Adalberto Vilela

The establishment of large-scale sugar manufacturing in the Americas posed an important challenge to technology and, therefore, to scientific knowledge. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, sugar production in Brazil, in addition to being costly and time-consuming, was possible only due to slave labor, the first trade apprentices in the country.
In 1888, with the abolition of slavery, the country embarked on a mission to establish and encourage ways to improve technical education required for its modernization and industrialization. Manuel Raimundo Querino (1851–1923), Afro-Brazilian artist, professor, politician, and historian who fought for the development of an efficient educational network to generate technicians and scientists who would contribute to the country's technological progress, is remembered as an example of community and pedagogical action for legitimate transfer of knowledge.
In its pursuit of transitioning from an agrarian society to an industrial nation, this study reveals that Brazil emphasized the cultivation of technical skills, with design education playing a pivotal role. This strategic shift aimed to facilitate industrial expansion by dismantling the historical influence of sugar mills, which had not only shaped the sugar-centric economy but also molded the fabric of Brazilian society. In more straightforward terms, the goal was to eradicate the stigma of servitude that had characterized the early stages of industrial education and the devaluation of manual labor in the country. From a broader perspective, it highlights the importance of drawing as a means of technical, political, and social transformation in architecture and construction.

This essay revisits the residential production of architect João Filgueiras Lima (1932-2014), repositioning his houses within a broader context, from the perspective of production and design of his architecture.
https://vitruvius.com.br/revistas/read/arquitextos/22.263/8448

Este artigo se propõe a destacar aspectos-chave em torno do processo de preservação da obra do arquiteto João Filgueiras Lima (1932-2014), também conhecido como Lelé, no Brasil. No momento em que o Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional (IPHAN) decide iniciar a salvaguarda de seus prédios em Brasília, me parece pertinente levantar questões que remontam às origens de seu envolvimento com a pré-fabricação. Nesse sentido, descobrir como a sequência de falhas atribuíveis a Lelé e sua equipe se tornou um pré-requisito para a pesquisa construtiva do arquiteto é fundamental.
Lelé mostrou que, durante mais de 50 anos dedicados a promover a industrialização da construção no Brasil, os desentendimentos técnicos foram frequentes e decisivos em sua vida profissional. Os fracassos vividos pelo arquiteto durante a construção da Universidade de Brasília (1961-65) – um dos momentos mais significativos da pré-fabricação no Brasil – e depois, durante a ditadura militar (1964-85) – quando se envolveu mais sistematicamente com construtoras e engenheiros – formaram a base de sua capacidade de converter a falta de meios em desafios.
De certa forma, as decisões deliberadas do arquiteto em relação ao método operacional e às diretrizes práticas de sua obra podem apresentar desafios para o poder público interessado nas ações de preservação. Prova disso são os inúmeros edifícios em que os sistemas originais (cobertura, drenagem, ventilação, iluminação, etc.) foram parcial ou totalmente alterados. A questão que se coloca aqui não é se essas mudanças podem ter afetado a funcionalidade ou aparência do edifício, mas como o Instituto do Patrimônio no Brasil poderia aproveitá-las para (re)construir e validar o conhecimento construtivo do arquiteto e, portanto, compartilhar sua maneira de pensar e produzir arquitetura como um objeto técnico, percebida e executada como parte de um processo.

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Preservation challenges of Lelé's rationalized architecture in Brazil

This paper attempts to highlight key aspects around the preservation process of the work of the Brazilian architect João Filgueiras Lima (1932-2014), otherwise known as Lelé, in Brazil. In a moment when the National Historic and Artistic Heritage Institute (Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional, IPHAN) decides to initiate the safeguarding of his buildings in Brasília, it seems pertinent to arise questions that trace back to the origins of his involvement with prefabrication. Therefore, finding out how the sequence of failures attributable to Lelé and his team became a prerequisite for the architect’s constructive research is paramount.
Lelé showed that, during more than 50 years dedicated to promoting building industrialization in Brazil, disagreements were rife and decisive at his professional life. The failures experienced by the architect during the construction of the University of Brasília (1961-65) – one of the most meaningful moments for prefabrication in Brazil – and afterwards – during the military dictatorship (1964-85) when he got involved with building companies and engineers more systematically – formed the basis of his capacity of converting the lack of means into challenges.
In a way, the architect’s combined attitude behavior towards operative-based method and practice guidelines may present challenges for the public power interested in the preservation undertaking. Proof of that are the numerous buildings where the original systems (roof, drainage, ventilation, illumination and so forth) were partially or totally altered. The question arising here is not whether these changes may have affected the building’s functionality, but how the heritage institute in Brazil could take advantage of them to (re)build and validate the architect’s constructive knowledge and, therefore, sharping his way of thinking and producing architecture as a technical object, perceived and performed as part of a process.

