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Elevation

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Section through the building

Floor plan

Image information
Description: Floor plan
Type: Drawing
Credit: Richard Rogers Partnership
Copyright: The Artist
File ref: 99_0125_1_W

Image information
Description: Section through the building
Type: Drawing
Credit: Richard Rogers Partnership
Copyright: The Artist
File ref: 99_0136_1_W

Image information
Description: Elevation
Type: Drawing
Credit: Richard Rogers Partnership
Copyright: The Artist
File ref: 99_0166_1_W

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A expresso neoconcreto uma

tomada de posio em face da arte
no-figurativa geomtrica(neoplasticismo, construtivismo, suprematismo, Escola de Ulm) e particularmente em face da arte concreta
levada a uma perigosa exacerbao
racionalista. Trabalhando no campo
da pintura, escultura, gravura e
literatura, os artistas que participam desta I Exposio Neoconcreta
encontraram-se, por fora de suas
experincias, na contingncia de
rever as posies tericas adotadas
at aqui em face da arte concreta,
uma vez que nenhuma delas compreende satisfatoriamente as possibilidades expressivas abertas por
estas experincias.

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Nascida com o cubismo, de uma

reao dissolvncia impressionista da linguagem pictrica, era natural que a arte dita geomtrica se
colocasse numa posio diametralmente oposta s facilidades tcnicas e alusivas da pintura corrente.
As novas conquistas da fsica e da
mecnica, abrindo uma perspectiva
ampla para o pensamento objetivo,
incentivariam, nos continuadores
dessa revoluo, a tendncia racionalizao cada vez maior dos
processos e dos propsitos da pintura. Uma noo mecanicista de construo invadiria a linguagem dos
pintores e dos escultores, gerando,
por sua vez, reaes igualmente
extremistas, de carter retrgrado
como o realismo mgico ou irracionalista como Dad e o surrealismo.
No resta dvida, entretanto, que,
por trs de suas teorias que consagravam a objetividade da cincia
e a preciso da mecnica, os verdadeiros artistas - como o caso,
por exemplo, de Mondrian ou Pevsner
- construam sua obra e, no corpo-a-corpo com a expresso, superaram, muitas vezes, os limites
impostos pela teoria. Mas a obra
desses artistas tem sido at hoje
interpretada na base dos princpios
tericos, que essa obra mesma
negou.
Propomos uma reinterpretao
do neoplasticismo, do construtivismo e dos demais movimentos afins,
na base de suas conquistas de expresso e dando prevalncia obra
sobre a teoria. Se pretendermos
entender a pintura de Mondrian
pelas suas teorias, seremos obrigados a escolher entre as duas. Ou
bem a profecia de uma total integrao da arte na vida cotidiana
parece-nos possvel e vemos na obra
de Mondrian os primeiros passos
nesse sentido ou essa integrao
nos parece cada vez mais remota e a
sua obra se nos mostra frustrada.

Ou bem a vertical e a horizontal so mesmo os ritmos fundamentais do universo e a obra de Mondrian a aplicao desse princpio
universal ou o princpio falho e
sua obra se revela fundada sobre
uma iluso. Mas a verdade que a
obra de Mondrian a est, viva e
fecunda, acima dessas contradies
tericas. De nada nos servir ver
em Mondrian o destrutor da superfcie, do plano e da linha, se no
atentamos para o novo espao que
essa destruio construiu. O mesmo
se pode dizer de Vantongerloo ou de
Pevsner. No importam que equaes
matemticas esto na raiz de urna
escultura ou de um quadro de Vantongerloo, desde que s experincia direta da percepo a obra entrega a significao de seus
ritmos e de suas cores. Se Pevsner
partiu ou no de figuras da geometria descritiva uma questo sem
interesse em face do novo espao
que as suas esculturas fazem nascer
e da expresso csmico-orgnica
que, atravs dele, suas formas revelam. Ter interesse cultural especfico determinar as aproximaes
entre os objetos artsticos e os
instrumentos cientficos, entre a
intuio do artista e o pensamento
objetivo do fsico e do engenheiro.
Mas, do ponto de vista esttico, a
obra comea a interessar precisamente pelo que nela h que transcende essas aproximaes exteriores: pelo universo de significaes existenciais que ela a um
tempo funda e revela.
Malevitch, por ter reconhecido
o primado da pura sensibilidade na
arte, salvou as suas definies
tericas das limitaes do racionalismo e do mecanicismo, dando a
sua pintura uma dimenso transcendente que lhe garante hoje uma
notvel atualidade. Mas Malevitch
pagou caro pela coragem de se opor,
simultaneamente, ao figurativismo e
abstrao mecanicista, tendo sido
considerado at hoje, por certos
tericos racionalistas, corno um
ingnuo que no compreendera 1bem o
verdadeiro sentido da nova plstica. Na verdade, Malevitch j exprimia, dentro da pintura geomtrica uma insatisfao, uma
vontade de transcendncia do racional e do sensorial que hoje se
manifesta de maneira irreprimvel.
O neoconcreto, nascido de uma
necessidade de exprimir a complexa
realidade do homem moderno dentro
da linguagem estrutural da nova
plstica, nega a validez das atitudes cientificistas e positivistas
em arte e repe o problema da expresso, incorporando as novas dimenses verbais criadas pela arte
no-figurativa construtiva. O racionalismo rouba arte toda a autonomia e substitui as qualidades
intransferveis da obra de arte por
noes da objetividade cientfica:

assim os conceitos de forma,

espao, tempo, estrutura - que na
linguagem das artes esto ligados a
uma significao existencial, emotiva, afetiva - so confundidos com
a aplicao terica que deles faz a
cincia. Na verdade, em nome de
preconceitos que hoje a filosofia
denuncia (M. Merleau-Ponty, E. Cassirer, S. Langer) - e que ruem em
todos os campos, a comear pela
biologia moderna, que supera o mecanismo pavloviano - os concretos
racionalistas ainda vem o homem
como uma mquina entre mquinas e
procuram limitar a arte expresso
dessa realidade terica.

