty meters, maintaining in visual range of the public space a set of centenary figs existent in the site. The landscape treatment of this grand garden, besides the fence, entry lobby, designed with concrete pieces “loose” from de main building, a pedestrian and vehicle access, interferes very little in the natural landscape, characterizing a generous look, just as the gaucho prairie, with predominantly horizontal lines and some tree covers. The club´s design , just as others made inside that context, in a certain way exemplify a condition of equilibrium between formal determined drawing and judicious observance to the program , besides rigorous detailing proportionated by a somewhat conservative society, which creates a parallel with the connection with São Paulo and evidenciates more moderation and parsimony..