português
 
 
1 2 3 4 5 6 7   1 2 3      
     
   
     
 
 
      
 
Inaugurated in 1896, half way between the cities of Recife and Olinda, the installations of the Tacaruna factory constituted a reference to the industrial transformation of the sugar-producing Northeast in the early years of the Republic.
The building impresses for its scale, for the regularity of the openings—a series of colonial arched windows—and for the lack of symmetry of the set of three well-defined blocks. No longer containig industrial machinery, the building with its ancillary edifications and the surrounding area became the object of a competition. The idea was to revitalize the set by converting it into a complex able to provide for public facilities for leisure and culture, as well as for a convention and commercial center.
The main block limits one of the sides of a great esplanade (gained by the demolition of the old annexes and warehouses) and connects to the a new building, which limits the opposite side. The most striking element of the new building is a wall. A conventional wall 13 m high (42 ft) and 200 m long (650 ft), interrupted in its extension only to embrace a smaller smoke stack (a remnant of the factory) and to meet the marquise. Built of rustic, irregular Cyclopian masonry, its crevices are home to mosses, ferns, orchids and bromelias. Also delimitating the esplanade are an acoustic shell, to the north, and a vertical block, a hotel, to the south. The esplanade itself contains an area of mangrove vegetation and concentrations of preexisting trees in addition to a mass of coconut trees proliferating on beach sand. The varied and contrasting vegetation of the complex accommodates two important cultural references: the Memorial to the Integration of the Arts—a composition consisting of thirty timber poles, each painted by a Brazilian artist, representing the tradition of Northeastern and Brazilian popular festivities—and the Árvore Resistente (Hardy Tree), a great fig tree wedged tightly in the remaining 6 m (20 ft) of masonry of one of the old warehouses, preserved as a symbol of the strong and symbiotic integration of cultural man and his landscape.

SANTOS, Cecília Rodrigues dos –Tacaruna Cultural Center.

In: CALDEIRA, Vasco; FANUCCI, Francisco; FERRAZ, Marcelo; SANTOS, Cecilia Rodrigues dos – Francisco Fanucci, Marcelo Ferraz: Brasil Arquitetura studio. São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2005.


 
     
 
1 2  
 
 
Brasil Arquitetura Ltda.®  2008. Todos os direitos reservados. Resolução mínima 1024x768.