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Costa, Nuno Tavares da (2019). The National Coach Museum and the question of the other. Colonial and Postcolonial Landscapes.

N. M. Costa,  "The National Coach Museum and the question of the other", in Colonial and Postcolonial Landscapes, Lisboa, 2019

@misc{costa2019_1777168885108,
	author = "Costa, Nuno Tavares da",
	title = "The National Coach Museum and the question of the other",
	year = "2019",
	url = "https://www.colonialandpostcoloniallandscapes.com/"
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - The National Coach Museum and the question of the other
T2  - Colonial and Postcolonial Landscapes
AU  - Costa, Nuno Tavares da
PY  - 2019
CY  - Lisboa
UR  - https://www.colonialandpostcoloniallandscapes.com/
AB  - Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha recurrently refers to the need of a critical reappraisal with respect to colonialism policies, particularly from the architecture and urbanism point of view. The discovery of America was one of the events that most influenced the character of the modern era. According to Mendes da Rocha, it was the moment to stand for a shifting point in the history of humanity. For architecture, it was the moment to reinvent. The rise of modern man should have corresponded to a new architecture: modern, settled on human needs. Instead, colonialism insisted on repeating the same old models, imposing its cultural ideas and credos in the new discovered land. Mendes da Rocha is conscious of this particular moment of history and sums it up in the body of knowledge that he uses in his work.
Mendes da Rocha is the heir of the Brazilian modernist heroic generation. In this emblematic period, Brazilian architecture raised upon the urgency and opportunity of constructing a new way of living, settled on local inherent characteristics. “Climate, habits and sensibility” in Oscar Niemeyer words; but also, with a social concern like in Artigas proposition. The confrontation Architecture-Nature and Architecture-Society is strongly rooted in Mendes da Rocha work. 
His project for the Coach Museum in Lisbon is not an exception. The fact that it is one of his rare works outside Brazil gives it a different meaning: a strange proposal in the context of the old continent, where, traditionally, repetition remained. The museum appears as a stranger in the monumental site of Belém, a symbolic place in the country’s history, from where the Portuguese ships departed to expand their influence all over the world. It was here that in 1940 the dictatorship organized the Portuguese World Exhibition, in many aspects a celebration of the colonization process. It is also interesting to note that the only country that was represented there (instead of what was initially intended) was Brazil. The Brazilian pavilion displayed a canvas from the painter Candido Portinari – “Café” (1935) – showing the hard work and misery of the coffee pickers. José Augusto França referred to this work as a “Trojan Horse” in the context of the Portuguese exhibition. Can one look at Mendes da Rocha museum in the same way? Perhaps it appears as an opportunity to return to the America’s modern experience, an alternative that still resists.

ER  -