The Moorish Pavilion in the context of eclecticism in Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

The article tells the history of the design of the Moorish Pavilion, headquarters of Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz), completed in 1918. The year 2021 marks the fortieth anniversary since its listing by the Brazilian heritage protection agency, Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico Nacional, as one of the most representative examples of eclectic architecture in Brazil. Designed by the Portuguese architect Luiz Moraes Jr., its aesthetic, formal, spatial, and functional features derive from multiple influences, which consolidated its recognition as Brazilian cultural heritage. The urban setting in which it was built, in Rio de Janeiro, is also analyzed, and the revision of the historiography of Brazilian architecture, instrumental in the recognition of its cultural and scientific value, is appraised.

eclectic architecture; Moorish Pavilion; health and science heritage

Resumo

O artigo conta a história do projeto do Pavilhão Mourisco, edifício-sede da Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, no Rio de Janeiro, suas influências e construção. Terminado em fins de 1918, celebrará, em 2021, 40 anos de sua preservação pelo Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico Nacional, como uma das construções mais representativas do período eclético da arquitetura brasileira. Projetado pelo português Luiz Moraes Jr., sua configuração recebeu influências estéticas, formais, espaciais e funcionais das mais diferentes origens, o que consolidou seu reconhecimento oficial como patrimônio cultural brasileiro. O texto também analisa o contexto urbano em que se deu sua implantação na cidade do Rio de Janeiro e ressalta o momento de revisão historiográfica da arquitetura que contribuiu para o processo de seu reconhecimento enquanto valor cultural e científico.

arquitetura eclética; Pavilhão Mourisco; Patrimônio da Ciência e da Saúde

Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Fiocruz) has its roots in the Instituto Soroterápico de Manguinhos (Manguinhos Serum Therapy Institute), founded in 1900, which then went through a series of name changes: Instituto de Patologia Experimental (Institute of Experimental Pathology), in 1907; Instituto Oswaldo Cruz (Oswaldo Cruz Institute), in 1909; Fundação Recursos Humanos para a Saúde (Foundation of Human Resources for Health), in 1969; and finally Fundação Instituto Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz), in 1970 (Costa, 15 maio 2018). It was built on an old farm overlooking Guanabara Bay, in the Manguinhos district of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which was appropriated by the federal government in 1892 (Benchimol, 1990).

Thus began one of the most important health research institutions in Latin America. The history of its development is intimately linked to the history of its host city, which, in the early 1900s, was to go through unprecedented urban developments. This period of growth under the administration, from 1902 to 1906, of Pereira Passos, mayor of what was then the capital of Brazil, was accompanied by the consolidation of eclectic architecture in the city (Benchimol, 1990), along with the introduction of new technologies like electricity, piped gas, sewers, and water supply systems, plus the use of materials like iron, cement, and glass, all juxtaposed with historical architectural styles labeled with new nomenclatures like neo-Gothic, neo-Greek, neo-Arab, or even neo-Moorish, the style used for the main building of the then Instituto Oswaldo Cruz. Here, we tell the story of its design, influences, and construction, and analyze the urban context in which it was built. The article ends with some considerations about the changes in attitudes in the field of heritage that resulted in the recognition of the cultural and scientific value of the Moorish Pavilion, the headquarters of Fiocruz.

For Claude Mignot (1983), the period from 1840 to 1850 was the most controversial in the history of European architecture, marking the beginning of a movement now known as “eclectic.” It began with a revival of Gothic influences and the Greco-Roman tradition:

Architects were at one in condemning pastiche but all of them subscribed to the idea that it was not a question of imitating the past but solely of seeking inspiration in its principles and experience in order to envision the style of the nineteenth century; everyone practised quotation, the pleasure of which ultimately derived from a development of the picturesque aesthetic (Mignot, 1983, p.100).

The architects involved in the eclectic movement adopted either a structural principle or an archetypal form, sometimes a layout or a motif, and adapted it to their means and the needs of modern times (Mignot, 1983). But this diversity also depended on the input of the architects’ clients. For both parties, the code used by eclecticism was easy to grasp at the time: “The disconcerting juxtaposition of several styles was one of the means of expression open to nineteenth-century architects” (p.100).

According to Mignot (1983), the term “eclecticism” encompassed two different phenomena: the typological and the synthetic. In both cases, adherence to one or the other phenomenon depended on the architect’s intentions and, equally importantly, those of their client. With typological eclecticism, a single aesthetic model from the past was selected and adapted to the needs of the project, whatever it might be. Meanwhile, in synthetic eclecticism, the architect was at liberty to choose different models from the past to inform the principles, solutions, and motifs of the building, which were combined to produce its overall aesthetic.

Analyzed from the perspective of Luciano Pateta (1987), active in the historiographical review of European eclecticism seen in the second half of the twentieth century, the apparent historical fragmentation was united by certain phenomena: consolidation of bourgeois power, the course taken by industrial civilization, the mutual influences of ideas about nation and independence, to mention just a few. As a consequence, the period stretching from the mid-nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century was a “long, single period” in which the history of bourgeois architecture followed a continuous line that has since been labeled “eclectic.” As Pateta notes, eclecticism was essentially the architectural culture of an increasingly powerful bourgeoisie, who actively pursued comfort and “loved progress (especially when it improved their living conditions), loved the new, but relegated artistic and architectural work to the level of fashion and taste” (Pateta, 1987, p.13). By the same token, nineteenth century urban developments and architectural historicism progressed in the “most perfect symbiosis” (p.23).

