Development of ethical form, two times: Vilanova Artigas and Rem Koolhaas

Abstract

This post doctoral project aims to develop the results achieved with the proponent doctoral research (process 07/56344-9, concluded in 2011), regarding the relationship between form and function in contemporary design methodologies. Among the issues opened up by the doctoral research, it was possible to identify affinities between the design methodologies of João Batista Vilanova Artigas - Brazilian architect exponent of the Paulista Architecture and Rem Koolhaas - Dutch contemporary architect. Both architects, each one in his specific context and time, propose an ethical form: conceived inside the respective political/economical/social systems, subtlety subversive in its will of integration among user, architecture and urban context. In order to do so, the design project works as an open platform that sews complex programs with the immediate urban context, throughout spatial, topographical and volumetric relationships. The concern with an ethical architectonic posture was crucial in the 1960 /1970 Artigas' work and it is being recovered nowadays by several authors, architects and philosophers, as a way to rescue the architects and the architecture's importance in the building of the contemporary city, mastered by late capitalism speculative real state processes. The investigation of the modern Paulista heritage through Artigas' legacy versus the contemporary architectonic production influenced by Koolhaas' theory and practice opens up a new path to the understanding of contemporary ideas in its relation with the modern movement. (AU)