Experiences of Modern in Belém: construction, reception and destruction

Abstract

This paper revisit modern constructs (physical, social, cultural and political) that are observed in Belém since 1930 and that show themselves repeatedly until the 1960s. These are intermittent expressions that are presented on two levels and two different spaces: (1) in the central area of the city with proposals of public facilities and the first buildings modernized in the 1930s and 1940s; and (2) in the urban space in expansion along central roads and their adjacencies, where houses, buildings, schools, public institutions headquarters are constructed following a concept of modernity that were associated, in the 1930s, with the policies implemented in the 'Era Vargas,'2 and in the 1950s, with the policies of development, and with the new demands for housing by an emerging social group. In this sense, the purpose of this paper is to discuss these experiences under three different dimensions: (1) construction (buildings, speeches, and historiography); (2) reception; and (3) destruction of a great part of this experience of the Modern in a capital city of the Brazilian Amazon. The methodology consisted of documentary survey (photographic record and original designs), architectural survey, and redrawing of some work, with a subsequent formal and spatial analysis of the most representative. It is considered that the expressions of the Modern in Belém addressed here, though manifested in a especially hard economic moment, sought to break with the established codes, promoting, in a certain way, a reorganization of the space and the physiognomy of the eclectic city, being then an experience of the 'radical Modern' in the context of an Amazonian city after the 'rubber period'.