No concebemos a obra de arte

nem como mquina nem como
objeto, mas como um quasicorpus,
isto , um ser cuja realidade no
se esgota nas relaes exteriores
de seus elementos; um ser que, decomponvel em partes pela anlise,
s se d plenamente abordagem
direta, fenomenolgica. Acreditamos
que a obra de arte supera o mecanismo material sobre o qual repousa,
no por alguma virtude extraterrena: supera-o por transcender essas
relaes mecnicas (que a Gestalt
objetiva) e por criar para si uma
significao tcita (M. Pority) que
emerge nela pela primeira vez. Se
tivssemos que buscar um smile
para a obra de arte, no o
poderamos encontrar, portanto, nem
na mquina nem no objeto tomados
objetivamente, mas, como S. Lanoer
e W. leidl, nos organismos vivos.
Essa comparao, entretanto, ainda
no bastaria para expressar a realidade especfica do, organismo esttico.
porque a obra de arte no se
limita a ocupar um lugar no espao
objetivo mas o transcende ao
fundar nele uma significao nova que as noes objetivas de tempo,
espao, forma, estrutura, cor etc
no so suficientes para compreender a obra de arte, para dar
conta de sua realidade. A dificuldade de uma terminologia precisa
para exprimir um mundo que no se
rende a noes levou a crtica de
arte ao uso indiscriminado de palavras que traem a complexidade da
obra criada.

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A influncia da tecnologia e da
cincia tambm aqui se manifestou,
a ponto de hoje, invertendo-se os
papis, certos artistas, ofuscados
por essa terminologia, tentarem
fazer arte partindo dessas noes
objetivas para aplic-las como
mtodo criativo. Inevitavelmente,
os artistas que assim procedem
apenas ilustram noes a priori,
limitados que esto por um mtodo
que j lhe prescreve, de antemo, o
resultado do trabalho. Furtando-se
criao espontnea, intuitiva,
reduzindo-se a um corpo objetivo
num espao objetivo, o artista
concreto racionalista, com seus
quadros, apenas solicita de si e do
espectador uma reao de estmulo e
reflexo: fala ao olho como instrumento e no olho como um modo
humano de ter o mundo e se dar a
ele; fala ao olho mquina e no ao
olho-corpo.

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porque a obra de arte transcende o espao mecnico que, nela,

as noes de causa e efeito perdem
qualquer validez, e as noes de
tempo, espao, forma, cor esto de
tal modo integradas - pelo fato
mesmo de que no preexistiam, como
noes, obra - que seria impossvel falar delas como de termos
decomponveis. A arte neoconcreta,
afirmando a integrao absoluta
desses elementos, acredita que o
vocabulrio geomtrico que utiliza pode assumir a expresso de
realidades humanas complexas, tal
como o provam muitas das obras de
Mondrian, Malevitch, Pevsner, Gabo,
Sofia Taueber-Arp etc. Se mesmo
esses a tistas s vezes confundiam
o conceito de forma-mecnica com o
de forma-expressiva, urge esclarecer que, na linguagem da arte, as
formas ditas geomtricas perdem o
carter objetivo da geometria para
se fazerem veculo da imaginao.
A Gestalt, sendo ainda uma
psicologia causalista, tambm
insuficiente para nos fazer compreender esse fenmeno que dissolve
o espao e a forma corno realidades
causalmente determinveis e os d
como tempo - como espacializao da
obra. Entenda-se por espacializao
da obra o fato de que ela est
sempre se fazendo presente, est
sempre recomeando o impulso que a
gerou e de que ela era j a origem.
E se essa descrio nos remete
igualmente experincia primeira plena - do real, que a arte neoconcreta no pretende nada menos
que reacender essa experincia. A
arte neoconcreta funda um novo
espao expressivo.
Essa posio igualmente
vlida para a poesia neoconcreta
que denuncia, na poesia concreta, o
mesmo objetivismo mecanicista da
pintura. Os poetas concretos racionalistas tambm puseram como
ideal de sua arte a imitao da

mquina. Tambm para eles o espao

e o tempo no so mais que relaes
exteriores entre palavras-objeto.
Ora, se assim , a pgina se reduz
a um espao grfico e a palavra a
um elemento desse espao. Como na
pintura, o visual aqui se reduz ao
tico e o poema no ultrapassa a
dimenso grfica. A poesia neoconcreta rejeita tais noes esprias
e, fiel natureza mesma da linguagem, afirma o poema como um ser
temporal. No tempo e no no espao
a palavra desdobra a sua complexa
natureza significativa.

A pgina na poesia neoconcreta

a espacializao do tempo verbal:
pausa, silncio, tempo. No se
trata, evidentemente, de voltar ao
conceito de tempo da poesia discursiva, porque enquanto nesta a linguagem flui em sucesso, na poesia
neoconcreta a linguagem se abre em
durao. Conseqentemente, ao contrrio do concretismo racionalista,
que toma a palavra como objeto e a
transforma em mero sinal tico, a
poesia neoconcreta devolve-a sua
condio de verbo, isto , de
modo humano de presentao do real.
Na poesia neoconcreta a linguagem
no escorre: dura. Por sua vez, a
prosa neoconcreta, abrindo um novo
campo para as experincias expressivas, recupera a linguagem como
fluxo, superando suas co tingncias
sintticas e dando um sentido novo,
mais amplo, a certas solues tidas
at aqui equivocadamente como
poesia. assim que, na pintura
como na poesia, na prosa como na
escultura e na gravura, a arte neoconcreta reafirma a independncia
da criao artstica em face do
conhecimento prtico (moral,
poltica, indstria etc).
Os participantes desta I Exposio Neoconcreta no constituem
um grupo. No os ligam princpios
dogmticos. A afinidade evidente
das pesquisas que realizam em
vrios campos os aproximou e os
reuniu aqui. O compromisso que os
prende, prende-os primeiramente
cada um sua experincia, e eles
estaro juntos enquanto dure a afinidade profunda que os aproximou.

