Museu Oscar Niemeyer: o anexo como protagonista

The article deals with the building "The Eye" (2000-2002) a project by Oscar Niemeyer by which turned into a museum one of his own earlier work - the building Humberto Castelo Branco, originally designed in 1967, was designed to house the Institute of Education of Paraná, in Curitiba. However, for political reasons, it housed for a long time several state secretariats. The proposition to it use as a museum occurred more than three decades after the original design. In 2002, the then State Governor Jaime Lerner invited the architect to develop the expansion and the conversion of the building into a museum. The article confronts some interpretations of Oscar Niemeyer’s projective procedures through verifications on the development of solutions proposed in 2002, in relation to the repertoire and compositional behaviors observable in 1967. It is located in the continuity of the topics presented in the 7th DOCOMOMO Brazil and III PROJETAR which dealt with building recycling- rearchitecture, requalification - both held in Porto Alegre in 2007. The pre-existing building, though it contained quality architecture, has long been overlooked in the historiography of the works of the architect. We just need to note its absence in the book of J. Ma. Botey (1996), considered one of the best in recording the work of Oscar Niemeyer. Still, its proposition is pioneering in the work of O.N. to contain a large volume, defined by a completely closed box (chevron building). Its sidewalls and the cellular internal walls function as beams enabling large spans and balances relying on 24 truncated pyramidal pillars, allowing a free ground. This proposal worked as a rehearsal for the building design of the classrooms of the University of Costantine (1969-1972). The conversion of the building to a museological function occurred through a project of internal restructuring and the establishment of an "annex" requalifying the old work and still expanding its public use. The definition of the building known as "The Eye" as an "Annex" is debatable. Attachments are categorized in architecture dictionaries as additional parts or appendages to existing buildings. Almost always they are configured as new wings, additions of smaller bodies or buildings to receive additional programs. In his acceptance of the invitation from Jaime Lerner, Niemeyer conditioned his project to the implementation of a new building that would become a symbol of today's cultural institution. It showed a willingness to make the desired extension or "annex" in a deliberate definition: the new building should have starring role in relation to the pre-existing building. The article in this assumption makes a reading of the elements and procedures that Niemeyer would have used (or not) in terms of new proposals for recycling of modern building from 1967. The analysis of these actions will be conducted from three prevailing interpretations, within recognized procedures in the architect's work. The first one is that in the most recent works, he used repertoires and compositional procedures with which he had already turned into his language. The second is that the architect extended, between the initial work and the recycling project, his architectural repertoire, both in order to adapt museological programs, as well as in the repertoire of tectonic forms structures, which he used. The third is based on the idea that the "annex" has a protagonist role is due not only to the reuse of elements from his own arsenal, already built throughout his career, but to new relationships among them, which made possible to engage in its recycling new relationships among components of his own language, not fixing only on the mere appearance of its elements. What is manifested among known elements of his repertoire as the bars, the shells, the chalices, circular buildings, towers, hubcaps, ramps and organic pergolas etc. is the proposition of the Oscar Niemeyer Museum not as an "annex", but it reverberates a protagonist that, through new relationships with the place, with modern pre-existences, update propositions and leads to a qualified conversion.