An investigation into design language - repertoire and design process in the architectural work of Maria do Carmo Schwab
Design language; Maria do Carmo Schwab; Modern Architecture; Espírito Santo.
The design language is understood as a systematized set that structures and identifies a certain architecture, characterized by its specific design strategies and solutions. Unlike the architectural language, usually apprehended from the final image of a building and its meanings, the design language is constituted in the design act, in the synthesis process carried out by the professional. As a method for investigation, here experienced in the production of the capixaba architect Maria do Carmo Schwab, a reading from a double methodological lens is proposed. In the first dimension, with a closer perspective, the aim is to better understand her repertoire and design process, as well as the continuities and transformations presented in the analysis of her architectural production; while in the expanded scale, we seek to trace conceptual, technical and visual relations to other architectures. Supported by the critical analysis of projects, in the first place specific to the architect's work, and then combined with other contemporary productions, indicated in the reassembly of her trajectory, it is intended to recognize and systematize her design language. Based on a syntactic reading, four are the subsystems that guide the discussion – Building-Site, Programmatic-Functional, Material-Technical and Aesthetic-Formal – and contribute to the decoding of this architecture. Thus, one observes not only an operation of analysis and synthesis in its design, revealing a rational and analytical process, but also the manipulation of a system of references, linked to formative relationships, to parallel experiments and even to the construction technologies themselves. Such a reading, therefore, reveals itself as a possible approach to different productions, in the investigation of the design language of a given architecture.