Amlcar de Castro
Ferreira Gullar
Franz Weissmann
Lygia Clark
Lygia Pape
Reynaldo Jardim
Theon Spandis
NeoConcretism Exhibition catalogue /
1959-1961, Banerj Art Gallery, September
1984.
Note the modern layout of the Sunday Supplement of the Jornal do Brasil, published
on March 23, 1959.
EN version available

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Luis

Gonzaga

Bahia

Brazil

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Art

Museum

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So

Paulo

under

construction,

by

Lina

Bo

Bardi,

1968,

in

So

Paulo,

Brazil.

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under construction

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under construction

under construction

under construction

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Tate Modern
London, UK
Competition 1994-1995, project 1995-1997, realization 1998-2000

Eleven stations at Tate Modern

The following text was prepared for the occasion of the Opening Exhibition at Tate Modern: Herzog & de Meuron 11 Stations at Tate Modern, curated by
Theodora Vischer, in collaboration with Kthe Walser at Tate Modern, Turbine Hall, London, UK from 12 May to 26 November 2000.
North entrance concourse: The north entrance is a space that is more than simply a zone of passage. Its sloping ceiling stretches out
between two mighty architectural elements: the brick tower on one side and the turbine hall on the other. The glass shaft of the escalator is a body of light that suffuses floor and ceiling; it is akin to the light beam on the roof of the museum and the bay windows in
the turbine hall.The properties of this area, so close to one of the Tate Moderns main entrances, make it an ideal and multipurpose
exhibition space that is the perfect complement to the other galleries. It has therefore logically become the base camp of our exhibition. Ordinarily, in exhibitions of architecture, the buildings themselves are absent and therefore communicated by proxy in models,
plans, films and other documents. This time the building in question is present and can be fully experienced in all its sensuality.
Instead of plans and documents, the building itself is on view. The exhibition is designed as a stroll in and around the building with
fourteen stations and one base camp. Here in the base camp, a large architectural model of the Tate Modern, a projection and statements
by the architects introduce the project and place it within the framework of Herzog & de Meurons oeuvre as a whole. The stations in and
around the building are located in places that typify a specific characteristic or feature of the architecture.

Statements:It is exciting for us to deal with existing structures because the attendant constraints demand a very different kind of
creative energy. In the future this will be an increasingly important issue in European cities. You cannot always start from scratch. We
think this is the challenge of the Tate Modern as a hybrid of tradition, Art Deco and super modernism: it is a contemporary building, a
building for everybody, a building of the 21st century. And when you dont start from scratch, you need specific architectural strategies that are not primarily motivated by taste or stylistic preferences. Such preferences tend to exclude rather than include something.
Our strategy was to accept the physical power of Banksides massive mountain-like brick building and to even enhance it rather than
breaking it or trying to diminish it. This is a kind of Aikido strategy where you use your enemys energy for your own purposes. Instead
of fighting it you take all the energy and shape it in an unexpected and new way.
The ramp:The ramp is one of the main architectural modifications involved in converting this industrial building, once closed to the
public, into a museum that daily attracts thousands of visitors. Already outside the building the ramp begins to descend into the ground
so that visitors immediately recognize it as the west-side entrance. The ramp is not only an entrance but a prominent meeting point,
like the tower to the north and the gate to the south, which will be opened to the public in a later building phase. The location acts
as a meeting point due to an architectural strategy which does not treat the gigantic complex, originally built by Giles Gilbert Scott,
as a closed shell, but has instead transformed it into a landscape with different topographies that visitors can approach and use from
all four directions. The ramp, as one of these topographies, takes visitors down to the base level of the building, the floor of the
turbine hall, situated below the water level of the Thames. The turbine hall is the area that establishes the link between inside and
outside. The hall runs like a street through the entire length and height of the building. The new faade of the museum rises to the
left, revealing its interior structure at a single glance: entrance, shop, cafeteria, educational facilities, auditorium, concourses and
exhibition spaces. The faade on the other side is not see-through at present; the rooms behind them will be made accessible in a later
building phase.

