Goiânia by Attilio Corrêa Lima (1932 a 1935): Aesthetic ideal and political reality

De Anamaria Diniz

Attilio never gave up on Goiânia. The research carried out by the architect and urban planner Anamaria Diniz proposes a counterpoint and a reparation to the official history of Goiânia's urban planning, carried out by Attilio Corrêa Lima. For this, it uses primary sources and unpublished documents. Work awarded by CAU-GO, "Goiânia by Attilio Corrêa Lima (1931 to 1935) – aesthetic ideal and political reality" is the result of the author's master's thesis, published articles, as well as recent studies shared here for the first time.

• Idioma: Português
• Editora: Nega Lilu Editora
• Data de lançamento: 29 de jul. de 2021
• ISBN: 9786599526336

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Supporting a legacy

Fernando C. Chapadeiro

Registering the facts and works of a period of history is essential for the construction of the identity and memory of the society. As far as Architecture and Urbanism are concerned, knowing the history of professionals and their performance contributes to the continued maturation of the profession, either in front of their peers or in front of those who benefit from the results of their work. After all, it is extremely important that we recognize the legacies that have been granted to us, guaranteeing their place in academic narratives or on city street corners. We recognize them as a starting point or transition, in the evolution of design and construction processes. Only with this perspective we will understand the importance of each work for the construction of the spaces we have today.

By observing the movements that took place during the development of the initial plan for Goiânia, from the beginning, and the subsequent state policy, allied to particular interests, we will understand the current formal aspect of the city and the local tradition of disrespect for urban planning. Hence, to understand Attilio Corrêa Lima's relationship with Goiás as well as Goiânia with his plan is to understand the current city. It is clear that the problems that prevented the execution of Attilio's plan for the capital city from taking place, and led to the interruption of the urban planner's contract with the State, are the same ones that haunt us today.

The expectation of technical professionals, such as architects and urban planners, is that at some point this understanding and knowledge will contribute to the elaboration of more accurate diagnoses, preferably ones that are not as tied to economic and political interests. And, as a result, necessary repairs might become a reality.

This is the legacy that the Council of Architecture and Urbanism aims to build, through the sponsorship public notices carried out by the autarchy. We promote seminars, debates, exhibitions, social housing projects in order to contribute to the work of guaranteeing decent housing for people. And, thereby, we support, convinced of their importance, publications such as Goiânia by Attilio Corrêa Lima.

Fernando C. Chapadeiro

Architect and Urban planner

CAU/GO Chairman

The dream and the reality

Estevão C. de Rezende Martins

The conception of space and its occupation by an urban design, conceived by the architect-urban planner, takes on a good dose of dreams. A light dream, which hangs over the concrete reality, in which the creative idea of a new city is projected.

The first half of the twentieth century was generous on urban dreamers, such as Attilio Corrêa Lima, the idealizer of Goiânia, the new capital city of the state of Goiás. The present book has two remarkable characters, around whom the author, Anamaria Diniz, surrounds with grace and lightness, like a ballet dancer: Attilio, the inventor, and Goiânia, the invention.

Anamaria Diniz, whose research was done while she was doing her Master’s degree in Architecture and Urbanism at Universidade de Brasília, weaves her characters in the context of the emergence and consolidation of the urban professional specialty in the early 20th century, in the context of the territorial occupation policy and of regional power and in the dynamics of marches to the West.

In this context, the dream of cities, ideas and the greatness of aesthetic, political and social objectives are mixed.

Throughout human history, people have dreamed of an ideal world – the land of happiness. The final verse of the poem Utopia (1516), written by one of the most famous utopians of the 16th century, Thomas Morus, sounds like this: Utopia is my name: a land of happiness.

Urban planning is understood as a science strongly oriented towards the future, whose core includes development goals to come. As a result, utopia is an effective tool for the elaboration of urban planning scenarios, perhaps even the only possible way out of a possible structural crisis, such as that concerning the old capital of Goiás, Vila Boa (Goiás Velho).

Unlike prognosis or vision, utopia is characterized by an idea of a very striking community. In essence, it always presents itself as a kind of model. Modeling community is a characteristic assumption of urban planning in general. It can be understood that, from a social point of view, urban planning intends to be the utopia that materializes. However, ideas about what characterizes utopia have always diverged between urban planners and sociologists.

