The Telephone on the Eighteenth - Century Table: How Brazilian Modern Architects Conceived the Preservation of Historic City Centers

The preservation strategies developed by modernist architects at the Brazilian National Service for Historic and Artistic Heritage (SPHAN) in the 1930s and 1940s encapsulated the modernist attitude toward historic architecture in that country. To an extent unprecedented in other countries with strong modernist movements, the leading Brazilian modern ist architects were also the country's leading preservationists, and, in this official capacity, were even able to designate their own works. This essay explores the strategies that the modernists at SPHAN adopted for the preservation of historic buildings within growing urban centers, and for modern interventions into historical centers. In both cases, the architects of SPHAN used preservation to create a dialogue between colonial and modern architecture, and to reinforce the continuity between the distant past and the future of Brazilian architecture.