Factory and Ideology: The Development of Modern Thought and Industrial Architecture in the City of São Paulo (1889 - 1930)

Abstract

By the eighteenth century, in the international panorama, as a result of processes of industrialization and urban growth there were numerous experiments called “modern” related to the evolution of materials and conceptual and aesthetic revisions that in the industrial architecture had a range of prominent possibilities with distinguished examples in the early twentieth century. Taking this conjuncture as a reference, the analysis focuses on the city of São Paulo during the late nineteenth century until 1930, when part of the capital of coffee elite was invested in the implementation of the industrial park. This study aims to check how the precepts of the international incipient modern ideology were incorporated into the industrial architecture developed at this moment in the growing paulista capital. From the characterization of some factories it was found that the main source of this approach to modern ideas relates to the large "functional mass" from the advent of rationalism produced in Europe between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which the main characteristics were: the search of functionality, cost reduction, structural modulation and standardization of the openings. In this way it is verified that both the rising industrial elite and the professionals involved in construction in São Paulo do not regard the contemporary industrial architecture solutions in Europe characterized by a lower degree of pragmatism and a more formal review. So, this work aims to contribute to an evaluation where this relative gap is concerned to the approach on the manufacturing program, which is related to the different degrees of understanding of the modern ideology in its totality.