The development of ferrocement in Brazil cannot be dissociated from the works of the architect João Filgueiras Lima, popularly known as Lelé (1932–2014). Renamed as argamassa armada by a group of engineers from São Carlos in the 1960s—to make a clear distinction from Nervi's ferrocemento – the construction material was used in an innovative way in the 1980s in cities like Rio de Janeiro, Brasília and Salvador. This paper analyses Lelé's use of argamassa armada and the way in which he assigned a social role to slender and lightweight components. In this context, transient prefabricated schools and some of their key components allow us to discern the motivations behind the architect's innovations, which matter much more than the material's mechanical properties.

For over fifty years, João Filgueiras Lima – Lelé, as he is known, has established a working methodology based on the application of different building technologies and the rationalization of construction sites. The career of the young architect begins with his coming to Brasilia in 1957, to take over the construction of the city's first superblock, SQS 108, designed by Oscar Niemeyer. Amid a work highly diversified and spread throughout the country, with emphasis in prefabrication, his residential projects are distinguished for the idiosyncrasy in counterpoint to his other productions.
In this study, we are particularly interested in the so-called "author's house," those made to meet more wealthy client's requirements and in whose design it can be exercised a freedom of technical, functional and aesthetic choices that differ essentially from other architectural programs. In 1961, already involved in the works for the campus of the University of Brasília, Lelé designs his first house at the request of his friend and Juscelino Kubitschek's adviser, César Prates. Despite the traditional program, the residence already highlights some concerns of a technical and aesthetic character that will be refined and applied with greater ease in other experiences in this field.
To better appreciate the spectrum of building solutions adopted by him, we choose four residences, all in Brasilia.
The first, the Residence Aloysio Campos da Paz (1969 and 1991), has certain peculiarities that give it a distinctive place in the architect's production. Besides possessing a plant rather atypical, issued from an organicist interpretation given to the program, we don't find here a stiffness in the spatial organization dictated by some modular definition as can happen in other examples. A weekend house built in stone masonry and completely integrated into the landscape, it received in 1991 an annex in metallic structure whose language differs completely from that originally adopted.
The second house is exemplary of a moment when Lelé turns to brick building techniques. The Residence Nivaldo Borges (1972-1978) was designed according to a structural system based on the use of arches and vaults in "mid-point", whose construction was under the Spanish master Tião, an expert builder and family friend.
The third project can be read as an ode to concrete and the bold technical solutions arising from it. In the Residence José da Silva Netto (1973-1976), Lelé adopts a simple constructive logic, yet sophisticated in terms of execution. The structure calculation involved porches and cantilevers that support a large slab roof, five meters high from the ground. This unusual solution resulted form the interpretation of a clearly expressed desire by the client: a clear view of Lake Paranoá.
Fleeing the stipulated time frame, that in order to fully respond to the event's theme, the fourth project, the Residence Roberto Pinho (2007-2008), is representative of a more recent phase of Lelé's architecture, characterized by the extensive use of steel as plastic and structural element. Employed in a pioneer way during the years of the Community Equipment Factory, FAEC, in Salvador (1985-1989), this building system was the basis for a quite fruitful subsequent experiment, the Technology Center of the Sarah Hospitals (1991), continued and enhanced in the Brazilian Institute of the Habitat Technology (2009).
Keywords: João Lelé Filgueiras Lima; residential architecture; home; building systems; materials.

There is no way to talk about the professional trajectory of Lelé without mentioning Brasilia. Just as there is no way to separate work from life of an architect that started his career on a construction site and made it his personal experimentation laboratory. In 1957, João Filgueiras Lima – most known as Lelé, offered himself at the Institute of Retirement and Pensions of Bank Workers (IAPB) in Rio, where he worked as a designer, to join the team that would build the Superquadra 108 South in Brasilia, designed by Oscar Niemeyer.