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Hidden spaces: The power station, as designed by Giles Gilbert Scott, was organized in three parallel spaces, each of which served a
specific function. The boiler house was installed to the north facing the Thames, the huge turbines were placed in the middle, and the
switch house lay to the south. The latter still contains switching stations today, which have been supplied with electricity produced
outside London since 1982, when the power station was decommissioned. In a later building phase, the switch house will also be incorporated in the new museum complex. The window affords a view of the room under the transformers, which is presently in disuse. Probably
the most dramatic spatial composition in the former power station lies directly behind this room. It consists of three cylindrical
spaces, arranged like a three-leaf clover, which once housed the oil tanks. This spatial composition will one day be accessed directly
from the garden opposite to the south. The ground-level rooms, now containing the transformers, will be directly related to the gardens.
These rooms and the floors above them could, for example, house a Department of Design and Architecture, a library or other exhibition
spaces and seminar rooms. Upon completion of the second building phase, the turbine hall will reveal its full potential as a covered
street. The soft hum of the ventilation, now required to cool the transformers, will then be eliminated.
The platform: The platform is a remnant of the flooring that once stretched the entire length of the turbine hall. The removal of this
flooring allows visitors to experience the extraordinary scale and dimensions of the turbine hall in their entirety. Today the platform
is like a bridge between the former boiler house to the north, containing the galleries, and the switch house to the south, which will
be converted into additional exhibition space in a second building phase. The platform is conceived not only as a bridge between two
wings of the building but also as an instrument that explicitly and effectively addresses the urban surroundings. The promenade along
the Thames moves straight into the centre of the Tate Modern through the north entrance. From there, the path will cross the platform,
pass through the gate to the switch house, and lead to the new Tate Garden to the south and on to Southwark. This makes the platform an
important crossroads not only for the building itself but for the entire neighborhood as well. The platform is a piece of urban topography and therefore also a suitable meeting point, like the ramp to the west of the turbine hall.
The Turbine Hall: From the platform, visitors look out over the vast space of the turbine hall. Like a covered plaza or galleria, it is
open to everyone to people who have come in order to visit the galleries or to take a look at the semi-annual installations created by
artists specifically for this space or to simply share in the lively atmosphere. The faade of the actual museum rises on the north side
of the turbine hall. The new museum occupies the site of what was once an open-work steel structure with no floors or ceilings, in which
countless boilers and other machines were installed. This steel structure has been replaced by the new, seven-storey museum. Its faade,
adjoining the turbine hall, looks to visitors like a gigantic screen showing the Tate Moderns varied programmed of events and exhibitions. The bay windows, elongated glass bodies of light, afford an interior view of the museum and its exhibition activities. The bay
windows are also architectural bodies that break up the mighty, vertical steel supports of the faade and generate an optical instability. Depending on lighting conditions, the brightly illuminated glass bodies may seem to be suspended in front of the faade, thereby
clearly toning down the monumentality of the industrial architecture. The bay windows belong to the same architectural family as the
light beam placed atop the heavy brick body of the former power station and visible from afar.
The stairway: The stairway connecting all seven stories of the museum tract functionally complements the other two vertical transport
systems: the lifts and the escalators. However, it plays an entirely different role as well. The heavy steel construction with its
flush, wooden handrail, its continuous band of light and its distinctively compact proportions adapted to human movement represents an
independent piece of architecture. The balcony-like landings offer visitors surprising, unanticipated vistas and spatial impressions
between the storeis. While travelling the stairs, one feels disengaged from the stream of museum-goers, the rhythm of ones steps changes and slows down in response to the height of the treads and the placement of the landings.
The bay windows: The bay windows are self-contained, architectural spaces with more intimate proportions and a different scale than the
adjacent concourses or galleries. They provide moments of rest and contemplation or merely a place to stop between gallery visits. They
are also convenient meeting places as well as offering breathtaking views of the people and works of art in the turbine hall. Seen from
the turbine hall, the bay windows look like floating bodies of light and also like vitrines with people sitting on benches, relaxing,
waiting for someone or about to move on to the next exhibition. The bay windows belong to the same architectural family as the light
beam placed outside atop the heavy brick body of the former power station: a landmark visible from afar.
Galleries: In gallery design there are two extremes: there is the highly specific gallery, which usually tends to be too spectacular,
too sculptural, too individualistic, and there is the supermarket, developed to give good orientation and an overview that puts
everything in the same light. We have tried to take the best things from both poles: from the supermarket and from a highly specific
venue, like the Soane Museum.
Dimensions and scale: There are three floors of exhibition spaces, none of which is privileged. There is no main level with large, high
rooms for monumental works, and a different storey for smaller formats, like photographs or drawings. All of the spaces are at least
five meters high and some are significantly higher, like the top-lit galleries on the fifth floor and the double-height gallery on level

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3, which raises the entire 12-metre length of the former cathedral window in Scotts brick shell. This vertical room with its dramatic
dimensions is not only an exciting experience for tired visitors; it also offers undreamt and unprecedented installation potential in a
museum context. The spatial variety is considerable; almost all of the rooms are different in size and proportion. In addition, walls
can be added or removed at certain places, allowing dimensions and scale to be tailored to the needs of special installations. The construction of these temporary walls is no different from that of the other walls.
Lighting: Lighting is a decisive factor in the perception of art works. Slightly different in every room, it alternates between daylight, artificial illumination and a mixture of both. The artificial illumination comes from glass panels set flush with the ceiling;
potential variations in adjusting the coloring and intensity are almost unlimited. This necessitates considerable machinery and technical facilities concealed above the plaster ceiling. Visible are only the light, the space and, above all, the works of art on display.
The natural illumination reveals the seasons of the year and the daily weather: sunshine, passing clouds or rain. The fenestration is
defined by the immense cathedral windows, placed by Scott in the brick shell. The layout of floors and walls has been designed to establish direct contact between the gigantic windows and the galleries in order to provide an optimally self-evident, direct link between
interior and exterior. In the rooms where the light comes in laterally through these wall-height windows, visitors can look out on the
London backdrop and also get their bearings in relation to the building. There are no lateral windows on level 5 since the floor lies
above the cathedral windows. Daylight falls directly from above through glass panels placed flush with the plaster ceiling. They are
almost identical to the glass panels for artificial lighting in the two floors below, so that visitors will barely notice the difference
at first glance. In the large and high central galleries on level 5, the walls end at the top in broad strips of glass so that the rooms
are flooded with daylight. The light enters the exhibition spaces through the glass front of the light beam that can be seen from afar,
hovering on top of the Tate Modern. Inside, visitors sense what the light is like outside as it comes in through the luminous opaque
bands of glass without interfering with the perception of the works of art.
Design: Although the galleries vary in size and proportion, they are basically uniform. They are all plain, rectangular rooms ordinary
and self-evident, on one hand, and yet of spectacular impact, on the other. The astonishing views of London are, of course, spectacular.
But spectacular and unusual are also the radical simplicity and directness of the architectural measures that produce the impression of
self-evidence. There are no connecting joints between walls and floors or floors and ceiling. The ceilings are flat and unarticulated.
The oak floors are unfinished and add an unexpected sensuality to the rooms, while the dark concrete floor on level 5 forms an unaccustomed contrast with the works of art, especially those of classical Modernism. The cast-iron grids for ventilation, set into the flooring, look as if they were part of the former power station. As a whole, one has the impression that the exhibitions spaces have always
been there, like the brick faades, the chimney or the turbine hall. This impression is, of course, deceptive. In the interior of the
building everything has been re-invented and re-conceived but the new and old building components have been interrelated and attuned to
each other in such a way that they are indistinguishable. Something new has emerged that is more exciting than the pure preservation of
a given structure and more complex than a completely new building.
The chimney: The chimney performed an important function in the former power plant since all the flues from the boilers were gathered
into it. The load-bearing structure of the chimney, centered on the boiler house side of the power station, is separate from the rest of
the building. In a second building phase, the chimney will be converted into an observation tower with two staircases and two lifts. At
a height of 93metres, it will afford a breathtaking view of all London. Looking at the chimney from outside, one realizes that technical
and functional requirements do not entirely explain its architecture. The chimney was primarily designed as an urban landmark that transcends exclusively functional purposes and enters into a dialogue with St. Pauls on the opposite shore of the Thames. The vertical
symmetry of the chimney is a direct response to the central dome of the cathedral.

