MODERN ARCHITECTURE FROM UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO RIO GRANDE DO NORTE’S CENTRAL CAMPUS
UFRN´s campus; modern architecture; brutalism; heritage; preservation.
The creation of Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) belongs to a process that set up higher education units in many Brazilian states in the beginning of the 20th Century. During its early functioning years, the university’s activities took place in buildings that had hosted former independent colleges, distributed in many addresses along the city’s central neighborhoods. Only after 1968, with the Reforma Universitária (University Reformation), a paradigm shift started, structuring courses in a university campus. Concentrating activities and buildings inside a university campus represented a modernity ideal, opposing the traditional university model, fragmented and complying with principles of efficiency and rationality of university organization. These interventions were based on the Manual produced in 1970 by American consultant Rudolph Atcon, which proposes guidelines such as functional zoning and street hierarchy, which alongside rationalization, flexibility, expansion and integration principles coincide with the ideal of a modern city preconized by the Athens Charter. Employing these principles resulted in a broad university campus, distant from the city’s urban network and with a street structure that privileged automobiles. This idea was materialized trough the proposition of flexible, modulated buildings with standardized constructive components, with a notably brutalist aesthetic composition. As a large educational institution, its functional dynamics constantly goes through changes and modernizations, both by pedagogical and infrastructure perspectives. Therefore, throughout the years, there is a permanent free space demand for extending departments, building new structures, and renewing premises with new equipment. The community’s (students, docents, technical employees and city’s residents) lack of recognition on the cultural value of UFRN’s Central Campus modernist ensemble makes preserving these buildings even more difficult. Therefore, this study starts a process of knowledgement and recognition to this modern ensemble lesser known nationwide, identifying modern architecture attributes in its most significant exemplars.