The expression of contemporary ornament in the construction of the urban imaginary in Faria Lima Avenue

Abstract

This article aims to present the architectural ornament within contemporaneity, as a sense-yielding language, and as its corpus, it brings the buildings on Faria Lima Avenue in São Paulo. Our interest is to reflect on the dialogue that contemporary architecture establishes with culture, participating in the construction of both an image and an imagery within a given context. Thereto, one follows the track of Sá (2005), Moussavi e Kubo (2008), Venturi (2003), to address the relation between ornament and architecture. One relies on Ferrara (1988, 2000) e Lynch (2011), to address the relation between city and communication, as well as the concepts of image and imagery within cities; concerning a methodology to analyze ornaments, one avails oneself of Peirce’s semiotics (2003); finally, the cultural analysis of the contemporary city is based on Jameson (2006) e Montaner (2002, 2009). This study helps to understand that architecture creates social senses beyond its practical functions, since it is an expression of society and, therefore, of the milieu in which it is inserted.