Architects and engineers often formulate their utopias in a very impartial and experimental way. Social changes must occur as a result of a comfortable and reconsidered environment. The utopian of urban planning assumes that better architecture always means a change in society towards being more human. In doing so, future models are designed, often based on the most recent technical achievements, which should allow a typical ideal coexistence and promise the inhabitants a carefree and conflict-free life. In order to underline the innovative character of design, urban planning utopias generally move within the framework of extreme and superlative ideas ( for example, the city of 3 million Le Corbusier or the French revolutionary architecture of Ledoux ).They are universal utopias that deal with all kinds of issues of traffic, land use, the functional structure of the city and the inclusion of nature. The idea of being able to bring about a transformation for the better in society thus seems understandable, in view of the broad structural changes and the effects on the individual. Although the utopian projects of ideal cities are at the service of new ideologies, they can nevertheless be seen as a visual and aesthetic way of realizing social and political ideas.

Social, political or humanistic utopias thus influenced the planning and development of cities. Particularly significant changes were projected during social and urban crises and at the beginning of new political formations and periods of urban planning.

One can realize in Attilio Corrêa Lima’s itinerary, while expressing himself in the Goiânia route, a form of utopian idealization of the city, with the aim of transforming it into reality.

The creation of the new capital city, Goiânia (1933-36), evidenced the governmental commitment – in particular of Pedro Ludovico Teixeira (1891-1979) – in consolidating the political and economic leadership in Goiás, in developing the state and building a version of a modern Goiás, aligned with the times when innovation was strongly desired. New cities around the world, since the 18th century, have given visibility to both the authority that sponsors them – Juscelino Kubitschek’s connection with Brasilia is one of the most notable examples – and their creators – what is extensive to Lucio Costa, urban planner , and Oscar Niemeyer, architect, regarding Brasília.

(Re) invented urban spaces say a lot about the circumstance and their creators. The utopian trait prevails in the conception line, the shock of reality shapes the design and the idea to the harsh concreteness of the theater of political life, in which the urban planner Don Quixote has to play his part.

Attilio Corrêa Lima had in Goiânia the great wide-ranging project of his career. The place was not a city yet. It could have been as he had thought, but it was not fully executed, due to political and economic injunctions typical of Goiás at the time. The project for Recife, shortly after the project for Goiânia, dealt with a city that had begun to settle in 1537. Goiânia came to occupy an urbanistically virgin space, while in Recife the reality imposed more limits. Anamaria Diniz helps us to understand how the urban planner´s education – in a Brazil in which this specialty was just advancing from scratch – and the design of the projects became interdependent. And also how it is not possible to defend an autocracy from the urban planner, as an omnipotent creator of space. The variables are real, especially the one related to political power and to its goals.

The author takes us through the complex polyhedron of the canonical treaties on the conception of cities, their purposes – both excellent ones and simple ones, their managers, their pontiffs, professionals or politicians, to understand paradigms and standards present in the first half of the twentieth century and the daring of the ruptures considered at that time.

In new cities, sprouting in their own unimpeded area, urbanism occurs as a project of a well thought artifact, often only in two dimensions, but eventually sketches and perspectives superimposed on the plants point to a more holistic view of the urban design, even if as simple sketches. Thus, what is of major interest is not only the urban land parceling, the indication of the number, position and size of free spaces and the artistic arrangement of the roads, but also the forecast of prominent public buildings and the treatment of urban road afforestation.

It is possible to infer, thereafter, that the various components of the urban form are organized as an artistic composition, obeying canonical academic precepts. In search of harmony in the set, for example, streets, avenues, roundabouts; boulevards, alleys, sidewalks and road afforestation; blocks, buildings and building alignment; squares, parks, gardens, terraces, gazebos; entrance and city center; monuments and fountains are all arranged to match. Indeed, the ideal standard of urban aesthetics was achieved with certain formal reasons and design patterns that valued art, architecture and its principles.

As Anamaria Diniz rightly states, "Attilio Corrêa Lima was a man and urban planner of his time, who sustained the modernist thinking of esprit nouveau and believed that through architecture and modern urbanism a ‘new man’ would be born in the city planned from scratch, in the middle of the Brazilian hinterland. Goiânia, as an island of utopia, would rise from the will of its creator, from the transformation of a new society" Anamaria Diniz’s work guides the interested reader, being an expert or a non-expert, through an exhilarating chapter in the history of urbanism in Brazil, which was suddenly discontinued with Attilio Corrêa Lima´s accidental death in 1943.

