Building `gallery` shopping centres in the European style was championed in São Paulo from the early 1960s, during the initial `verticalisation` of the city, by Italian architect Ermanno Siffredi. Others followed suit, and the character of these elegant buildings still holds sway in São Paulo Centro. São Paulo already had a considerable and elegant built heritage.
Foyer of the São Pãulo Teatro Municipal opera house. Ramos de Azevedo, 1911.
But the shopping gallery projects did not import materials and craftsmen and women wholesale from Europe, as did the Teatro (1903 – 1911) and the Gothic Revival Catedral da Sé (1913 – 1954). The galleries were not stone but ferro-concrete constructions, and some designs were the outcome of architectural competitions. With striking results.
Façade of Grandes Galerias, Avenida São João 439, São Paulo. Siffredi & Bardelli, 1962
Boldly modern in its sweep and style, the Shopping Center Grandes Galerias nonetheless combines curves and straight lines to good effect, just as the eclectic Art Nouveau Teatro does. The Grandes Galerias were designed by the Italian practice of Ermanno Siffredi and Maria Bardelli, business and personal partners. Since their qualifications were not recognised in Brazil, they were not always named as architects. Brazilian Alfredo Mathias also had a hand in the design – he went on to design the Portal residential complex in Morumbi.
Their effects are achieved with simple devices – linear placement of ordinary light fittings, pale curved facade floors which draw the eye away from the darker faceted standard plate glass windows, the safe yet open galleries which invite a casual shopper to linger on the railing and enjoy the view. And there are more visual delights inside.
A vantage point for vigilant security
The curves of the façade are carried through into the arcade walk in both horizontal and in ascending vertical planes. The wooden battens – a favoured decorative element in Brazil – of the façade shop fronts wrap around the mezzanine, spacious despite the intrusive fire system piping.
Each floor has a distinct pattern for its tiled floor. The demands of commercial advertising may intrude – what IS that on the underside of the elevator ? – and the character of the design may or may not be strong enough to overcome them.
A visual Babel
The lifts are a case in point. The floor tiles, and the dark facings and stainless steel doors interpolated in the curve of wooden battens, are matched in colour, and contrasted in form. But the ceramic mural of shoppers and their consumer durables above is somewhat lost in the noise of the commercial environment. Let’s take a closer look.
Fashionable furnishing at its height
Decorative ceramics, household furniture, light fittings and wall coverings are all advertised in a rather more subtle way than today’s retail items. Today the building is known as the Galeria do Rock, and sells skater fashions, T-shirts, tattoos and sports goods, and serves as a commercial music venue for tribute bands. Urban sub-cultures thrive here.
Sloping access to lower ground floor, original lettering
What we see here under the commercial noise and frankly, the startling poverty of São Paulo Centro today, is the elegance and the real optimism of an earlier age. Today Avenida São João is inhabited by the urban poor and small retailers.
The facade on Avenida São João from the inside looking out
Hard to believe that in 1978, Brazilian music star Caetano Veloso wrote a song to honour São Paulo – “Sampa” – which has the corner of Avenida São João and Ipiranga at its heart, where Bar Brahma was “a favorite of intellectuals, musicians & politicians in the ’50s & ’60s, with beer, snacks & music”, if Google Maps is to be believed.
Modernist composition, ground floor, looking up
Under the glitz and the grinding poverty, the architecture of the Shopping Center Grandes Galerias is a fading though glamorous echo of that time.
Drinks at the fashionable (or as they say here, “chic-y”) Hotel Unique. By day it alludes to a slice of watermelon – Japanese Brasilian architect Ruy Ohtake also used an ‘inverted’ solid for his Instituto Tomie Ohtake – but by night it’s more science fiction: overcast sky lit by apartment towers on the horizon, traffic streaming by in the rain, no obvious access – you just drive in over the gravelled frontage – and an army of men in dark clothes to park your car and direct you. In at the doorway on the right, you enter a dark space and a dim and sombre lift. City views from the lift as you ascend. You step into a short passage lined with back-lit panels of translucent stone, and into the bar.
The view is Sao Paulo impressive – set in a little valley crammed with buildings to the horizon and beyond. Communications towers wink and glow. The decking gleams in the rain, table umbrellas offer shelter.
And when you come back down to ground level, the world seems slightly duller by comparison. You want to go and stand by the giant upright, lit with colour and soaring up to the apex of the curve, sheathed with wood underneath, echoing the shuttering pattern on the ferro-concrete. The excitement of this architecture is compulsive.
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