In the beginning of July, a preliminary study was published which was prepared by the Herzog & Of Meuron office, and contracted by São Paulo State‘s government. Just one hundred square meters will separate the building of the Júlio Prestes Station – projected by Christiano Stockler of Neves and in which ten years ago Dupré inserted the Sala Sao Paulo – from the cultural compound that, according to the government will put São Paulo definitively on the map of the great projects of international architecture.

According to São Paulo’s government, the summons of Herzog & Of Meuron, contracted for well-known specialization, among other reasons, happened after the English company TPC Theatre Projects Consultants, had defined the profile of the complex and detailed the program of each item. Their technicians studied and analyzed the city to visualize a theater of unique characteristics.

From that study, the state government selected architects’ international offices that could be interested in developing the project: English Norman Foster, the Argentinian rooted in the EUA Cesar Pelli, and the Dutchman Rem Koolhaas. “We wanted to provoke a scandal in the Brazilian architecture. In the good sense”, it provokes the secretary of Culture, João Sayad.

Even holders of Pritzker, Oscar Niemeyer and Mendes of Rocha were discarded, according to Sayad, for they already have other projects in the city. In the secretary’s evaluation, Foster’s architecture, Pelli and Koolhaas turns their projects easily recognizable in any part of the world, while the one of Herzog & Of Meuron it is always revealed innovative, not vulgar.

The intrinsic concept to the project of Herzog & Of Meuron was to mix and combine the maximum possible activities, transposing in the building, the dynamics of the metropolis. The group possesses four pavements (and medium height of 23 meters), from which it’s possible to do a lineal external reading nor to define a hierarchy among the facades.

A possible approach is the suspended square, composed by a game of sheets interlaced in the two senses, that integrates into the green areas that the architects propose.

This project is part of the renovation of São Paulo’s downtown, an area that until the 90s used to be dilapidated and is now becoming the most important cultural center in Brazil.

Via: Arcoweb.