Brasília, April, 2021

Estevão C. de Rezende Martins

Full Professor Emeritus of Universidade de Brasília

Goiânia de Attilio Corrêa Lima_01

Revisiting Attilio’s Goiania

During the development of the Cara Limpa¹ Project, work developed in 2003 for the City Hall of Goiânia in order to revitalize the central area of the capital, I got motivated to research the theme that I now present in this book. In the course of my studies, I found a city which was unknown until then. This city only existed in Attilio Corrêa Lima´s plan. The first city analyzed was the one of our daily lives, translated into signs that de-characterize the architecture of the buildings, covering up the history. The second city, the imaginary one, covered by the first layer, is the result of the implantation of the new capital city of Goiás in the early 1930s.

When I elaborated, during the execution of the Cara Limpa Project, the studies of colors and signs for the facades of the buildings of the main avenue in the center of Goiânia, Goiás Avenue, I had access to the original project of the first building built in the capital city, Grande Hotel. From the comparative analysis between the project and the construction of the hotel, it was possible to raise some questions regarding Attilio Corrêa Lima´s plans for Goiânia.

The questions raised were about the pioneer buildings in the city, such as Grande Hotel, and whether the projects attributed to the architect-urban planner were respected or underwent changes during the works. Another investigation that was necessary was to study the original plan and thus research of Attilio´s urban plans for Goiânia.

The Cara Limpa Project – Goiás Avenue – 2004 – Drawing: Luiz Aurélio

Source: Author´s archive

Based on these preliminary analyzes, I considered a problem to be examined: how was the Goiânia city designed by Attilio Corrêa Lima?. This was the main object of the research developed during the master’s program at Universidade de Brasília (UnB), at the Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo, in 2005, 2006 and 2007, when I counted on Phd. Professor Estevão Martins´s guidance.

The work presented intends to fill some gaps regarding the history of the period of construction of the new capital of Goiás, when the urban planner Attilio Corrêa Lima, recently arrived from Paris, worked in the urban plans and in the development of the architecture of the main buildings.

Goiânia by Attilio Corrêa Lima (1932-1935): aesthetic ideal and political reality (DINIZ, 2007) is a piece of research that was dedicated to the studies and analyzes of the original plans for the new capital of Goiás. The documentation that constitutes it comes from primary sources found in the archives of the Corrêa Lima² family.

In addition to the primary sources of the family collection, some bibliographic references were essential for a better understanding of the theme. The book Como nasceu Goiânia, by Ofélia Sócrates do Nascimento Monteiro, may be considered as a relevant documentary source on the decrees and laws that marked the beginning of the construction of the new capital city. Ackel´s research (1996, 2007), Attilio Corrêa Lima, um urbanista brasileiro and Attílio Corrêa Lima: uma trajetória para a modernidade, recover the architect-urban planner´s history. Another important source was the rare access publication by Armando de Godoy, A urbs e seus problemas, in which the engineer presents the report on the region chosen for the installation of the new capital city and the needs for change. Goiânia: uma modernidade possível, by Gonçalves (2003), was also an enlightening master’s dissertation regarding Armando de Godoy´s role in the modifications of Corrêa Lima´s original plans.

The contacts with Attilio Corrêa Lima´s collection and his family contributed to increase my interest in the architect-urban planner and his education and, this prompted me to discover facts that had happened at the time of the development of the projects for Goiânia. During the master’s degree, it was possible to establish bonds of trust with the Corrêa Lima family, which granted me with access to a rich material.

This particular collection of Corrêa Lima is of great relevance to Brazilian history and urbanism. It contains sketches, correspondences, executive projects, texts and memorials, academic works carried out in the Architecture course at National School of Fine Arts, the NSFA. (1920 a 1925), and some other productions by Attilio when he studied urbanism at the Institut d’Urbanisme de l’Université de Paris (IUUP), from 1927 to 1930. Therefore, this abundant documentation represents a treasure for scholars interested in understanding the formation of the field of urbanism in Brazil, in addition to that of the architect and his activities in the first half of the 20th century.

In the interviews with Bruno, his memories became fundamental for the reconstruction of his father´s history. Regarding the transfer and preservation of family values and cultural heritage, there is a concern among the Corrêa Lima members to maintain an identity, a link with their direct ancestors, not only in their professional choices, but in the care in keeping documents, letters, photographs, in short, everything that can reconstruct the family history.

The family’s saved documents are testimonies of the desire for continuity. Having been carefully preserved by the museologist Rachel Corrêa Lima, these documents also keep a sacred meaning and, therefore, their keepers demand an initiation ritual in order to have access to them.