In his analysis, Pateta (1987) considers at least three major currents in eclectic architecture: stylistic composition (the trend for revivals), typological historicism (analogical models adapted to the needs of the contemporary project), and compositional pastiche (invention of historically inadmissible stylistic solutions). The author stresses that in all these currents, even the ones based on the most comprehensive research to replicate an ancient monument, the results produced by the historicist architects were no more than simulacra of reality, for as they set about rectifying and correcting the putative errors in the originals, they created something quite new: the specific style of their own time.

The resulting buildings contained references to all manner of models from the past – Greco-Roman, Gothic, Byzantine, Baroque, Arabic – and generally indicated an association between style and function within what may be regarded as architecture parlante.¹ Arab-inspired architecture, for example, was appropriated for recreational buildings; “conversely, the same style can appear in different buildings because of different mental associations. For example, the same style of oriental inspiration may be found in a synagogue, such as that in Berlin (1859), or in an eccentric dwelling place ... in Lille (1892), built in Moorish style” (Mignot, 1983, p.107).

The celebration of this architectural culture is epitomized by the imposing structures of the pavilions, especially the national pavilions at the universal exhibitions (London 1851 and 1862; Paris 1867 and 1889; Vienna 1873; Philadelphia 1876; Chicago 1893; Saint-Louis 1904; Liege 1905; Milan 1906; Brussels 1910; and Grand 1913). These were truly international in nature, with representatives from across Europe and the United States, as well as regions still under total imperial and colonial control. The exhibitions were held at regular intervals and attracted considerable press interest. As noted elsewhere, they were huge events that extrapolated their stated purpose of showcasing progress and industry to boost trade in new inventions and publicize developments in manufacturing and industry. Ultimately, they were a material representation of the capitalist world project conceived by the prevailing philosophical beliefs (Barbuy, 1996; Pereira, 2013). Within this context, eclectic architectural language took inspiration from the broad sweep of the exhibitions to strike the “exact tone of self-celebration” in the architecture of its pavilions (Pateta, 1987, p.13). For Pereira (2013), these great exhibitions constituted one of the most important spaces for cultural education in the nineteenth century, geared as they were towards the general city-dwelling public and presenting as they did different cities, peoples, and cultures from a hierarchical perspective based on a particular evolutionary view of development and history. In this new social practice of the exercise of the gaze, comparing and judging was exemplified by the appearance of exotic pavilions.

Through the stylistic language adopted in each context and country – Greco-Roman, Gothic, Moorish, Turkish – or through the technological developments exhibited, their level of civility, cosmopolitanism, and progress was judged. In fact, it could be said that the idea of the Universal Exhibition and especially this comparative judgment of peoples and cultures ended up consolidating new social practices and a new trinomial: exhibit, admire, and consume (Pereira, 2013, p.8-11).

Brazil first took part in these exhibitions in 1876 in Philadelphia, when it sent a delegation of businessmen and journalists. However, it had been earlier, in 1867, that the exhibitions had first had national sections, for which Orientalist pavilions were already erected (Vasseur, 2001). The construction of national pavilions was effectively consolidated as of 1876 (Barbuy, 1996).

Civilizing Rio: constructing a new urban and architectural culture

In Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, public hygiene was consolidated as a public policy to ensure the salubriousness of urban spaces; i.e., the material and social foundations for the best health for individuals. Based on prevailing theories about disease, which associated its spread with environmental conditions, physicians adopted a discourse that effectively medicalized space and society and thus shaped new social practices and urban policies.

In fact, along with engineers and architects, medical doctors played a pivotal role in urban planning and the development of knowledge about the city. Urban interventions began to be designed along the lines of specific organizational, health-related, and functional criteria, as well as urban beautification. It could therefore be said that today’s ideas about urban sanitation actually have their roots in the late 1700s, with the French public hygiene movement: “In the nineteenth century, the birth of a movement in favor of urbanism is directly linked to a generalized sensibility for questions of public hygiene” (Calabi, 2012, p.81).

Accordingly, any agglomerations in the urban fabric that might result in commotion, danger, or disease were scrutinized and combatted. The circulation of water and air was controlled to prevent contamination, and water and sewage were channeled and organized to prevent contamination. These prophylactic measures designed to curb epidemics were inspired by miasma theory.

Between 1903 and 1906, the capital of the Republic of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, was the target of profound transformations enacted by both the Ministry of Transportation and Public Works and the City Hall. In particular, downtown Rio was the target of interventions designed for its gentrification and embellishment (Benchimol, 1992). These projects then spawned others, which were pursued in the name of making the capital city hygienic and modernizing its port. According to Pereira (2013, p.14), these transformations were a turning point in the history of the country, giving the impression that “the whole of Brazil had suddenly modernized all its institutions and the very mentality and habits of its inhabitants.”

For Nicolau Sevcenko, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, every stratum of social experience was affected by a tide of change:

Never at any earlier time were so many people involved so completely and so quickly in a dramatic transformation of their daily habits, their convictions, their modes of perception, and even their instinctive reflexes. This not just in Brazil, but in the world now taken as a whole (Sevcenko, 1998, p.8).

