The planning of the garden city and the company town (Brazil, 1918-1953)

Abstract

The paper analyzes a group of plans of mill villages and company towns designed in Brazil, following - more or less anchored - postulates and design tools disseminated within the planning of garden cities. Shows how the garden cities planning found scope in projects of this nature in the country in the first half of the twentieth century, especially in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. The approach highlights three issues: the significant number of projects produced, their characteristics and their projective references. In this sense, the work discusses how was the appropriation and reworking of garden cities in 14 developments related to factories, designed by professionals - especially engineers and architects - as Angelo Bruhns, Lincoln Continentino, Angelo Murgel, Attilio Correa Lima, Francisco Baptista de Oliveira, Abelardo Soares Caiuby e Romeo Duffles. Signalizes as strategies and procedures related to the spatial model of garden cities were most often applied in a partial and limited way, associated with the requirements of economy that govern industrial developments and with the urgency as some of these sets were erected, requiring - in some cases - that the plan needed to adjust to the already built or under construction. The paper lay emphasis on the application in some of these projects of principles and design tools used and proposed by planners as Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin, as well as the exceptional qualities of the design of the Commercio and Navigation Company housing development for comprehensive utilization of this method of design, integrating urbanism, architecture and landscape.