SESC Fabrica de Pompeia
(8 votes, average: 3.25 out of 5)
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Location:
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Rua Clelia 93
Sao Paulo
05042-000
Brazil
coordinates:
lat -23.5263481, long -46.6827850
Building names(s): SESC Fabrica de Pompeia
Architect/Designer: Lina Bo Bardi
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Other Information:
Completion date: 1982
Function:
getting there:closest Metro: Barra Funda (red line)
Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday: 09.00 – 22.00 / Sundays and Holidays: 09.00 – 20.00.
website: www.sescsp.org.br
Last modified: 10 August, 2009 | Suggested By LT
MASP (1957), along with Bo Bardi’s other works, is a powerful and dramatic expression of architectural thinking in its own right and must be acclaimed on that basis.
MASP provided a space for art, but above all, a public forum for people. A huge rectangular block, elevated above a ground level ‘belvedere’, it houses pictures floating in a vast open space, inspired by the idea of the semi-industrial market buildings of the past, in which the spectator is recast as actor. In the sense that it constitutes a remarkable sculptural volume, or figure, in the city, it owes much to the modernist, rationalist roots that Bo Bardi never disowned. Indeed, she was always indignant at any suggestion that Le Corbusier’s ideas for a functionalist, mass-produced architecture were inappropriate to Brazil as an ‘underdeveloped’ country, pointing out that they were embraced by the Brazilian establishment (during the 1930s) when Europe was still treating eyeing him with scepticism. MASP built on a concept of rectilinear, rationalist – and delicate – beauty which she had already realised with her Glass House (1951), but on a much greater scale, veering towards a new sense of solidity and popular engagement. Like the Glass House, it also highlighted a fascination with collecting, which Bo Bardi had entertained since childhood, and the contents, as much as the form of a building. This was to become a powerful component of her subsequent work, in which form became increasingly solid, yet playful – embracing a deliberate aesthetic impurity – and ‘little things’, evoking both the simple and sacred dimensions of everyday life and its accompanying rituals, became central to the decoration or elaboration of the whole architectural idea.
I consider this building as dialogue between sensuality and brutalism.
It is free to enter and you can ask for a guided tour. (Go to the room on your right after entering the gate. Tell the person behind the desk that you study architecture. We didn’t had to pay for it, but I don’t know if this is normal or if we are very privileged.)
With this steel barrel factory/”culture factory” conversion, Lina Bo Bardi revolutionized São Paulo’s attitude to its obsolete industrial estates.
Between 1977 and 1986, the old brick sheds were transformed into exhibition spaces, a library and a series of workshops. The SESC Pompéia also features a curious and interesting theater (home to many superb concerts), as well as a choperia the serves up a collective lunch alongside inexpensive but equally delicious portions of beer and live Brazilian music.
Bo Bardi also built two new buildings that are connected to the factory by footbridges. These are entirely made from rough concrete—alleviated by amoeba-shaped windows the architect referred to as “Spanish civil war holes”—and contain sports facilities like football fields, a swimming pool and a solarium. Both the “Spanish civil war holes” and the general redesign of the old factory exemplify “muxarabi”, a postmodern remix of colonial-style elements that foregrounds references to Brazilian popular culture.