One factor that contributed to the new image of the Brazilian capital was a progressive change in attitudes towards sanitation in a bid to curb the epidemics that had slayed so many in the nineteenth century and lent the country the less-than-complementary epithet of “foreigners’ graveyard.” The first major yellow fever epidemic in Rio de Janeiro took place in 1849. It was this that prompted the imperial government, in 1850, to create the Public Hygiene Board (Junta de Higiene Pública), tasked with inspecting everywhere that could potentially cause harm to public health. This effectively marked the rise of the reign of medicine in efforts to organize public health. The Public Hygiene Board was responsible, among other things, for overseeing vaccination, controlling medical practice, and inspecting sanitary conditions on the ground, which included inspecting foodstuffs, dispensaries, food depots, restaurants, butchers, schools, prisons, aqueducts, cemeteries, workshops, laboratories, factories, and even hospitals (Benchimol, 1992).

In 1897, now in the republican period, public health services were subordinated to the General Directorship of Public Health, under the Ministry of Justice and Home Affairs. As of 1903, the physician and sanitarian Oswaldo Gonçalves Cruz (1872-1917) was appointed Director-General of Public Health and started engaging actively in the battle against yellow fever in the city. At the time, Cruz was a member of the Brazilian sanitation movement. The main arguments used in the reforms of the city during the first republican period (1889-1930), under Mayor Pereira Passos, were to adjust urban space to meet the requirements of a new economic reality: industrial development (Benchimol, 1990). However, the young republic’s efforts to join the ranks of the so-called civilized world and vie on an equal footing with other capitals in Latin America (Buenos Aires and Montevideo) ended up focusing more on the urban aesthetic than the field of sanitation per se (Pinheiro, 2002).

The start of this effort to carve out a new image for the country initially consisted of ad hoc interventions rather than the kinds of structural changes that had marked urban modernization elsewhere. The idea behind this model was to transform the layout of the city, with its colonial features – narrow streets, uneven paving, open-air sewage channels, low-built housing, and lighting by gas lamps – to a modern, cosmopolitan civitas fit for the ruling classes (Abreu, 1987).

From the mid-eighteenth century through the early decades of the twentieth century, residential and public buildings in large towns and cities were embellished with a great array of ornamental features. In this context, the language of eclecticism was adopted as the formal repertoire for the revitalization of the capital city, which was adapted from the widely divulged urban model utilized in France.

The eclectic architecture that emerged in Europe was based on a historicist and traditionalist language, but also made use of industrial materials and techniques, especially in the buildings’ infrastructure and installations. Similarly, in Brazil, the new elements used in eclectic buildings tended to be imported materials, as well as novel infrastructure solutions, like electrical wiring, plumbing, sewage and communication systems, etc. Tax incentives were given for imports of industrial construction materials and new technologies, which, when associated with specialized work in the field of civil construction, enabled the substitution, over the coming years, of the existing mixed-materials structures for reinforced concrete structures, for example.

The building façades and interiors then in vogue drew inspiration from a historical past, be it Classical, Egyptian, or even a medley of several, as Mignot indicates. By the mid-twentieth century, however, this practice had become the target of scathing criticism by modern architects, who considered it entirely lacking in architectural merit and historically bogus, a denial of its true time. At the height of modernism, eclecticism also received harsh criticism from scholars.

The Moorish Pavilion, home of Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz), may be appreciated equally for its architectural qualities and for the fact that it is representative of an important early twentieth century architectural movement, providing significant technological innovations at the service of health, and an enduring landmark in the Rio de Janeiro cultural landscape. Here, the analysis focuses on the different influences that affected the design until the completion of the final drawings, revealing the interests of its architect, Luiz Moraes Jr., and above all those of his client, Oswaldo Cruz. It is a story that may seem somewhat convoluted, but is no less fascinating for that.

We begin with the accounts compiled in 1972 by Fonseca Filho, which are consistent with what we have already set forth. Some have put down the choice of architectural language for the building to the architect’s Arabian roots, using this to explain the use of “so unusual a style for a house of science” (Fonseca Filho, 2000, p.103). Another mooted explanation is that Oswaldo Cruz perceived the “need to attract the lay public’s attention, giving his headquarters a spectacular appearance” (p.104). One commentator on the motivations behind the Moorish design for the headquarters of what was then Instituto Oswaldo Cruz was Pedro Bloch, who, according to Fonseca Filho, best summed up the prevailing feeling upon catching sight of that imposing building: “A vision that aggrieves the landscape. An enormous Moorish palace. What does it have to do with the rest of the city? What incoherence brought about that architectural aberration snatched from some capital of the Orient? That is Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, of glorious history, a scientific center respected and honored in every corner of the Earth” (p.104).

The design of the building had to satisfy not just the stylistic preferences of its idealizers, but also the building’s planned uses – demanding and unprecedented for Brazil at the time: to be the administrative and laboratorial hub of an institute of research, production, and education in health, which called for solutions rarely found in other buildings of the day, as we shall see.

The institute in Manguinhos

In late 1899, Baron Pedro Affonso (1845-1920), director of Instituto Vacínico Municipal (Municipal Vaccination Institute), based in the district of Catete, had proposed to the then mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Cesário Alvim (1939-1903), that a serum therapy laboratory be set up in the grounds of Manguinhos Municipal Farm, where plague serum could be produced on a large scale (Benchimol, 1990; Costa, 15 maio 2018). An official letter (ofício n.490) dated May 25, 1900, stated that “the works for the conclusion of the institute were authorized, as was the transfer of the premises, then adapted by Baron Affonso on Manguinhos Farm, from municipal to federal responsibility. Thus, was born the Federal Serum Therapy Institute” (Costa, 15 maio 2018, p.1).

