Tradición, técnica y patrimonio en la obra de Mendes da Rocha.

The production of Mendes da Rocha is usually framed within 'critical regionalism' regarding the review of modern architectural canon in the twentieth century. Three aspects of his architecture are discussed here: tradition, technique and heritage. The first aspect sets his work as heir of modern Brazilian architecture concerned by the configuration of the public space. This outlook allows to understand his work under a growing urban concern: architecture as an object, architecture as part of the surroundings and architecture on the territorial scale. The second aspect explores the emphasis given by Mendes to the couple art-technique, developing a poetic based on the reduction of elements and the symbolization of archetypes which finds in reinforced concrete the appropriate lexicon for the new syntax of modernity. The third aspect reflects on the way he addresses his work in built heritage with a 'puritan' aesthetic singularised by subtractive strategies: designing may also imply suppressing the unnecessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]