Pmdr

ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN COLLEGE

PAULO MENDES DA ROCHA

ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN

WASHINGTON
2013
Archias Paulo Mendes da Rocha (Vitória, October 25, 1928) is a Brazilian architect and urban planner. Belonging to the generation of modernist architects led by João Batista Vilanova Artigas, Mendes da Rocha has taken in recent decades a prominent position in Brazilian contemporary architecture, having been awarded in 2006 with the Pritzker Prize, the most important of world architecture.
Author of controversial projects and who constantly divide the critics, as the Brazilian Sculpture Museum and the portico located at Praça do Patriarca, both in São Paulo. It is also in this city that the architect has spent most of his life.
Formed architect and urban planner from the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the Mackenzie Presbyterian University, São Pauloem 1954, part of one of her first classes. During this period the college was still attached to a model of historicist architecture and Mendes da Rocha began to join a group of students interested in modern architecture (as Jorge Wilheim and Carlos Millan).
The architecture proposed by Vilanova Artigas the influences from his first major project, the gym's Club Athletico Paulistano. Already in this first book, Paul designs using concrete apparent, large open spaces, rational structures, among other elements that would characterize the "Escola Paulista" above.
Passing to teach at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism (FAU), University of São Paulo (USP) in 1961, amid an intense social debate promoted by teachers and students. We discuss now the social role of the architect, which would not please ogoverno military that initiated in 1964. As a result, their political rights are annulled in 1969 and is forbidden to teach. Returns the only University in 1980, along with other teachers cassados (including, Vilanova Artigas).
In 1998 Paul Mendes becomes professor of architectural design at the school, the