Espaço de cultura e lazer Delfim Amorim: estudo preliminar de uma proposta de requalificação para a sede social do América Futebol Clube

Abstract

Since the 80s we have witnessed the dismantling of the modernist architectural heritage, either through interventions that disregard the characteristics of such heritage, or through the demolition of these buildings. What we see is a lack of laws aimed at the effective preservation of modernist archive. The building of the Social Headquarters of the América Futebol Clube is one of the modern architecture examples that falls within this scenario. Designed by Portuguese-Pernambucano architect Delfim Amorim in 1959 and opened in 1966, The Social Headquarters building is an important representative of modern architecture produced in Brazilian northeast in that period. Although remaining one of the most important works of modern architecture in the state, in both architectural design and construction quality, in recent years it has had large parts of its land subtracted due to new additions made by the football club that disrespect the heritage status of the modernist work. Besides that, the area of the lost that used to be destined to the pools and courts is about to house two 27-floor towers. This work proposes an intervention in the Social Headquarter building, not in order to prevent the construction of towers - as that is beyond our reach - but as an academic exercise. The project presented intends to intervene in the building and presupposes that the land beyond the building is available. The land will house both the construction of an annex, which can complement the uses of the Social Headquarters (bookstore, coffee shop, AFC museum, remaining administrative areas of the club and bookstore), and newly designed semi-public squares that will be able to re-establish the “building scale with the surrounding landscape" (Cadernos Brasileiros de Arq. -. vol. II, 1982), its independent relationship with the lot and the building's relationship with the road, namely the integration of the internal to the external spaces. Thus the square intends to resume public life of the space, attracting users to the building and onto the streets, reviving the "honeymoon between the building and the street", as previously present in the Modernist buildings of the mid-twentieth century.