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We hereby broach the architectural oeuvre by influential and controversial architect Vilanova Artigas, active in São Paulo between the 1940s and the 70s. We take the stand of treating this modern architectural work as an autonomous artwork that puts up a figuration out of reinforced concrete beam and lintel structures, which worked out a fusion between linear members and volumetric configuration in the same material, reinforced concrete. His designs exhibit on the one hand a serial disposition of both volumes and structure alongside an axis, and on another they alternate alongside the viewer’s path between mass and space, between intense lights and deep shadows, between weight and resistance, contrasts which tradition assigns to the sublime, to the tragic view of human toil that raises structures far beyond the measure of sound utility. This excess sets his work at odds with his own Marxist creed about the exploitation of work but it is grounded on the project of modern architecture as style of modern times which would nonetheless be in stark opposition, according to Reyner Banham (1970, p. 327), to the uninterrupted development of technology through which it aimed at legitimizing itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]