Edifício sede da ELETROSUL, em Florianópolis

ELETROSUL's Headquarters Building, Florianópolis: The monolith's refinement With the installation of Santa Catarina's Federal University, in 1960, and the headquarters of South Brasil's Eletric Central (ELETROSUL), in 1978, Florianópolis had a significant social, economical and urban space advance. Both the federal institutions located in neighbor areas, in Pantanal district, gave a boost to the expansion of this area, at the time periferic to the foundational downtown. In this process, others state institutions (TELESC in 1976, CREA-SC in 1978 and CELESC in 1988) installed themselves in the surroundings, in the Itacorubi district, with their own significative buildings. As a result of the arrival of professionals from other brazilian states to Florianópolis, the technological modernization and new architectural and constructive parameters linked to national and international patterns were introduced in the city. Buildings and urban spaces that form today a documental patrimony in the city’s landscape. The ELETROSUL’s headquarters building, of Luís Forte Netto e Orlando Busarello authorship, was the winner project of a public contest taken in 1975 and inaugurated in 1978. Conceived in a massive external volume made of apparent steel concrete, it has a facade part protected by horizontal metallic brise-soleils and it’s implanted in a lifted level which evidences and gives a monumental aspect to the robust horizontality of the squared prism that raises from the soil. The architecture desing takes as it’s main element the distribution of the access and the architectural program from a central hall which allows the acquaintanceship and visual contact of it’s floors, connecting them by a whole of stairs and elevators. This great void is lightened by a modulated cover made of aluminium latticework closed by translucent glass domes. The modulation of the columns structure allows freedom to the disposal of different spaces. The care with the execution of the concrete pieces and metallic structures was determinative for the work’s final quality, showing that the technical domain was prevalent in the project’s elaboration and specification. That associated with constant maintenance provided the preservation of the building, sustaining the quality of the originals constructive materials even with some alterations and complementations made as the had gone through. Inserted in the late context of brazilian brutalists works, the ELETROSUL building is a significant example of the typological solution adapted to regional context of the use of the apparent concrete, building a projectual language that exploits the concrete’s plasticity in it’s stiffness and appearance to obtain the monolithical plastical expression associated to the finishing refinement and the resultant spaces quality. Graduated by Mackenzie University, in 1958, Luís Forte Netto settled his first office in the IAB building in São Paulo. As a student made part of Pedro Paulo de Melo Saraiva’s team for the Brasília contest. In 1961, lived and worked in Curitiba. Had taken part in important nacional contests, which had won the Santa Monica Club in Curitiba, and the Petrobras building in Rio de Janeiro. Looking for the connections between Forte Netto’s professional experience and the ELETROSUL project, it can be observed that this work represents and synthetizes the journey of his career putting in evidence the principles and conceptions of his architecture. Hereby manifest the prismatic volumetric architectural party generated by subtractions, the use of apparent concrete in the structures, of flat slab and cantilever beams, of the covering in galleries as an element of connection between different areas, the brises-soleils in the facades, elements that reinforce and connect it’s vinculation with others authors works and his conceptuals references.