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The concourses: The concourses on the exhibition floors are an important source of orientation. They provide views of the turbine hall
through the bay windows; they house the vertical transport systems, the stairs and lifts; and they provide access to the individual
galleries. In keeping with their function, they are clearly set off from the galleries and designed as open spaces. The ventilation
system, concealed above the plaster ceilings in the exhibitions spaces, is visible in the concourses, as if the ceiling had receded to
open up the view overhead. Although the concourses are almost identical in size, they each have a character of their own. The concourse
on the third floor hovers directly above the platform in the turbine hall. On the fourth floor, the concourse yields to the track for
the crane, and on the fifth floor, part of the concourse ducks under the mighty steel beams of the turbine hall. The sweeping steps,
which follow the rhythm of the ceiling, are an inviting place to stop and rest.
The clerestory: The view into the clerestory is a backstage view of the lighting facilities on the fifth level. The galleries on this
floor lie above Scotts huge cathedral windows so that daylight can be supplied only from above, via the light beam. Conservation and
the different needs of individual works of art call for maximum precision in lighting control. For this reason the glazing in the clerestory must satisfy certain requirements. It must be translucent to prevent direct sunlight and shadows, but without unduly reducing the
intensity or distorting the color of the daylight. Two sets of blinds are installed between the panes of glass: one to adjust the intensity of the light, the other to darken the galleries completely. The clerestory also provides artificial illumination; the lighting
elements which have been installed are designed to duplicate the coloring of daylight.
The light beam: From the very beginning, when we first started thinking about the project during the competition in 1994, we entertained
the idea of a huge body of light hovering above the heavy brick structure of the former power station. This body of light was to pour
daylight into the galleries on the top floor of the museum and, at night, the direction of the artificial illumination would be reversed
and magically shine into the London skies. The idea of the light beam proved to be a key element for the development of the other parts
of the complex within the overall architectural and urban concept of the Tate Modern. In terms of city planning, the conspicuously horizontal shape of the light beam forms a distinctive equipoise to the vertical thrust of the brick tower, designed by Giles Gilbert Scott
as a counterpoint to St. Pauls Cathedral just across the river. Scotts intention of explicitly responding to Christopher Wrens building has been accentuated and updated by the luminous beam of light. Like the cathedral, Bankside has now become a public site accessible
to all of the people in this city.
Landscape: Given the architectural strategy of transforming the Bankside Power Station into a landscape accessible and open to the
public from all four directions, the gardens are important topographical sites that mediate between the space of the city and the building. The gardens blur the distinction between inside and outside. Thus the ramp on the west side is a salient feature of both the gardens in the West court as well as the turbine hall. The plaza that spreads out between the riverside promenade and the chimney extends
into the turbine hall where it becomes the platform.
Bankside gardens (north): The spacious Bankside Gardens are divided into three areas. A plaza is centered in front of the north entrance
to the Tate Modern and framed by stands of birch trees. To the west the arboretum, a lawn dotted with groups of foreign birch trees,
offers a site of rest and repose. The garden on the east side of the plaza, with its smaller groups of birches, forms the transition to
the domestic scale of the adjoining buildings. The gravel, used throughout as the ground covering, has been chosen to match the color of
the brick faade of the building. Like different aggregate states, it may be loose, bonded, or rolled into the asphalt. The soft surface
texture of the gravel links the plaza with the lawns and, at the same time, suggests an extension of the riverbank. The groves of domestic birch trees resemble the wooded growth along riverbanks. But birches are also pioneer trees that thrive on fallow urban and industrial lands and therefore symbolize the transformation of abandoned terrain. The groups of foreign birches planted on the lawns challenge the accustomed image of this tree with their bark of different colors - snow white, salmon, grey or black.
West court: The landscaping of the West Court mediates between the expansive, open area of the Bankside Gardens and the framed spaces of
the South Terraces. The visitors' ramp leading into the turbine hall is placed in the centre. To the north, in front of the restaurant,
outdoor seating on a stepped slope is marked by evenly planted groups of birches. The arrangement of these multi-stem trees is related
to the groups of birches in the Bankside Gardens, while the single-stem birches to the south of the ramp reflect the single plantings in
the South Terraces.
South terraces: In contrast to the Bankside Gardens, which respond specifically to the expansiveness of the river, the South Terraces
are divided into two clearly defined gardens surrounded by hedges. The introspective, contemplative character of these spaces invites
visitors to rest or play. The hedges, consisting of coniferous yew trees, white flowering quince and white apple blossom shrubs, blossom
at different times thereby are mirroring the seasons of the year. Old and new maples, linden trees and plane trees along the southern
border along with the topographical design of the lawns heighten the spatial effect of the gardens. Thousands of yellow and white daffodils bloom on the lawns in spring. They are planted in squares, but this geometry will fade in years to come.
Herzog & de Meuron, 2000

> www.tate.org.uk

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THIS
EXHIBITION
IS AN
ACCUSATION:

The Grammar of
Display According to
Lina Bo Bardi

Roger M. Buergel

Until she really got what? By looking through the 'structure', the reinforced concrete of the
derelict factory space, Bo Bardi was able to access the site's psychic resonances. And while the
particular value of these resonances emanated from a typical weekend feel of pleasure and boredom - as well as from a sense of place in a community of mostly migrant workers from the Brazilian Northeast and Europe - the actual material condition of the space seemed to matter, too. The
social energy perceived and celebrated by Bo Bardi was a result of the precarious condition of
the once solid structure. Dysfunctionality kicked off happiness.

