Everywhere, nowhere: considerations on the Clock Tower, a symbol-monument of the University of São Paulo

Abstract

On December 17, 1968, four days after the enactment of Institutional Act n. 5 (AI-5), the Housing Complex of the University of São Paulo (Crusp) dawned surrounded by war tanks. More than a thousand students were interrogated; many of them arrested or persecuted, with disastrous consequences. The main nucleus of coexistence and resistance of the university, at that moment, was vacated. Adjacent to the blocks, a wide open space was waiting to be transformed, through the project, into an open stage for cultural and political manifestations. In this modern agora, a group of buildings, with different purposes, and a monument with totemic features, known as Clock Tower, would be implanted. Its insertion in the Cidade Universitária Armando de Salles Oliveira (Cuaso), headquarters of the University of São Paulo (USP), constitutes the object of investigation of this article. At first, the different meanings of sociability proposed for the university are presented and, more particularly, the project versions for the central nucleus of coexistence are analyzed. The second block examines the design intentions of the monument conceived by Rino Levi and Elisabeth Nobiling, taking into account the appropriation of the university territory by the Student Movement (ME) during the Brazilian political redemocratization process of the 1960s-1970s. In this section, we are interested in examining the horrors of the past so that we can avoid setbacks in the future.