The choice of this site was down to its location, far away from downtown Rio de Janeiro, between the districts of Benfica and Bonsucesso and near Inhaúma port. In a statement reported in Jornal do Commercio newspaper on February 26, 1915, Baron Pedro Affonrso explained that having travelled around “a great number of islands of our bay,” he had considered installing the institute alongside the military laboratory in Quinta da Boavista, but had ended up choosing Manguinhos, an old farm owned by Alexandrina Rosa de Carvalho that had been appropriated since 1892 by federal decree to house the incinerators to burn the city’s waste. The first buildings for the institute created by the baron were officially inaugurated on July 23, 1900, and used rooms adapted from the former farm buildings; i.e., cramped spaces of limited functionality, which were later transformed by Oswaldo Cruz:

Newly arrived from Paris, where he had extended his education at the Institut Pasteur, the physician Oswaldo Cruz would be one of the first to work at the institute run by the baron. When Pedro Affonso decided to step down from his duties in December 1902, Oswaldo Cruz took over command of the institute with the mission of proceeding with the manufacture of serums and vaccines and attacking the plague, yellow fever, and smallpox epidemics that threatened the then federal capital (Costa, 15 maio 2018, p.2).

A physician and sanitarian, Oswaldo Gonçalves Cruz earned his degree in 1892 from the Faculty of Medicine of Rio de Janeiro (Faculdade de Medicina do Rio de Janeiro) and, as of 1894, worked at the General Polyclinic of Rio de Janeiro (Policlínica Geral do Rio de Janeiro). In April 1897, he set off for Paris to specialize in microbiology and serum therapy at the Institut Pasteur, where he stayed for two years and three months. As well as joining the institute – the global hub in microbiology research at the time – as a scholar, he also studied at the Toxicology Laboratory, where he learned forensics, and took up amateur photography, a “passion he nourished for the rest of his life” (Klein, 2003, p.11).

While in France, Oswaldo Cruz experienced how it was to spend time in broad open-air spaces designed along Romantic lines, with city parks and tree-lined avenues. He soaked up the architecture of the new districts and the image of a new Paris transformed by urban redevelopment during the Second Empire (1852-1870) – a model that was replicated and adapted in other cities the world over. The mayor of Paris from 1853 to 1870 had been Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, and it was he who had spearheaded the many interventions that had significantly changed the face of the city,² itself already regarded as an important global center of culture and civilization. For this study, we consider Oswaldo Cruz’s time at the Montsouris observatory, in Paris, an important factor for the conception of the architectural study of the Moorish Pavilion.

Fonseca Filho (2000) also emphasizes Oswaldo Cruz’s time in Paris, stressing that despite the strong influence of Montsouris on the final design for the mansion at Manguinhos, there is no reference to Pierre Miquel (1850-1922) in the writings of the scientist at the time he was preparing his doctoral thesis. According to Fonseca Filho, Miquel was the leading microbiology expert in France at the time, and was then running the microbiology service of the Montsouris Meteorological Observatory, built in a city park of the same name.

The institute evidently took as its model, copying practically all its architectural details, the building of that Parisian observatory. The style of the central building at Manguinhos – exotic in its essence – undoubtedly has something of this in its origins. Any explanations that have been given for his choice, for the influence that Moorish Granada may have had on Oswaldo Cruz’s creative and dreamy imagination, or indeed an imagined ancestral stimulus somehow exerted over the distinguished Portuguese architect Luís de Moraes, who drew the plans and managed the construction works for the central building, are pure fantasy (Fonseca Filho, 2000, p.103).

On July 24, 1898, Oswaldo Cruz visited the branch of the Institut Pasteur in Garches, “a small town 9 kilometers N.E. of Versailles” (Cruz, 1972, p.285; originally published in 1898). There, he spent time in a building that had much in common with those he came to know at Manguinhos, or which he himself even proposed:

In the middle of a flat plot rises the serum therapy Institute from amongst great swathes of green, which serve as pasture for the horses reserved for the production of the serums. Traversing the zinc gateway, which gives access to the property, one can see at the back the forest of St. Cloud; to the left, the railroad; to the right, on a hillock, the ruins of an ancient castle (Cruz, 1972, p.285).

These impressions of his visit to Garches certainly came to the fore when, on the invitation of Baron Pedro Affonso, Oswaldo Cruz went to work at Manguinhos. The buildings he visited, namely, the “coach house, for the horses who are to be immunized against tetanus, streptococcus, and the plague ... and the stables for the horses used to produce the diphtheria serum” (Cruz, 1972, p.286), along with the wards for these animals and the cage for the test animals, described in detail in his report for Brasil Médico, must surely have been responsible for contributing to his choices about how to effectively build the premises he would run just ten years later. Could that ruined castle have inspired him to design his own, after the baron had left? This is one question that makes the history of Manguinhos so fascinating.

