RESTORATION OF THE PALACE OF JUSTICE
PALÁCIO DA JUSTIÇA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO
The project of this important São Paulo’s building, built from 1920 to 1942 and located on Praça Clóvis Bevilacqua, at the downtown area of the city, was designed by architect Francisco de Paula Ramos de Azevedo’s office, which kept itself for decades as the most active one in the city, during its exponential growth period related to the economic success of the state’s coffee economy.
Author of public projects such as the Teatro Municipal, the Mercado Municipal and the Pinacoteca do Estado, as well as of most of the elite’s residencies built by that time in São Paulo, the brazilian architect had his academic studies completed at the city of Ghent, in Belgium, which explains his intimacy with the use of neoclassical and eclectic european styles on his works.
The building’s restoration project, on the other hand, was developed by architect Samuel Kruchin office, representing the winning consortium of the public bidding process for the upholding of such. With a team of approximately ten architects and interns, hired specifically for that end, and whose coordination was in command of architect Alexandre Franco Martins, the work began on January 2011.
The first stage of the large survey was to measure the roof frame of the 6th and 3rd floors. Not by chance, this choice aimed to identify and solve immediately the source of infiltrations of water that came from the rooftop, damaging the mural paintings of the library’s roof lining, located on the 4th floor, as well as of some other rooms in the building.
The restoration and intervention project of this same areas was, therefore, considered as an emergency intervening stage. Thus, it began to be implantated even during the development of the repairment project as a whole, being elaborated by the office’s team for this construction.
The second survey stage was to map the entirety of the masonry, in order to secure that the digital files of the 1st to 6th floor plans could be developed, as well as the longitudinal and transversal sections and the facades of the indoor courtyards of the building. The design for the four external facades had already been developed through digital file, a few years earlier, when their restoration had been performed by the São Paulo’s architect Paulo Bastos team, and these files were provided to contribute on the new project’s development.
After the developments of all of these digital files by the pre-project’s team, the survey was carried on its third stage, mapping the remaining internal elements of construction: window and door frames typology, the coating of floors and walls, floor and lining designs, fixed furniture and light fixture. This wide survey lead to heavy photographic reports of window and door frames and chandeliers, and quite detailed floor plans, ceiling plans and identification and categorization of doors, windows and coatings.
As the entirety of the metrical survey digital files were concluded, began the analytical surveys, mapping and identifying the integral element’s pathologies. At the same time, the needs and requirements data were also collected, once not only the improvement and adequation of the facilities were considered by the project, but also the restructuring of some of the room’s functioning was being designated, allowing that the building would only keep the sections it beared and that were in accordance with its uses. Both of these stages were primordial to the preparation of pre-project’s basis and, afterwards, to the legal, pre-executive and executive intervention projects to be carried.
So they could also contribute to the project’s guidelines, specialized professionals in mural paintings and stained glass were hired by the office for the execution of proper surveys related to their field. All of the floors received an prospection of the painting, and a historian was also hired, being responsible for preparing a historical inquiry to date the main occurred events on the site.
The extensive project featured various stages of both development and delivery until it reached its executive stage, completed in 201X. Its implantation began in 201X and was concluded in 201X, and having been a part of it from start to finish of the basic project was a learning experience quite enriching and pleasurable.
On an excerpt of the project’s introduction on his restoration projects focused book, architect Samuel Kruchin describes in a rather specific way the building’s architecture:
“The Palace of Justice does not come up as a building only, it emerges as a landmark, a totem that rises, precisely, to the center of a dense urban mass under fast expansion, and on the path the complex of institutions originated from one republic and from one Constitution which had been recently established.
It was built in the 1920’s, in between small streets and a little later it produced its own urban spatiality, the opening that would grant it scale and grandiosity, the Clovis Bevilacqua Square, precisely beside the Sé Square, as the Brazilian tradition has dictated since the times of its Chambers Houses and Prison.
Designed by the Ramos de Azevedo office and having the Palazzo dela Giustizia Italiano, in Rome, as a direct reference, it occupies a full block with its 25.000m2 marked by a very regular and clear composition regarding its structure: one square plan and having in its angles four towers the sides of which all ambients are distributed.
Its accesses are also distributed hierarchically, in its four faces and the main entrance is faced towards the Clóvis Square. Open internal patios ensure aired circulations through large windows in the entire internal perimeter.
[…]
Internally, the mood shows a convent-like austerity, of such a majestic mode that it remits to the ideas that in its cloistered salons, men dressed in togas decide the destiny of many. There is silence, contention and slightly dimmed lighting along the corridors.
The mural paint, whose hierarchy defines the importance of the location and of its occupants, is generalized, sometimes in the form of broad artistic panels and sometimes in the form of a serial paint, also in more single fringes, also occurring on the fine plaster linings.
The filtered light of the stained glasses balances, here and there, the density of the masses offering some freshness to some ambients.
Its external plans, an ecletism that is molded with rubber mass, of intense rustication do not suggest distension or lightness, but an image of concentration, of force and density that touches intimidation. A given sense of the impregnable and of the inaccessible that can be seen in fortresses and prisons.
One relevant aspect in its execution was the introduction of an intermediate floor, with differentiated height and accesses, intended for support functions and which introduces, in the formal balance of the set, one dissonance that somehow disturbs it and makes it human, if we can call it so, softening its undisturbed severity.”.
LOCATION São Paulo. SP. Brazi
LEAD ARCHITECT Ramos de Azevedo Office
CONSTRUCTION DATE 1920-1942
RESTORATION PROJECT AUTHOR Samuel Kruchin
RESTORATION PROJECT CO-AUTHOR Alexandre Franco Martins
RESTORATION PROJECT TEAM Cristiane Gonçalves . Renata Mello . Larissa Carrelli . Raquel Fregonesi . Vanessa Pádua . Priscila do Valle . Raquel Casteliano . Tamires Oliveira . Marina Martin . Ana Carolina Gléria . Gabriela Ayub . Natália Hesz . Jéssica Chamma
AREA 25.000m2
FROM 2011
TO 201X
PHOTOGRAPHY Daniel Ducci
