A carpintaria das formas livres: um pavilhão em Porto Alegre

This paper discusses the Pavilion known as Mata-borrão (the "blotter"), built in 1961, which was a singular contribution to the architecture o Porto Alegre. Designed by Architect Marcos David Heckman (b. 1931), the light structure has originally been an exhibition stand of the State administration's public works, during Leonel Brizola's term as governor (1959-1963). It later sheltered the Rio Grande do Sul State's Second Salon of Architecture, in 1962, and the Press Center of the Universiade that happened in the city in 1963. The ephemeral building has transiently occupied a site with high building potential at Avenida Borges de Medeiros. The unusual prismatic shape, which also evoked the outlines of the human eye, overtly adopted as its matrix the auditorium designed by Oscar Niemeyer for a public school in Belo Horizonte (1951). The nonpermanent Pavilion was appropriately built in timber, with corrugated metal roof and glass panels on the façade, so displaying a possible alternative to concrete, the building material idealized by the main current of Brazilian Architecture at that moment. Besides the interest aroused by the Pavilion itself, this paper focuses this building as a pretext to reflect upon three ambiguous questions concerning Modern architecture. The first one is addressed to the material issue, to the surprising capacity of Modern architecture to employ available resources and adequate techniques to fulfill envisaged forms. The second, deals with the adoption of authorial forms as reproducible matrixes, so opposing the condition of necessary originality prescribed to Modern architecture. The third, finally, assesses the Pavilion as an image of modernity, stressing its transient promotional function as the motif responsible for its experimental bias.