This same report also contains a description of large, airy rooms “built with all the precepts of modern hygiene”; construction methods, such as “the corners formed by the meeting of the walls, [which] are rounded” (Cruz, 1972, p.286); and different building materials, such as tiles and cement, all of which can be seen at Manguinhos. At the end of the report, Oswaldo Cruz mentioned a “sanctuary” prepared after the death of Pasteur: a modest room on the upper floor of the main building that held the memories of what had been the French scientist’s quarters, with his bed, his desk, and “wreaths, palms, and commemorative plaques from the funerals, from almost every country in the world” (p.305-306). Here, Oswaldo Cruz foresaw the creation of his own “sanctuary” for the tributes he himself would receive after his death, in his own castle.

With these images in his head, all that was left for Oswaldo Cruz to do was to find someone to bring them to life, and this would come about in the most fortuitous of manners. Moraes Jr. was working on the renovation of the Penha church on the invitation of the vicar of that parish, Father Ricardo. The work lasted from 1900 to 1902, at the same time as the rudimentary buildings at the former farm of Manguinhos were being adapted for their new uses by the baron:

Oswaldo Cruz certainly kept abreast, with admiration, of Moraes’s work at Penha church while the two men took the train along the Leopoldina line, which they both rode to get to their respective workplaces. The scientist must have invited him to design the new laboratories, perhaps in dissatisfaction at the resources he was being offered by the baron. With the exit of Pedro Affonso, Oswaldo Cruz could officially invite Moraes to design the new laboratory buildings, with the desire to make them the most advanced at the time (Costa, 15 maio 2018, p.3).

Moraes Jr. was not long returned from Coimbra, Portugal, having earned a degree in engineering in Lisbon. His work at the nearby church paved the way for him to work at Manguinhos and ultimately in the area of public health. We are not aware of any records of his activities before he reached Brazil, but it is fair to assume that, at 31 years of age, he already had a considerable architectural portfolio under his belt.

The origins of Moraes Jr. are not clear. In Manguinhos do sonho à vida (Manguinhos from dream to life), Jaime Benchimol puts the date of birth of Luiz de Moraes Jr. as January 28, 1868, based on information from an obituary, in 1955. However, recent research of Faro city records (Faro..., 1867, entrada n.18) reveal a different date of birth and a different spelling of his name:

On the twenty-fifth day of the month of February of the year eight hundred and sixty-seven, in this parochial Church of St. Pedro, council of Faro, diocese of the Algarve, I did solemnly baptize an individual of the male sex, to whom I gave the name of Luiz, and who was born in this parish at seven hours in the evening of the thirtieth day of the month of January of the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-seven, legitimate son of Luiz Moraes, blacksmith, natural of the parish of Jesus, in Lisbon, and of Eugênia Emília da Fonseca, natural of the parish of São Pedro d’Alcântara, in Lisbon, received in this central parish of Faro, of which they are parishioners, residents of Rua da Cruz das Mestras; paternal grandson of unknown grandparents, and maternal grandson of António da Fonseca and Matilde Rosa (Livro..., 1867, entrada n.18).

Some documents from the Luiz de Moraes Jr. archive (DAD/Fiocruz) present his name as “de” Moraes. However, in a document of his authorship, in which he gives a summary of his curriculum in French, he calls himself Luiz Moraes Jr. (DAD/Fiocruz). Similarly, on the stone set in the main façade of the Moorish Pavilion it reads: Luiz Moraes Jr.; hence, this is the name we use here.

A perusal of his curriculum reveals he was responsible for the design and construction of “large hospitals, the Oswaldo Cruz Institute of Biology and Bacteriology, the School of Medicine, and other public services.” The architect himself highlights his participation in the International Hygiene Exhibition in Berlin in 1907, where he was awarded a diploma of honor, and also at the Dresden exhibition, in 1911, as well as the ones held in Rio de Janeiro in 1908 and 1909, where he earned gold medals.

In fact, Moraes Jr.’s influences are little known, as Fonseca Filho points out. Nonetheless, familiarity with different styles from catalogues, magazines, handbooks, and postcards should not be underplayed. After all, many eclectic architects were self-taught (Fabris, 1987).

Spelling and dates aside, Luiz Moraes Jr.’s place of birth may indicate he had some familiarity with Moorish architecture, even if Olímpio da Fonseca writes this off as “fantasy.” The Moors conquered the area that is now Faro (or Harun, in Arabic) from the Romans and Visigoths in 713 A.C. It remained under their control for over five hundred years until it was won back by King Afonso III in 1249. Curiously, until 1910 the whole region was known as the second kingdom of Portugal. Indeed, the word algarve is Arabic for “West of the Alandalus.” This hails from the time when the region was a caliphate of the Moorish Empire in the Iberian peninsula, one of the last territories to resist Portuguese dominion. The town was protected by a fort and a Roman wall, which was extended during the Muslim period and reconstructed under Portuguese rule. Important features of the remains of this defensive structure are the two towers from the old walls, known as the albarrã towers (al-barran, in Arabic), more commonly known as the Arco do Repouso, or “arch of rest.”

If occupation by the Moors left any marks on the national imaginary (legends or myths), it left very little in terms of physical landmarks – perhaps due to Portuguese endeavors to remove all signs of their occupation or to destruction during warfare, not to mention the 1755 earthquake, which razed much of the original walls dating back to the Moorish occupation. However, there are still some buildings in the city that show influence of this heritage, revealing a neo-Moorish interpretation.

