Residential architecture in são paulo between World Wars

Abstract

The present text was prepared for a doctoral thesis about the panorama of residential architecture in São Paulo during the 1920s and 1930s, the period between the two World Wars in the 20th century. Apart from residences and palaces designed by renowned professionals for the elite in São Paulo, and the proletarian homes, this period saw the appearance of residential architectural manifestations based on expressions by the middle class, which had a large presence in the urban landscape of the city. Today, the remaining homes of that period make up the urban environment heritage. Those houses are significant cultural assets because they show the technological and cultural stage reached by a specific social group, also revealing prominent customs, techniques and stylistic tastes. By analyzing a representative sample of residential projects stored in the São Paulo’s City Archive, the study characterized the predominant architecture of middle-class home’s focusing on technical and constructive innovations, as well as its implications in improving building quality, on programmatic solutions arising at the time, and on the formal and stylistic repertoire of those years (neocolonial and later Art déco), as well as other forms of architectural expression with personal character.