Uruguayan Gouda. The unbearable lightness of the bricks of Eladio Dieste

When modernists around the world were building from reinforced concrete and glass, the Uruguayan architect Eladio Dieste created elegant objects with complex vaults that did not require ribs or beams from the much cheaper red brick. Deriving the rigidity and strength of his finely structured constructions from linear geometry, he was a successor to the ideas of the legendary Gauda. With correction for the colossal economy - both money and time.

Abrahamic religions offer to believe that man was created from clay - the dust of the earth. So what is surprising in the fact that his dwellings have been made of clay bricks since ancient times? Simple rectangular blocks and the same non-original forms of brick buildings reflect, it would seem, the idea of ​​ego conservatism originally embedded in the material - without any hint of novelty. But not everyone agrees with such an Abrahamic approach to the material. The Uruguayan modernist Eladio Dieste refused to believe in the obvious hardness and immovability of the rock walls. And he made his buildings soar, soar and breathe.

Eladio Dieste

The architectural landscape of the middle of the 10th century was very diverse, and against the background of this diversity, those who reinterpreted tradition stand out especially clearly. Born on December 1917, XNUMX (coincidentally, on the day of Oskar Niemeyer's death), Dieste decided to return the seemingly lost monumentality to the brick.

Architect Eladio Dieste

The lined surface of the walls of the Church of Jesus Christ the Creator in Atlantis, Uruguay. Photo: Gonzalo Viramonte

In 1943, the young engineer Eladio graduated from the Republican University in the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo, and three years later he received the first order to design the roof of a mansion. The architect of the building was the same young specialist from Spain, Antonio Bone, who preferred to build in the traditional Catalan style, which involves the creation of economical brick vaults. The house with brick self-supporting vaults, created by Bonet and Dieste, still stands on the picturesque shore of the Atlantic Ocean in the town of Punta Ballena. Now this is a small cozy hotel.

A mansion in the town of Punta Ballena in Uruguay is the first project for which Dieste developed a vaulted self-supporting brick roof

Soon, Dieste, together with his colleague Eugenio Montañez, opened his own independent practice - Dieste & Montañez SA, which lasted 50 years. Actually, the company with this name still exists. Now it is managed by one of Eladio's sons - Eduardo Dieste.

Since its foundation, Dieste & Montañez has offered alternative projects based on technologies that were completely unpopular in the middle of the XNUMXth century. Eladio and Montañez, refusing to rely exclusively on world experience and turning to local traditions, proposed brick as an economical alternative to the super popular but not cheap reinforced concrete. And methods of working with it corresponding to this material. Dieste can be credited with the use of reinforced masonry and removable formwork, which is used to make the relief flat.

Eladio Dieste: "The construction methods that I describe allow you to build at a speed close to the speed of assembly, requiring less equipment and manpower"

Engineering education allowed Eladio Dieste to clearly present projects at all levels. Simple in plan, but impressive in their dimensions, the buildings with which I had to work determined the architect's desire to find super-strong forms that distinguish the economy and integrity of the structure. This balance has already, of course, been applied in world architecture. We are talking about lined surfaces.

Linear geometry is a branch of science in which straight lines forming linear surfaces are considered as elements of space: hyperboloid of revolution, hyperbolic paraboloid, helicoid and conoid

One of the first noticeable works of architecture, in which ruled surfaces were used, is the modest parish school at the Sagrada Família temple of the legendary Antonio Gauda. Not very impressive in appearance against the background of its powerful older sister, it is undoubtedly a small miracle of functional architectural thinking.

Architecture of Antonio Gaudi

Parish school at the Sagrada Familia church of Antonio Gaudi

The outer shell of the school is a spatial composition of linear surfaces - a conoid and a hyperbolic paraboloid. And it is this shell, at the same time being part of the structure, that ensures the expressiveness of the building. Of course, having worked on his first project with the Catalan architect Antonio Bonet, Eladio could not fail to know the work of his compatriot and namesake Antonio Gauda.

What today is called the "organic architecture" of the great Catalan, originates from the observation and analysis of natural forms. And if, according to the researcher and architectural critic Vyacheslav Glazychev, "genius of subjects differs from outstanding talent that does not find expression in the method. Antonio Gauda has no method," so Dieste's outstanding talent is precisely based on a solid methodology.

