Technique, art and fundamental issues of existence. Thoughts on Paulo Mendes da Rocha’s discourse

Abstract

The focus of this document intends to discuss the relevance of the technique and the art in the discourse in the architecture of Paulo Mendes da Rocha. It observes the texts of the architect committed to praxis and discusses the value of the “technique” in the architecture configuration and its attachment to a program of life humanity. The dimension of “art”, in turn, also integrated into life, is seen as the one that always guarantees the condition and the extension of the attributes inherent to the ordinary processes of everyday life. The ideas of the text are based in the words of the architect – considering the published texts that mention the concepts of the projects, the lessons, the testimonies and the interviews. It advocates theposition that the reasoning and the ethics revealed in the speech integrated a “body of knowledge” inherent to the “modus operandi” of the projects. For those who know or want to approach to this architecture, the hospitality of the words of the architect clarifies that the design’s knowledge is in the discussion of a horizon that implies the subject, the mankind and the fabricated world. This intentional arch, which reveals itself in the individual trait of the work, is based on rationality.It teaches that spatiality is a condition and a value of lifetime, and even a speech and a historical action interdependent to the artistic sensibilities of human nature. To get to know the architecture of Paulo Mendes da Rocha, which aspires to be the expression of objectivity as designation “radical” of the technique, it is essential to go back to the texts of the architect committed to praxis and involved directly with the production of meanings of architecture. The involvement with the speech reveals that is the “natural inclusivity” of the aesthetic dimension that introduces the negotiation between desire and experience. It also reveals that the senses of human beings are those that organize the structure of rationality and knowledge.