During a period in close collaboration with Niemeyer on large projects and whose brutalist aesthetic would mark the architecture of the first years of the University of Brasilia, such as the Institute of Theology (1962-1964) and the Central Institute of Sciences (1963-1971), Lelé designed at the UnB Campus his first projects following the precepts of the concrete apparent: the General Services Pavilion (1962) and the residential blocks for teachers, called Colina (1963). At that time when the need and urgency were slogans, the University began to seek solutions that meet their demand for new institutes, schools, administrative buildings and lodgments. Thus, in 1963, commanded by Darcy Ribeiro, Lelé travelled to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in order to learn about new technologies and methods used in the mass production of industrialized buildings.

With the arising of the dictatorship period in Brazil in 1964 and the first invasion at UnB in April of that year, just nine days after the military coup, the life of Lelé would change dramatically. He decided to resign his teacher position in 1965 along with 223 other university professors as a protest against the military authority recently installed in the power. Since then, the lack of work due to his political views turned into a period of great reflection and innovation in his projects, all designed within the language of brutalist architecture. Some examples from that period: the DISBRAVE Auto Dealers (1965), the Taguatinga Hospital (1968) and headquarters buildings of Portobrás and Camargo Corrêa (both from 1974) in Brasilia, and the Bahia Administrative Center (1973-1975) in Salvador.

Fleeing the stipulated time frame, others Lelé’s projects could be mentioned, including some more popular, such as the Sarah Hospital in Brasilia (1976-1980), or the numerous kindergartens and prefabricated schools produced over the 1980s in Rio de Janeiro and Bahia, even one of his last works in concrete before moving to steel as primary material in his projects: the CAICs (Integral Support Centre for Children), 1990. However, the works mentioned above reveals a peculiar feature of Lelé’s architecture in that period: the transition to a greater diversity of building components and greater plasticity of some design elements suggest a greater freedom in the formal repertoire of the architect, previously reduced to large isostatic traditional beams.

Keywords: João Filgueiras Lima, Lelé, prefabrication, industrialization, brutalism, building systems, concrete.

This dissertation investigates the work and industrial thinking of João Filgueiras Lima – or simply Lelé (Rio de Janeiro, 1932 – Salvador, 2014) – within the context of the seven state-owned factories for precast building elements that he founded in Brazil over the course of 30 years of intense manufacturing activity (1979-2009). It aims to explore three interrelated levels of his architecture – factories, systems and components – as they constitute the fundamentals of his constructive approach, in terms of both conception and production. From the perspective of the architect acting beyond the scope of the designer, manufacturer and builder, this study seeks to portray how Lelé broadened the discipline throughout his practice. In view of an inconstant notion of industrialization – which would affect the way his precast plants were organized – it is argued that Lelé incorporated a strong manual dimension in his modus operandi. Thus, his compromises and convictions were paradoxically centered upon the combination of crafted and industrial ways of producing the technical object; ways that might prove less expensive and more efficient, given the community-oriented use of the structures concerned. The reason for conducting this study on Lelé is to re-evaluate his contribution through the prism of the operationalization of prefabricated architecture in a wider context; this will bring into question political, economic and social issues as determinants in his manufactured work.
Supervisor: Laurent Stalder (ETH Zurich)
Co-supervisors: Sylvia Ficher (UnB) and Max Risselada (TU Delft)

Full text available at ETH Research Collection:
https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/handle/20.500.11850/301849

In the Brazilian architecture history, João Filgueiras Lima (Rio de Janeiro, 1932) occupies a place of highlight for his social characteristics, technical purity and formidable ingenuity of his solutions. Also known as Lelé, he has consolidated for more than 50 years of profession, a method of work based on experimentation of technologies and rationalization of the building site, applying for that pre- -fabrication as the tonic of his career. Among high diversified work, which is found all over the Brazilian territory, appears a small number of houses, completed in Brasília and in the state of Bahia, brought to the analysis as a central theme of study. It is a historical approach about the origins and development of the modern house in Brazil's 20th century cultural, political and social context, discussed un- der scope of the production of an architect that, fearlessly, reinvents himself by means of his researches.

Este livro baseia-se na dissertação de mestrado homônima apresentada à Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade de Brasília em outubro de 2011. Trata-se de uma abordagem histórica sobre as origens e o desenvolvimento da casa moderna no contexto cultural, político e social do Brasil do século XX, discutida sob o enfoque da produção de um arquiteto que, sem temor, se reinventa por meio de suas pesquisas. Esta edição apresenta ainda uma seção (Anexo C) com 23 projetos residenciais inéditos de autoria do arquiteto João Filgueiras Lima, Lelé.

ISBN: 978-85-230-1200-7
Editora Universidade de Brasília, 2017