Architecture of Antonio Gaudi

Hanging model of the crypt in Colony Güell. Podobny served Gauda for empirical calculation of loads, determining the inclination of columns and the shape of arches

In other words, Gaudí sees and rethinks the behavior of a suspended loop of chain, imagining the lines of the catenary arch in the colossal Barcelona cathedral, while Dieste calculates the Gaussian normal distribution curve in order to design the giant "wrinkles" of the roof and wavy walls of the Church of Jesus Christ the Creator in the unremarkable village of Atlantis in Uruguay.

Architecture by Eladio Dieste

Church of Jesus Christ the Creator in the village of Atlantis in Uruguay. Eladio Dieste's first independent project

Architecture by Eladio Dieste

Interior of the Church of Jesus Christ the Creator in Atlantis, Uruguay

Intriguing brickwork behind the altar wall of the Church of Jesus Christ the Creator in Atlantis, Uruguay

The complex joining of the ceiling and walls in the Church of Jesus Christ the Creator in Atlantis, Uruguay

The walls of the nave with a wave-like relief, calculated on the basis of a collection of conoids, in the Church of Jesus Christ the Creator in Atlantis, Uruguay. Photo: Gonzalo Viramonte

Internal spiral staircase of the bell tower of the Church of Jesus Christ the Creator in Atlantis, Uruguay

The elegant brick bell tower of the Church of Jesus Christ the Creator in Atlantis, Uruguay. Photo: Gonzalo Viramonte

By the way, this church, completed in 1960, is the first full-fledged work of the master, which is still his business card and recognized masterpiece of world modernism. It is distinguished by a complex spatial structure - the rectangular foundation of the church carries the seven-meter walls of the nave with a wave-like relief, calculated on the basis of a set of conoids, which gives the building fierce dynamics and life. Here, the sinusoid originates in the ground itself, at the base of the wall, and reaches its maximum under the roof itself, making the structure incredibly intriguing.

Scheme of construction of the linear surface of the wall of the church in Atlantis: the sinusoid originates at the base of the wall and reaches its maximum under the roof

The self-supporting roof of the building "swells" with soft waves towards the center with a distance between the supports of the arches of 16 to 18 meters. This technique made it possible to perfectly connect the wavy walls with the flat periphery of the roof - without any cornice, thus illustrating both the ingenious simplicity of the project and the master's motto "deny through form".

Eladio Dieste: "There are deep moral and practical reasons for creative search, from which the form of our objects is born: this is how we respectfully adapt to the laws of nature, forming a dialogue with reality and its secrets"

He used this principle when creating the Don Bosco sports hall in Montevideo. Here, the length of the span between the supports is 25 meters.

Don Bosco Sports Hall in Montevideo, Uruguay

An even more impressive construction of the architect-engineer Dieste is the incredible complexity and scope of the roof of the port warehouse in the Uruguayan capital. Here he uses the technique of an intermittent arch with a double bend, and the length of the span between the supports reaches a record 50 meters!

Elements of a discontinuous arch with a double bend in a port warehouse in Montevideo, Uruguay

In 1976, Dieste & Montañez designed and built a gas station in the Uruguayan city of Salto. Here, gas pumps were hidden under awnings of a special design, which became perhaps the most famous objects in the creative heritage of Eladio Dieste. This is no longer a vault, but a single beam balanced on a support with two curved brick "wings" spread out in the air. About 20 years later, in 1996, they decided to destroy the gas station. But in the process of dismantling, the mayor of the city of Salto. At his request, one of the structures was preserved, moved to the southern entrance to the city, where "Wisdom Square" was created in honor of Dieste with a structure installed in its center, which has since been called "Seagull".

"Seagull" on Wisdom Square at the entrance to the city of Salto, Uruguay

Dieste - an architect, engineer, builder and philosopher - demonstrated in each of his works with the elegance of a great master the ability of simple materials to balance on the very edge of the laws of nature. But for him, unfortunately, this balancing act ended in a big failure. Toward the end of his life, he suffered from a chronic illness that completely confined his ego to a chair. He regretfully admitted that he was "forced to submit to physics."

Eladio Dieste died on July 29, 2000 in Montevideo, leaving behind more than a hundred impressive objects. The construction of any of them would not have been possible without a series of equipment designed by him for the implementation of his own innovative technologies within the framework of the "space economy" to which he aspired, deeply feeling the social and economic conditions in Uruguay at that time.

Folded roof in the church of San Pedro, Uruguay. 1969-71