Brutally modern walls: the supremacy of the hybrid building in São Paulo’s architecture in the 1960s

Abstract

The view of an architecture of punctual supports, like the Parthenon, historically captures architects' desire regarding the construction with the structural wall. In the Renaissance, beyond the freestanding columns, the skeleton is represented amid the surfaces: Brunelleschi at Pazzi Chapel; Alberti at Palazzo Rucellai. At the end of the nineteenth century, the structural framework was made concrete: the independent structure with its punctual supports made continuous constructive systems of structural walls obsolete. In its assimilation, Le Corbusier promotes a specific independent structure, proposed in the Dom-Ino house, with free disposition of walls without visible beams. In Brazil, Lucio Costa understands the Dom-Ino- ype skeleton by the characteristic and preferential structure of modern architecture, which connects to special structures and walls for hybrid alternatives. In this sense, works of São Paulo Brutalism evidence the coexistence of punctual and continuous supports. This article discusses the radical transformations in this architecture not by its materiality but as a rupture of this hierarchic system. The wall, until then attributed as a pure cladding element, is a fundamental agent of systemic mutation, with hybrid, formal, and constructive perception. The investigation reveals the importance of hybrid solutions under the tensions between structural behavior and  formal demands.