A castle in Manguinhos

The presence of Orientalism in the Americas, which came about between the mid-1800s and early 1900s, was accompanied by the formation of a new European culture keen to gain acquaintance with aesthetics from the Orient, North Africa, and also southern Spain, represented by the picturesque and the sublime, “together with the desire for scientific investigation and, evidently, a certain economic and political expansionism. We therefore witness the Orientalist moment of Romanticism, which is translated into literature, painting and travel books, which are at the root of this Arabic aesthetic” (Guzman, Viñuales, 2016, p.13). One prime element through which this acquaintance came about was architecture, with the Fiocruz headquarters being a fine example of this in Brazil and Latin America. A taste for the picturesque, the rare, and the sublime was fundamental for architectures keen to break away from the monotony of the utilitarian buildings of the industrial city (Guzman, Viñuales, 2016). In Portuguese, this architecture was repeatedly identified as mourisca or neomourisca, in line with the Anglo-Saxon terms “Moorish” and “neo-Moorish”. The 1832 publication of Tales of the Alhambra and its subsequent editions and translations, a 1906 edition of which is kept at the Fiocruz Library of Rare Books, spawned a whole appropriation of this aesthetic, first in England and later in the United States, then spreading elsewhere in the Americas, including Brazil.

The Arabic style of the castle was a mixture of English and Portuguese references. It and the other historical buildings in the complex are now referred to as the Manguinhos Historical Architectural Nucleus. Its ancillary buildings, far from detracting from the main building, actually make it all the more unique and singular.

The Moorish Pavilion was designed from an initial sketch by Oswaldo Cruz himself. In the hands of the architect, this original version gained body in a Moorish-inspired project. Imagining how the headquarters of his new institute would be, Oswaldo Cruz had, according to Henrique Aragão, provided Moraes Jr. with a first sketch in a Byzantine style. Later, “upon dealing with the subject with Luiz Moraes Jr., his preference erred towards the Moorish style, more grandiose and more powerfully evocative of mysteries as was appropriate for the headquarters of an institution destined to symbolize the grandeur of science and probe the secrets of life” (Aragão, 1950, p.34),

We believe there were three major sources of influence on the design of the Fiocruz castle: the Montsouris Observatory, in Paris, built for the Universal Exhibition of 1867 and designed by Louis-Étienne Alfred Chapon; Palace of the Lions (Palacio de los Leones), in Alhambra, Granada, Spain, and Unesco World Heritage; and the New Synagogue (Neue Synagoge), in Berlin, Germany, built between 1859 and 1866 and designed by Eduard Knoblauch. The evolution of the drawings for the Manguinhos headquarters reveals the influence these buildings had on its final design.

According to the justification given by the museologist Luiz Fernando Ribeiro for the listing of the Manguinhos architectural complex, the first design, drawn by Oswaldo Cruz himself, imagined a “construction of a horizontal body, with two lateral bulwarks, one central one, seventeen windows, and one great doorway and a stairway leading to the second floor. When this idea was presented to the architect, he prepared a similar design to Oswaldo Cruz’s, except that it did not have the side towers and it was already in the Moorish style” (Ribeiro, 1980, p.B). This arrangement (Figure 1), without the towers, is very similar to the Montsouris Observatory (Figure 2), which Oswaldo Cruz visited several times during his stay at the Institut Pasteur. This makes it a good candidate for the first main inspiration for the project.

Figure 1
: First design by Luiz Moraes Jr. for the headquarters of Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, 1905 (DAD/Fiocruz collection)

Figure 2
: Montsouris Observatory, former Palais du Bardo (Private collection)

The influence of the observatory in Paris on Oswaldo Cruz is cited by some authors, but has not been completely explored. We would argue that the building should be analyzed more closely for its formal similarities and its importance in the overall architectural landscape of France when Orientalism was appropriated.

The building became known as the home of the Paris observatory as of 1868, but it was actually originally designed by the French architect Louis-Étienne Alfred Chapon (1834-1893) as Palais du Bardo, the Tunisia pavilion for the Universal Exhibition held in Paris in 1867. In 1868, after the exhibition, the building was acquired by the city of Paris, and was reconstructed in 1869 by the architect Gabriel Davioud on a hill in Parc Montsouris.³

The Palais du Bardo pavilion was itself inspired by a palatial building in Tunis, Tunisia. Designed by Chapon, it had three stories and was topped by three domes. Although on its façade it used elements replicated from the model on which it was based, its façade was more exuberant in details and textures, using the Oriental repertoire of Arab and Turkish influences.

French nineteenth century architecture was influenced by colonial building styles along the coast of Africa. According to Toulier (2006), the Orientalism applied to French architecture can be divided into three moments: the first great manifestations (1850-1870), large-scale appropriation for leisure, residential, and religious buildings (1870-1914), and the last expressions between the two world wars (1914-1937).

Planners and architects from École des Beaux-Arts were active in the French colonies in both building design and urban planning. The emphasis on Orientalism – expressed in styles described as “Arabic,” “Moorish,” or “Hispanic-Moorish” – was great, particularly in architecture for diversion and with no commitment to fidelity (Toulier, 2006). Moorish architecture, peculiar to the more leisure-oriented functions, used structural or decorative elements derived from the repertoire of forms from the Islamic architectural tradition.

