Superfícies abstratas: o elemento cerâmico como textura na Arquitetura Moderna Brasileira

For centuries the clay in the form of massive blocks was a key element for setting vertical planes. The structural bricks were used in Brazilian architecture since the colonial period, a traditional answer to compositional and structural issues until the early twentieth century. The Brazilian technical and constructive context always been conducive to the use of bricks- derived clay material that remained employed for constructing walls, even after the emergence of the independent structure made of reinforced concrete. However, it is precisely when modernism sets new compositional paradigms that the ceramic block as texture arises. The traditional ceramic brick, before solid, becomes light and perforated. The repetition of this small elements creates patterns and this texture is an abstract alternative instead of the heavy and massive volumes of colonial and eclectic architecture. The concept of texture, as well as rhythm, is related to the action of repetition. Modern architecture also explored new strategies in the use of rhythm, valuing asymmetries and balance, instead of repeating a mirror action. But still, it was the texture, not the rhythm, the compositional principle responsible for the tendency to abstraction in modern facades. Texturing plans brought lightness to the purists and flat volumes, expanding the possibilities of combinations with the inevitable glass wall. The paper will approach, from this point of view, some iconic works of the period between 1930 and 1970, where the use of perforated ceramic element was explored as a texture. Given this context, compositional, technical and functional parallels will be drawn through the analysis of this material application in projects selected under the texturizing criterion. Among them, the Brazilian Pavilion in New York (1939), of Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, and the buildigns at the Guinle Park (1948), of Costa. The potential of ceramic elements as texture, which balance the weight in the facade composition while establishing a new relation of visual permeability, have also been explored in small residential architecture. One example is the residence Couto e Silva (1953), of Affonso Eduardo Reidy, that also is a reference in the analysis proposed within this panorama. Through a formal connection, the paper aims to establish a relationship between abstraction and the use of ceramic perforated elements in the configuration of facades in Brazilian modern architecture.