Centro Cultural São Paulo_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

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Centro Cultural São Paulo
history
collection
curatorial profile
projects portfolio
architectural plans
location and entrance
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visiting information

History

The history of Centro Cultural São Paulo begins in the seventies, when the land between Rua Vergueiro and Avenida 23 de Maio was given to the City Hall. The area was a product of disappropriations caused by the subway construction, the area of around 300 thousand square meters was target of many speculations. In July of 1973, under the administration of Miguel Colassuono, the Vergueiro Project was launched, and its purpose was to promote the urbanization of the area, where it would be built an office complex, hotels, a mall and a large public library. The deadline to finish the works was five years.

the project

Two years later the administration of Olavo Setúbal canceled the Vergueiro Project, having to pay the indemnification to the consortium Prounb that had won the bidding for the works. The only thing that remained from the old plan was the construction of the public library. To do it so, a studies commission was installed composed of librarians, teachers and the architect Aron Cohen. The group's idea was to build a modern library where the reader would have free access to all the material; the objective was not to keep but to open the collection to the public. The architect Eurico Prado Lopes won the competition opened in 1976, and the construction began in 1978.

The following administration, of Mayor Reynaldo de Barros, decided to reformulate the project of the library and adapt it to a multidisciplinary cultural center similar to the ones arising in the entire world, such as Georges Pompidou, founded in 1977 in Paris (France). Mário Chamie, who was São Paulo culture secretary at that time, claimed that the location was ideal to install an institution like that. Besides, he argued that the building would be too large to be only a library. It was then decided that the cultural center would have a cinema, theater, a space for recitals and concerts, ateliers and exhibition areas. The architects Eurico Prado Lopes and Luiz Telles remained in charge of the project.

The conception of the cultural center was based in a large research, in order to understand what the access to information meant in a country like Brazil. The building was projected with the goal to facilitate the approach between the public and what would be offered in the center. Therefore, the architecture did not obey pre established patterns, focusing on wide dimensions and multiple entrances and paths.

Construction and opening

Centro Cultural São Paulo started to be built in the last years of the Brazilian military dictatorship. The proposal to value the multidisciplinary aspect of the spaces was target of lots of polemics.

The project was largely discussed in the media because, besides presenting new concepts like integration and multidisciplinarity, its construction had some technical problems, since it introduced many architectonical innovations. Researches and experimentations were done before a final product could be achieved. In order to the bold shapes intended by the architects be viable, a lot of different materials were used, like glass, steel, concrete, acrylic, bricks and fabric. With four pavements and an area of 46500 m2, the architectural project of Centro Cultural São Paulo is highlighted and integrated to the urban space. The project dissolves the construction in the land topography. Without barriers, it invites who passes by to come in. To break the hardness of the concrete and the steel, the project foreseen large hollow and glazed spaces, that allow the entrance of natural light, and kept in the center of the construction a garden of 700m2, where the original vegetation was preserved.

the structures The conception law of Centro Cultural São Paulo, promulgated on May 6th 1982, established that its attributes included: "to plan, promote, encourage and document artistic and cultural creations; gather and organize an information infrastructure on human knowledge; develop researches on Brazilian culture and art, providing subsidies to their activities; encourage the involvement of the community, in order to develop the creative capacity of its members, allowing simultaneous access to different forms of culture; and offer study and research conditions, in the knowledge and culture fields, like supporting education and the scientific and technological development".

The inauguration took place on May 13th 1982. The mayor Reynaldo de Barros and the culture secretary Mário Chamie received a great public composed of guests, workers and citizens. After the ceremony, the people went through the dependencies of the building, watched musical concerts with the Coral Paulistano [São Paulo Choir] and the pianist João Carlos Martins and had the opportunity to see the works exhibited in the Art Gallery.

23 de maio

In 1982, São Paulo had approximately 8.5 million inhabitants, with a great number of them living in the suburbs. The intention of the rising cultural center was to gather these heterogeneous people, providing an area where everybody had access to different cultural genres.

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