Talles Lopes

Excedente Monumental (Monumental Surplus)
Styrofoam, polyester canvas, grout and iron bars, variable dimensions.
2020.

“Monumental Surplus” emerges from a research that I have been dedicating myself since 2017, called “Brazil Builds”, which I investigate the appropriation of modern architecture elements by informal constructive cultures in Brazil, documenting the incorporation of the shape of the column of the Palace of Dawn – Palacio da Alvorada (Niemeyer`s project in Brasilia, 1958) by several non-official and anonymous modernism spread all around the country.

The work proposes the reproduction of 5 of these columns in the approximated size of their real scales, adopting the value of 3 meters as the average height. The falsification of a certain weight and materialness through the use of polystyrene revested with grout suggests a scenic architecture, in a higher proper logic as well as the anonymous columns and those drawn by Niemeyer, since beside the supposed modern function, both are thought almost exclusively to ornamental purpose, “almost like a decoration bet”¹.

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1. According to Bastos and Zein analyses (2011), the columns of Dawns Palace suggest the support of the large cover of the building allowing a wide and flexible space, however, it is only to hold part of the load of the gallery flagstone while the rest of the Palace structures itself independently. Therefore, in a reverse of the modern functionalism and besides the secondary structure role, the columns were highlighted as the main visual element of the Palace, in a deliberately formal choice.

(BASTOS, Maria Alice Junqueira; ZEIN, Ruth Verde. Brasil, Arquiteturas apos 1950. São Paulo: Persperctiva 2011)