A History of historic landscape in Brazil: a practical knowledge

Ref.: 258
Key theme: 03 Visual integrity of historic urban landscapes
Date of reception: 15/11/2008

AUTHORS (*Main author)

RUBINO, Silvana * (Brazil) - State University of Campinas

ABSTRACT

It is a common place to argue that the practice of preserving heritage started worldwide
with the protection of monuments. According with this statement, only after the Venice
Charter of 1964 we began to pay attention to neighborhoods, city centers and historic
towns. The policy and practice of dealing with such themes in Brazil has their origins in
1937, when a group of modernist artists and intellectuals found institutional shelter in a
strong government with Getulio Vargas. The Serviço do Patrimônio Histórico e
Artístico Nacional (SPHAN) [The Historical National Heritage Institute] was founded
in 1937 and in 1938 it landmarked Five historical centers: Diamantina, São João del
Rei, Serro, Tiradentes and Ouro Preto. Ouro Preto, that was declared National
Monument prior to the foundation of SPHAN, had the whole town preserved.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the practice of preserving historical sites with the
history of these towns that were declared "historical". Through these examples we can
trace the shifts in approaches and postures concerning to preservation. During the 1930's
these sites were a kind of laboratory of nationalism: they were obsolete and decaying
from an economical point of view, and intact and beautiful enough to be framed as art
masterpiece. I present the hypothesis of a strong influence of Camillo Sitte and his
Stadtbau during the first years of SPHAN, especially if we examine the way the
institution treated these town as a work of art, restoring each building as a piece of a
building. As a consequence, the tracks of some Nineteenth Century redevelopments
were erased, and the groups of buildings were re- conducted to their colonial appearance
(the independence of Brazil was in 1822). At the same time, in Ouro Preto, the SPHAN
authorized a new hotel, designed and constructed in the 1940's by the architect Oscar
Niemeyer. This building is a masterpiece of modern movement, the so called
International Style, but it tried to "quote" some elements of colonial Brazilian and
Portuguese architecture. This hotel, encompassed by a strong polemic that need the
interference of SPHAN to be built, is a premature example of the challenge of building
contemporary architecture in a historical urban landscape. For this reason, it is one of
the examples to be analyzed in a group of towns that have accompanied the shifts and
challenges of the field of cultural heritage for seventy years.
In 1980, Ouro Preto was nominated as World Heritage by UNESCO. In 1986 there was
a shift in its classification: the town was inscribed in the Historical book, as well as in
the Ethnographical, Archaeological and Landscape book of "tombamento" (the
Brazilian term to the inscription in the books of landmarking) whereas it has been
classified as a masterpiece in 1938. So we had a transfer of the frame of reference, from
work of art to historical landscape. In 1988, the new constitutional chart of Brazil
declared that the protection of our heritage is a responsibility of the municipalities and
declared that any citizen can demand the protection of a heritage good. So, the field of
preserving heritage and historical towns was transformed, not only by a shift of
principles and legal approaches in Brazil, but in dialogue with international tendencies
as well. Nevertheless, Declaration on the Conservation of Historic Urban Landscapes
is a achievement of 2005, and to investigate its effects is an historical site is an urgent
task. Is it possible that SPHAN was dealing with some notion of HUL even in the
absence of the accurate term? One of the goals of this paper is to try to answer this
question by examining the application (implicit or explicit) of the HUL notion in
practical actions.
Considering all above, the challenge of this application is to reconstitute the history of
historical tows in Brazil by discussing these episodes ­ from the 1930's to nowadays.
And to analyze how both practices and discourses about cultural, historical and urban
heritage were built while some towns were effectively preserved, considering that the
HUL is much broader then the inner city, and that guidelines that consider the dynamics
of the town are crucial.

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