Palais du Bardo was from the first wave of Orientalism in France. According to Toulier (2006, p.8), “a copy of Bey palace in Tunis, Bardo was designed by Alfred Chapon, an architect with the Suez Canal Company. This reconstruction sparks the imagination of Parisians.” He goes on that for a long time this monument remained a reference for Orientalism in the minds of the French. However, the critical words of the French architect Louis-Charles Boileau (1837-1914) express the creative freedom that moved the Orientalist compositions produced by the members of the École des Beaux-Arts, without adhering to any rigid typology.

We can put all these styles in the same bag. It is of little interest to us whether it is the Arabic art of the Belle Époque, Cairo or Alexandria, the Moorish architecture of Spain, the particular and interesting nuance from Persia, Turkish decadence, or the blended style of Islamic India; all these artistic manifestations, however, so diverse, meld for us into a set of fine figures, from which singular forms emerge here and there (Boileau, cited in Toulier, 2006, p.1).

The mansion was built atop a hill in Parc Montsouris, surrounded by extensive grounds. From the photographs and prints (picture postcards) encountered in the research for this paper, its strategic position gave the building a particularly imposing presence. Set in the outskirts of Paris, Parc Montsouris was landscaped in the romantic style, as was in vogue at the time. Its creation had been part of the urban beautification measures introduced by the Haussmann administration during the reign of Louis-Napoleon (Napoleon III). While he was in Paris with his family, Oswaldo Cruz took some pictures of his walks in the city’s parks. Created in the nineteenth century, city parks were a typical leisure option at the time and were designed to be healthful places of contemplation and symbols of social status. It is conceivable, indeed, that the erection of Palais du Bardo in Parc Montsouris (Figure 3) was mirrored in the decision to locate the headquarters of his institution in the grounds of Manguinhos, overlooking Guanabara bay.

Figure 3
: Parc Montsouris, around 1853-1870 (State Library of Victoria)

Let us now return to the work of the museologist Luiz Fernando in his examination of the influences and creative process behind the Moorish Pavilion: “Following this plan was another, in which the two towers were added,” as we can see from the postcard contained in the Luiz de Moraes Jr. archive, unpublished to date (Figure 4). “The definitive one differs from the previous ones as it has five floors, which lends the building not only more useful space, but also more grandeur,” he concludes (Ribeiro, 1980, p.B). This means that the final five-story design (Figure 5), from 1908, was developed after Oswaldo Cruz and his architect had been to Germany, where they had seen the New Synagogue of Berlin.

Figure 4
: Period postcard showing the two-story design with the two towers, an intermediate version between the 1905 and 1908 designs (DAD/Fiocruz collection)

Figure 5
: Definitive design of the Moorish Pavilion, by Luiz Moraes Jr., 1908 (DAD/Fiocruz collecion)

Oswaldo Cruz visited Germany twice in the company of Moraes Jr. to take part in international hygiene exhibitions – one in 1907 in Berlin, when the institute won the gold medal, and one in 1911 in Dresden (Figure 6): “In the model exhibited at the Hygiene Exhibition in Berlin, in 1907, the building already had its two towers. But it was only in 1908, with construction at a very advanced stage, that Moraes Jr. produced the final five-story design” (Benchimol, 1990, p.110). On that first trip, the two men would certainly have seen the synagogue in Berlin and drawn inspiration from it for the building in Rio de Janeiro.

Figure 6
: Photo of the Dresden exhibition, in 1911; right: model of the old two-story building housing the General Directorship of Public Health, on Rua do Resende in downtown Rio de Janeiro; left: model of the final design for the headquarters at Manguinhos (DAD/Fiocruz collection)

The Berlin synagogue was what inspired the now familiar design of the Fiocruz castle, at least when it comes to its main façade. The synagogue is aligned with other buildings surrounding it, unlike the Fiocruz building, which stands in the middle of its grounds, with all four façades clearly visible, which in this respect makes it more similar to the palace in Parc Montsouris. In Berlin, the only façade of the synagogue that can be seen by the public is the front one. If we observe it closely, we can see just how strong an influence it had on the plans for Manguinhos. The synagogue has one ground floor and three upper floors as well as certain visual elements, such as arches, cornices, and parapet walls, along the length of the façade. Horizontally, it is divided into three sub-planes: a central plane and two side planes. Atop the two side planes are two octagonal towers. All these details and stylistic options are visible in the building in Rio de Janeiro. Indeed, the similarities are too marked to be put down to mere coincidence (Figure 7).

Figure 7
: New Synagogue of Berlin (Berlin State Archives)

Without a doubt, the main reference for the decorative features of the Fiocruz building was the Alhambra palace, in Granada. A book on Alhambra published in 1906 by Albert F. Calvert, belonging to Oswaldo Cruz’s private library, contains drawings of this building, which Moraes Jr. borrowed for Manguinhos. (The book is now in the Fioruz Library of Rare Works.) The book transcribes studies about the Moorish decorative elements at Granada first published in London in 1837 under the title Plans, elevations, sections and details of the Alhambra, by Jules Goury and Owen Jones. In nineteenth century Europe, the bourgeoisie appreciated a neo-Arabic language with “very strong connotations of escapism, evocation, and social singularity, adopting the palaces of Alhambra as the main model of reference for awakening – always through decoration – a broad emotional repertoire” (Domingo, 1998, p.115).

