ABSTRACT
The third chapter investigates the redefinition of Costa’s role during the years of the Estado Novo (from 1937 to 1945). Despite his personal distance from the ideological positions of the Estado Novo, Costa would not shy away from the cause of modern architecture, which in his vision was strictly linked to the one of a modern Brazil. From this moment on, his efforts would focus on the systematisation of a discourse able to filter the spirit and themes of the international debate through the ideological needs of Vargas’s Brazil. Aware of the potential of a narrative that could articulate modernity and tradition, Costa strenuously supported the image of Brazil’s free-form modernism as the one destined to express the emotional and symbolic values that modern architecture was striving for. In an ambiguous balance between an attitude of resistance and one of compromise, he would contribute to strengthening the connections between modern architecture and State, identifying buildings such as the New York World’s Fair pavilion of 1939 and the seat for the Ministry of Education and Public Health as icons of the modernisation process of Brazil, therefore contributing to outline the ideal genealogy of modern Brazilian architecture.
