Historic urban landscape: What is this concept and how does it applies to the city of Rio de Janeiro?

Ref.: 240
Área temática: 03 Integridad visual de los paisajes urbanos históricos
Fecha de recepción: 30/10/2008

AUTORES (* Autor principal)

PACHECO SANCHES, Manuel Augusto * (Brasil) - Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro

ABSTRACT

This article has two objectives: the first is to discuss the concept of historic urban landscape and the second is to examine how this concept can be used to the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This work is based on a survey conducted during the year 2008 in the old city area, around the Morro da Conceicão, the main port area of Rio de Janeiro for over 300 years. The concept of historic urban landscape has acquired several meanings, all of them referring to a displacement, temporal or spatial, of some culture, more specifically of some representation of different cultures. Rio de Janeiro city - since it became the capital of the Portuguese Empire in Brazil, in 1763, until the beginning of XX century - was a scenario for the presence of British, French, Portuguese, and African people. All these cultures and this whole story are recorded in the districts of Centro, Saude, and Gamboa, neighborhoods closed to the port area, which testified different aspects of time and cultures. The reform of Rio de Janeiro made by Mayor Pereira Passos at the beginning of XX century, based on reform made by Baron Haussmann in Paris, and the opening of Avenida Presidente Vargas in the late 30 preserved that old part of Rio because ignored it. This brought us today a scenario forgotten by modernism. With the opening of the Rio Branco Avenue, all the neoclassical buildings in one specific area were destroyed but led to significant buildings that, in general, were representative of the eclecticist urban landscape in Latin America. From this landscape, however, only seven single and disperse unities remained preserved and are now part of the national patrimony, of which two are located in the study area. The construction of Presidente Vargas destroyed a colonial heritage leaving only two meaningful art-deco building (the central railway station and the former Secretariat of Defense) and a modernist building designed by Oscar Niemeyer. These urban interventions clearly reflect the dilemma of the concept of urban landscape: on the one hand to preserve the historic landscape and on the other to insert it in the contemporary structure of urban services and in the new landscape which the city permanently creates. The study, whose focus is purely conceptual, analyzed contrasting pictures to show that the dilemma can only be solved by preserving an ensemble around protected heritages (in this case, national, state and municipal heritages), and not by only preserving the outstanding units. The study concludes that only the preservation of the different sets protects cultural and historic landscapes, integrating them, by contrast, with the benefits and the landscapes of the contemporary city.

BIBLIOGRAFÍA

The bibliography remain the same.