The second time I went there, a Saturday, the atmosphere was different - no longer the elegant
and solitary Hennebiquen structure, but happy people, children, mothers, parents and OAPs [old
age persons] went from one shed to another. Kids ran, youngsters played football in rain falling
through broken roofs, laughing as they kicked the ball through the water. Mothers barbecued and
made sandwiches at the entrance of Rua Clcia; there was a puppet theatre near it, full of children. I thought, it has to continue like this, with so much happiness. I returned many times,
Saturday and Sundays, until I really got it4

Bo Bardi's most mature and extensive work hardly belongs to the sphere of art and culture
proper. SESC Fbrica da Pompia is a huge recreational complex on the outskirts of So Paulo,
built on an old factory constructed in the early twentieth century in the style of Franois
Hennebique, a pioneer of reinforced-concrete engineering.3 With an area of 16,500 square metres
(and a floor area of 23,500 square metres), its size corresponds to that of a small industrial
village. From 1977 till 1986, in a period of slow and painful transition from the rigidities of
military rule to the ambiguities of an inexperienced democracy, Bo Bardi worked on this site in
many different capacities - first as a planner, architect and designer, and later as its administrator, programme manager and exhibition organiser. She shaped the site in almost every regard
while allowing herself, in turn, to be shaped and informed by this evolving sprawl of planned
and spontaneous activities:

The festivities for the inauguration of the Pompia Factory were planned by Bo Bardi down to
minutiae like the colour of food. For the opening period she conceived of an exhibition for
which people were supposed to bring 'all kinds of objects forgotten or rejected by "civilisation''',8 while the gym towers were celebrated with an exhibition about the history of football in Brazil - a colourful dream of documentary material, devotional objects, players'
shirts and banners from all teams, 'even the most mediocre' ones.9 Later exhibitions by Bo
Bardi at the Factory included 'Mil brinquedos para a criana brasileira' ('A Thousand Toys
for Brazilian Kids', 1980) and 'Design no Brazil: Histria e realidade' ('Design in Brazil:
History and Reality', 1982). There is a common tune to these proposals: an unconcealed emphasis on radical inclusiveness ('all things'), on the material unconscious ('objects forgotten
or rejected') and on what might be called the psychic texture of objects (ask any football
fan about his or her team scarf or any child about his or her favourite toy). A similar

On the remaining plot of land, Bo Bardi erected a Brutalist, deliberately ugly complex of two
high towers and a tall fake chimney, all built in raw concrete.6 In contrast to the old factory space, this complex enters into open competition with the urban environment. Quite literally, its own towers face the city, with its high-rises, eye to eye. While the compact
tower houses a swimming pool in the basement and four gyms stacked upon one another, the
smaller tower, arranged in a pattern that is a foil to the pattern on the larger tower, contains the staircase and the facilities. The towers are connected on each floor by Y- or
V-shaped bridges or gangways, the spatial design of which is reminiscent of the expressive
constructivism of Liubov Popova. And although Bo Bardi toyed with the idea of painting the
cement in bright colours she finally abstained from it, reserving colour for the door and
window frames, or for the ventilating tubes - for elements, that is, which help to punctuate
the grey, bunkerish mass. To get to the gym or back to the showers and changing rooms, the
athletes, mostly adolescents, have to cross the open, weather-exposed gangways, thus undergoing a kind of rite of passage that purifies them and readies them for the excitement and
exuberance of play. The architecture's own playfulness becomes evident with the correlation
of each of the gym's floors to the colour code and name of a season - a football team thus
meets in 'winter' - and with the spectacular details of the gaping apertures in the walls,
with their violently irregular but also somewhat organic shapes. Contrary to most gym spaces,
the outside world is not closed off. It is confronted or challenged from within the arena.
The violent thrill that accompanies every animated game, the momentous fantasy of annihilating one's adversary, is subtly diverted toward the megalopolis outside: So Paulo, or, in Bo
Bardi's words, 'the world champion of self-destruction'.7

The Pompia Factory was conceived with a capacity of up to 15,000 visitors per day. Bo Bardi
decided to keep the old complex of brick buildings, preserving the industrial memory, but
took out the partition walls to create a fluid interior space. This open space comprises a
temporary exhibition area; a more solid, almost sculptural unit with a library and a videotheque; and, next to it, a multi-use space around a longish, elegantly-shaped lake - an allusion to the So Francisco River, the artery of the Brazilian Northeast. The spatial layout
not only corresponds to but actually favours the arbitrary ways in which people circulate if
they are not governed by definite destinations, aims or intents, while a multiplicity of
architectural details, like the shells in the cement floor or the line of textiles suspended
above the restaurant, disrupt the perception of a unified totality. The second part of the
factory complex houses a grand foyer leading onto a theatre for 1,200 people, and a workshop
area for making ceramics and other crafs. This workshop area follows a different spatial
grammar. Lush openness is scaled down in favour of a labyrinthine wall-system built from raw
bricks that slightly protects the respective working areas. However, these differences in
structuring divisions of consciousness seem insubstantial. They are subordinated to a general
rhythm - a rhythm that is less a matter of architectural composition (which is, by its very
nature, static) but that originates from the imponderable ways in which space is practised.
The rhythm therefore varies according to the intensity of lived experience.

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Learning from Bo Bardi today entails conceiving of institutions in terms of their self-perforation, their own undoing. They have to learn how to dramatise their key dilemma - namely, what
counts as teachable and why. Attempting to epitomise the gold-standard of legitimate knowledge
in a world of crumbling canons is ridiculous. Attempting to epitomise contemporary sexiness is
worse. A methodology is needed that addresses audiences as neither consumers nor infants, but as
partners.

There are two good reasons, at least, to lay claim to the architectural legacy of Lina Bo Bardi,
her technologies of display and her sense of spatial texture.1 The first reason is artistic: the
formal stagnation that haunts contemporary exhibition design. While curators are willing to talk
endlessly about mediation (and are taught in so many curatorial courses to do just that) the
realm of display gets shamelessly neglected. Art is made to look as if it were tied to nothing
but artistic production, while context gets reduced to mere text. The second reason is political: Bo Bardi is exceptional in her formal understanding of that equally vast and mysterious
entity called 'the social'. Her poetics of sensual collaboration could be the antidote to the
populist inclinations of Western art institutions (including their predilection for big exhibitions). Faced with the relative disappearance of their traditional constituency (the educated
middle class) and simultaneously challenged by a curious mob of aesthetic illiterates, art
institutions need to learn that cultural illiteracy will only be sustained by the business of
mediation - at least as long as the latter is conceived to be primarily a service for unenlightened savages to which institutions eagerly 'reach out'. Bo Bardi, in contrast, took clues from
Paulo Freire's 'pedagogy of the oppressed' - she based her work on the creative resources of the
populace and advocated the democratisation of knowledge.2