As for the design of an architecture conceived for a health institution, Moraes Jr. chose a configuration with a symmetrical plan divided into a central body, containing the different accessways (stairs, elevators, corridors) and the bathrooms; and two wings for the laboratories, the library shelves, and the terraces, forming an H-shape. Stretching round these wings and also in the front section of the building are the “aeration balconies” (Ribeiro, 1980, p.B). This H-shaped layout is strongly associated to buildings for health, like the Institut Pasteur in Paris, precisely because it allows for cross-ventilation, or the “aeration” mentioned by Luiz Fernando Ribeiro, and sunlight for the rooms, all of which was considered good hygienic practice and a commonly used feature at the time.

Besides this, small details in the construction and use of materials reveal how the practical needs of the serum therapy institute were met, some of which were remarked by Oswaldo Cruz on his visit to Garches: rounded corners where walls meet each other and where they meet floors and ceilings, to prevent an accumulation of dirt – widely used in biotechnology laboratories to this day; white tiling inside the rooms and along the corridors leading to them, facilitating cleaning; large windows, enabling air exchange; piped gas, used for the experiments done to this day in the laboratories on the second floor; lecture theater for the theoretical lessons of the course given at the then Instituto Oswaldo Cruz; skylights, to allow sunlight into the building; bathroom facilities in a different building for hygiene purposes, but interconnected to the central block by a covered walkway; as well as other features.

For these and other characteristics, the central building of Fiocruz, alongside the other buildings in the architectural ensemble, was listed in 1981; as such, its preservation for future generations is one of the institution’s missions. This recognition only came about in the 1980s because before then, the heritage protection authorities felt that this architecture was not genuinely Brazilian. As the Italian architect Luciano Pateta (1987) comments, it was the gradual waning of critical prejudices that led the architecture historiography in Europe to reassess eclecticism in the late twentieth century. The same can be said for Brazil.

The Venice Charter (1964) and its repercussions in Brazil in the following decade in terms of the valuing of urban history in line with modern preservation theory was also important. It was in the 1970s that this perspective on eclectic architecture began to change, especially when heritage protection ceased to be centralized and state entities were created.

Final considerations

In line with the review of the historiography of Brazilian architecture, eclecticism became the object of pioneering studies and research by architects and art historians like Mário Barata, Paulo Santos, and Giovanna Del Brenna in the 1970s and 1980s. Initially, they gave eclecticism recognition for its didactic importance to the history of art. Despite coming from different perspectives, they ended up converging with regard to certain issues concerning the style: the importance of industrialization and the development of urban culture. Their work contributed to the call, as of the mid-1980s, for eclectic architecture to be written back into the historiography of architecture in Rio.

The argument was that buildings were worthy of being listed if they were living witnesses to the regeneration of the city. As such, eclecticism came to be understood as one more artistic phenomenon in the course of urban civilization. Architectural sites that had not been deemed worthy of the label of “outstanding value” could thenceforth be reevaluated.

In 1977, Paulo Santos published Quatro Séculos de Arquitetura (Four Centuries of Architecture), in which he wove together, with great sensitivity, the history of Brazilian architecture over four hundred years, including eclectic architecture. In the chapter devoted to neo-Gothic and Oriental styles, he makes reference to the Fiocruz building and its surroundings

At the Manguinhos Institute, work of the architect Moraes Júnior (also responsible for the Beneficência Portuguesa hospital building and Penha Church), which, with its graceful silhouette of rosy hues standing out atop a hill, forms today a pleasant contrast for those who come from the Island of Fundão, with the functionally cold forms of the University of Brazil (Santos, 1977, p.88).

The appreciation of eclectic architecture resulted in moves to ensure its preservation in the following decade, mostly through pioneering initiatives by heritage protection entities like the Brazilian heritage protection institute Instituto do Patrimônio Artístico e Nacional (Iphan). As of the 1970s, the number of listing applications rose significantly, this time filed by entities from outside Iphan, mostly local governments and the people running public institutes, as was the case of Fiocruz.

The application to have the Manguinhos architectural compound listed on a federal sphere was submitted by the then president of Fiocruz, Guilardo Martins Alves, in correspondence dated September 1980 (Ofício..., 8 set. 1980). This was accompanied by a detailed study of this architectural ensemble by the Fiocruz museologist Luiz Fernando Ribeiro, in which he highlighted its architectural qualities and their significance to the history of Rio de Janeiro during the transition to republican rule in Brazil.

The history of its design, the principal references for which we have attempted to elucidate here, from Montsouris to Garches, from Alhambra to Berlin, helps give a better understanding of how eclectic architecture strikes the gaze and is constituted and appreciated today. Since the listing of its main building as a heritage site over three decades ago, Fiocruz has fulfilled its responsibility as custodian of this cultural heritage devoted to science and health, with all its enduring mysteries and enchantments.

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NOTES

• 1
  For further information, see Rocha-Peixoto (2001), Pereira (jul. 2007), and Kaufmann (1952).
• 2
  The growth of the French capital called for it to be opened up, for new roads to be laid, and for a sewage system to be introduced, which resulted in a convergence of the principles of hygiene and aesthetics, a new prospect for the city after years of cholera and typhus.
• 3
  The mansion was abandoned in 1974; then, in 1991, the Tunisia government decided to acquire it for a symbolic fee to reconstruct it there, but in that very year it was destroyed by fire.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  13 July 2020
• Date of issue
  Apr-Jun 2020

History

• Received
  30 Aug 2019
• Accepted
  8 Jan 2020