Centro Cultural São Paulo

In times of repression and urban development

Abstract

During the military regime, period between 1964 and 1985, the Brazilian political life was characterized by the repression, censorship, restriction of civil liberties, and on the other hand, in the context of urban issues, by the intense development resulting from industrialization and the predominant technocratic vision. In this scenario, it was being discussed in Sao Paulo the necessary expansion of the largest library of the city, which was overcrowded and unable to store appropriately its collection of 800 thousand volumes. As a solution of expansion was designed and built the Centro Cultural São Paulo, the first center of culture in Brazil and the largest in Latin America at that time. A public equipment of monumental dimensions, unusual constructive solutions and innovative spatial concepts at the time of construction. The building designed by the architects Eurico Prado Lopes and Luiz Benedito de Castro Telles took a long time to be considered an exponent of architecture in São Paulo because, at the age of the construction, the political issues had greater prominence than the conceptual innovations proposed by the project, but over the thirty-six years since the inauguration, it has become a powerful social, political, architectural and cultural equipment in the metropolis.