Given Bo Bardi's biography, her embrace of the little festival of affects is easily comprehensible, and so is her aim to sustain its energy. After more than a decade of military rule
in which her public engagement, like that of most Brazilian cultural figures, was severely
restricted, she might have felt ready for a new beginning. Her sense of beginning must, however, have been tinged by another beginning a few decades earlier. In 1946 Bo Bardi migrated
to Brazil, leaving post-War Italy physically behind while preserving the memory of the 'civilt mussoliniana'. Educated in Milan, where she became a co-editor of the magazine domus in
1943, she must have been equally sensitive about modern architecture's stance when it came to
vitalism, planning, progress and the New Man.5 Also on her sceptical mind in 1977, most
likely, were the heated architectural debates that shaped the Brazil of the 1950s and early
60s - debates that were fuelled by the utopian dream of a new country with a planner's fantasy called Brasilia as its capital, which were laid to rest with the establishment of the
US-backed military dictatorship in March 1964.

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In her love for Bahia, Bo Bardi chose an even more emphatic term for this immaterial entity
than the 'spirit of a place'. She called it the 'popular soul' and - this was the exhibi
tion's wager - she tried to convey it less by the objects themselves than by their appearance.12 Their appearance had to be revealed, not just their factual presence shown. In Bo
Bardi's still acute memory, Italian Fascism had both vampirised and exorcised the popular
soul. Under the Fascist regime, popular production or craft became 'irreversibly' transformed
into folklore or kitsch, while genuine popular art was defined by its 'perfect reversibility'.
While a kitsch object was thus defined as a psychic dead end that puts man's desire to rest,
popular art kept the soul alert and ready to look for ever new and transformative ways to
shape the world.13 The Bahia exhibition had to fight two enemies. One was folklore. The other
was the navet of utopian design that had become dominant in Brazil in the 1950s and what
this represented: the ludicrous fantasy that an underdeveloped country with feudal structures
could be transformed overnight into an industrial society. Presenting the popular soul in
action or revealing the reversibility of popular art called for a particular kind of display

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., p.323.

10

The open exhibition space in Ibirapuera Park, next to the biennial, was primarily structured
by a system of freestanding walls, most of them elevated on pedestals in the shape of white
cubes. The rather compact walls provided conspicuously solid support for the hand-crafed
objects - which were, all in all, either rude or tiny and brittle. While the elevated walls
were coloured in different shades, one particular wall was covered with gold leaf as if to
mirror the spiritual radiance of the religious sculpture displayed in front of it. The ex-votos, on the other hand, were directly fixed onto a whitewashed brick wall. By drawing on the
analogy between the bareness of the wall and the wooden rawness of those sculptures, their
stubborn dumpiness was transformed into an almost heroic expression: it embodied resistance
against the disenchantment of the world. The whitecube pedestals were scattered all over the
space, serving larger-size objects like the carrancas and Orishas as pedestals. A few artificial trees were planted here and there, one adorned with weather vanes, while the entire floor
was covered with pitanga leaves. In the background, before the row of Orishas, the exhibition
was sealed off by a huge, long curtain. This device, reminiscent of display strategies practised by Lily Reich in the 1920s and 30s, provided the space with an air of privacy while
simultaneously underscoring its highly theatrical dcor. In short, the language of display
spoke many different tongues and thus appealed to a multiplicity of perceptual registers. It
spoke less about objects than out of them. The exhibition's true subject was indeed neither
artistic form nor anthropology; it was, as its title suggests, the spirit of a place and its
possible transposition.

The Bahia exhibition of 1959, conceived by Bo Bardi and Martim Gonalves, looks retrospectively like a comment on, if not an answer to, the key question of how modern universalism could
be reconciled with a local agenda. (And without questioning Hlio Oiticica's genius, it needs
to be said that Bo Bardi pioneered her environmental aesthetics years before Oiticica built
his Penetrvels, the labyrinthine environments he began to make in the late 1960s.) The show,
according to its own definition, took an anthropological rather than aesthetic view on popular
artefacts created in the Brazilian Northeast - a region defined by poverty, a high rate of
illiteracy and a mode of production Bo Bardi characterised as 'pre-crafsmanship'10. In the
Northeast, 'objects of desperate survival' were basically made out of garbage. One section of
the exhibition was devoted to documentary photographs of the Afro-Brazilian religions macumba
and candombl. The photographs (by Pierre Verger and others) were informally mounted on a
fragile wooden scaffolding - the material sensibility of which was closer to the consistency
of the life depicted on them than to the institutional self-assuredness of, say, 'Family of
Man', the exhibition Edward Steichen organised at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1955.
Among the artefacts were almost life-size statuettes of Orisha spirits; musical instruments;
patchwork quilts made of reclaimed scraps of leftover cloth; fifs, or oil lamps, built from
empty medicine bottles and pieces of tin plates; carrancas, or figureheads, from river boats
of the So Francisco; ceramics; mats; hammocks; earthenware pans; pots for drinking water; and
so on. 'I could say that this exhibition reveals above all the creative force of a people who
do not give up under the severest conditions,' summarises Jorge Amado in an account written at
that time.11

in which the object's essentially transitional character would be shown. This aim was
achieved by a double operation. On the anthropological level the objects were linked to
specific religious or labour practices. The photographs of Pierre Verger, for example,
demonstrated their use in ritual. However, the objects were also paraded as being in excess
of themselves, or, rather, as transcending any conceptual framework that would fix and guarantee their meaning. This was achieved by dislocating them into a deliberately artificial
environment that highlighted their utter strangeness. This particular quality they had to
borrow or even extract from modern art's claim to autonomy - a claim that was excessively
stated, even propagated at the nearby biennial. The popular soul was, above all, volatile.
Or, as Bo Bardi put it: 'To carefully search for the cultural bases of a country (whatever
they may be: poor, miserable, popular) when they are real, does not mean to preserve the
forms and materials, it means to evaluate the original creative possibilities.'14