This book, therefore, is about my research that is grounded in the master’s and doctorate, with several results and updates in articles and lectures held for more than a decade. During more than 15 years of research and studies (2005 to 2020), I was in the collection of the Corrêa Lima family several times. There is always the desire to be there, experiencing the collection. The readings of the documents are never-ending. The revisiting of Attilio´s Goiânia for this publication was an enormous challenge, because rewriting a text is a complex task, especially when we have distanced ourselves from the object of the research and especially when the return to it occurs after a certain personal and academic maturation period.

For this book, the sequences of chapters 1 and 2, originally present in the dissertation, were reversed. Firstly, in the first chapter, I present Attilio to the reader, contextualizing his academic background which was started at the National School of Fine Arts (NSFA) in the Architecture course and, later, at the Institut d’Urbanisme de l’Université de Paris (IUUP), when deepened in the formalism of the French school of urbanism. The academic influences of Agache and other masters such as Henri Prost, his work-thesis advisor are analyzed: Avant-Projet d’Aménagement et d’Extension de la Ville de Niterói au Brésil. This academic path contextualizes the choice of the intervener Pedro Ludovico Teixeira for Attilio Corrêa Lima to develop the plans for the new capital of Goiás. Also in this section, relevant information was added mainly about IUUP, since I was able to study and know, during my PhD. in Paris, this traditional institution in the teaching of urbanism. The information is complementary and does not contradict the first research of the master’s. In Goiânia: filha direta da Revolução de 1930 em Goiás (second chapter), the historical background and the process of moving the capital city are pointed out. To this end, the first decrees and the formation of the commission for the choice of the construction site of the city were analyzed. Armando de Godoy’s extensive and detailed report on the move from the capital to the Campinas region is presented in this chapter.

In the third chapter, Goiânia: o ideal estético, the documentation found in the urban planner’s collection is read. The 1935 Master Plan report is presented and detailed, pointing out the influences of Attilio’s experiences prior to the one he had in Goiânia.

The urban plan is presented in an unprecedented way, making available to readers and researchers the images of sketches, details of architecture and urbanism, documents and correspondence from the period in which the urban planner worked in the plans of Goiânia. The urban design proposed by Attilio is analyzed in its symbolic and formal aspects. In the approach given to the chapter Goiânia: political reality, the original documents are presented to contextualize Attilio’s break with the government of Goiás, the modifications in the original plan carried out by the engineers Coimbra Bueno, with Armando de Godoy´s assistance.

And finally, in the last chapter, Goiânia: a modernidade possível, Attilio describes the desired future for the new capital as an industrial metropolis in the heart of Brazil in contradiction to possible modernity, materialized in the first constructions that adapted to the local reality of scarcity of skilled labor and construction materials.

85 years after the completion of the plans for the new capital of Goiás, the Master Plan of 1935 was recognized as the first plan for Goiânia city, through a municipal law passed in 2020.

The primary sources found in the collection of the Corrêa Lima family are thought to contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between Attilio Corrêa Lima´s production for the plans of Goiânia city, his aesthetic ideal and the political reality he faced. The proposal is to unveil, demystify, clarify and publicize the clash between the idealized / imagined city and the possible / real one.

Attilio Corrêa Lima: the urban planner of the new capital city

Why Attilio?

The State of Goiás was still far behind, too short of resources of all kinds to consider building a modern city. Specialized technicians did not exist. We had to hire them in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, but always bearing in mind the insignificance of our incomes. Hence, being informed that a talented Brazilian architect had arrived in Rio, after having graduated from a postgraduate course at Sorbonne, we contacted and hired, Dr. Correia [sic] Lima, who had distinguished himself in one of our schools. It was then his job to make the plan and supervise all the necessary activities for the construction of the city. (TEIXEIRA, 1973, p. 78).

In 1932, Pedro Ludovico Teixeira was in Rio de Janeiro looking for an experienced professional to develop the urban plans for the new capital city of Goiás. The intervener was informed that Attilio Corrêa Lima³ was the only Brazilian urban planner graduated in Urbanism, specialist in urban planning, since he had collaborated in the remodeling, extension and beautification plans of Rio de Janeiro, during the period he lived in Paris, working in the studio of the French urban planner Alfred Agache⁴. Corrêa Lima studied Urbanism at the Institut d’Urbanisme de l’Université de Paris (IUUP) from 1927 to 1930, standing out as a student of this traditional institution, which was one of the reasons for his hiring by the intervener Pedro Ludovico .

According to Gonçalves (2002, p.49), "Attilio’s experience met the concerns of the intervener in associating the project of the new capital city with the one of a renowned urban planner, capable of attributing