tune can be already detected in Bo Bardi's early Brazilian exhibition activities, like the
breathtaking installation of the 'Bahia no Ibirapuera' exhibition during the fifth Bienal de
So Paulo in 1959, or the display she conceived for the exhibition 'Civilizao do Nordeste'
('Civilisation of the Northeast') at the Museu de Arte Popular at the Solar do Unho, in Salvador de Bahia in 1963. Historically, both exhibitions belong to the window of utopian dreaming that preceded the military dictatorship. The Bienal de So Paulo, from the moment of its
inception in 1951, partook in this dream and, for better or worse, carried it along. It not
only celebrated modern art in all its universalist splendour, but also fed the generation of
Tropiclia with a repertoire of forms that had to be devoured and 'vomited' (as Glauber Rocha
put it) before being prepared for the artistic aims of a decidedly local modernism.

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Footnotes
1. The quote stems from Bo Bardi's 'Account Sixteenth Years Later', in Marcelo Carvalho FerrazandMarcelo Suzuki (ed.), L'Impasse del design. Lina Bo Bardi: L'esperienza nel Nordest del
Brasile, Milan and So Paulo: Edizioni Charta and Instituto Lina Bo e P.M. Bardi, 1995, p.5 (of the English insert). In 1980 Bo Bardi started editing material for this book, which was to
become a testimony of her Northeastern period, which will be discussed further on in this text. In 1981 Bo Bardi stopped the editing, convinced that the whole undertaking would be of 'no
use, all this is going to fall into a void' (p.1). Fortunately, the Instituto Bo Bardi, which fights for the preservation of Bo Bardi's legacy, continued and eventually finished the
editing. From the account the book provides, it becomes clear that the research done from the late 1950s until 1964 was part of a larger collective effort that, like Glauber Rocha with
his 'aesthetics of hunger', pursued an artistic agenda with the aim of aligning the practical, mostly raw aspects of this culture with a politics that sought to address the actual living
conditions of its people. An excellent source that covers the wider history of this period in Bahia is Roger Sansi's Fetishes and Monuments: Afro-Brazilian Art and Culture in the 20th
Century (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2007). See in particular chapter 6, 'Modern Art and Afro-Brazilian Culture in Bahia'. 2. Paulo Freire, born in 1921 in Recife, was a highly
influential educational thinker whose programmes to teach and emancipate the illiterate poor became officially implemented in Brazil in the early 1960. In his Pedagogy of the Oppressed
(1968), a treatise about an education that was both modern and anti-colonial, he states that '[n]o pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating
them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption'. P. Freire,
Pedagogy of the Oppressed (trans. Myra Bergman Ramos), New York: Continuum, 1970, p.54. 3. SESC, or Social Service for Commerce, is a private non-profit organisation that promotes
cultural and educational facilities all over Brazil. 4. The quote comes from Olivia de Oliveira, Subtle Substances: The Architecture of Lina Bo Bardi, Barcelona and So Paulo: Editorial
Gustavo Gili and Romano Guerra Editora, 2006, p.205. The book, which is based on Oliveira's doctoral thesis, offers a particularly rich and careful account of Bo Bardi's architectural
principles. 5. Italy's finest architects, it is well known, supported the Fascist cause more or less openly. Razionalismo, Italy's most radical branch of modern architecture, was
unambiguous about its Fascist leanings. And it was Pietro Maria Bardi, later Lina Bo's husband, who organised in 1931 in his gallery in Rome the second exhibition of 'Architettura
Razionale', a show accompanied by a manifesto in open praise of the 'civilt mussoliniana'. The point here is not to denounce the Italian architectural milieu of the 1930s and 40s, years
in which Lina Bo finished her studies and started to work in association with Gio Ponti in Milan. It suffices to say that Lina Bo was in a privileged position to contemplate the sinister
affair between advanced architecture and planning on the one side and an utterly perverted res publica on the other. 6. The architectural language of progressive 'ugliness' with its
bunkerish masses and unfinished surfaces is characteristic of the Paulista School (Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Joao Batista Vilanova Artigas and others). Its aesthetics were heavily inspired
by Oscar Niemeyer's self-criticism in the late 1950s, when he condemned his own former striving for originality and surface appearance at the cost of architecture's social functioning.
Bo Bardi explicitly stated: 'I want SESC to be even uglier than MASP.' Quoted in O. de Oliveira, Subtle Substances, op. cit., p.203. It should also be mentioned that at the time SESC
Pompia was planned, the integration of the suburbs became part of the official line in urban politics. Selfmanagement models based on neighbourhood groups or participatory building
sites were especially encouraged. 7. Bo Bardi also called So Paulo a 'pile of bones'. Quoted in O. de Oliveira, ibid., p.245. Her sensitivity for questions of cultural heritage and its
preservation drew her back to Salvador de Bahia in 1986, where she was invited by the mayor to intervene in the historic district around the Pelourinho. See L. Bo Bardi, 'Obra construida/Built Work' (text by O. de Oliveira), in 2G International Architecture Review, no.23/24, 2003, p.142. 8. See O. de Oliveira, Subtle Substances, op. cit., p.246. 9. Ibid., p.248.
10. See M. Carvalho Ferraz and M. Suzuki (ed.), L'Impasse del design, op. cit., p.1. 11. Ibid., op. cit., p.5. 12. What I have in mind here is an operation called 'cathexis' in
Freudian discourse, by which an object assumes a particular value or embodies beauty primarily because it comes to symbolise a much-desired lost object. Kaja Silverman conceptualises the
relation between appearance and visual affirmation in her book World Spectators. Any theory of display would have to start from this question: how can appearance be initiated from the
side of the object rather than from that of the visitor? See K. Silverman, World Spectators, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. 13. For Bo Bardi's concept of 'reversibility',
see M. Carvalho Ferraz and M. Suzuki (ed.), L'Impasse del design, op. cit., p.4. 14. Ibid., p.3.

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Bean Drop, 2008, Chris Burden