LIGA 32: Terra e Tuma
Shameless Copy
March – August 2020
Terra e Tuma, the Brazilian quartet made up of Danilo Terra, Fernanda Sakano, Pedro Tuma, and Juliana Terra, presents a project that defines their architecture of craftsmanship and skill: a discipline of copying and repetition. In this exhibition, they draw on the thought of Paulo Mendes da Rocha: the idea that architects are condemned to always making the same house, working with the same materials, but in a different way, as happens also in the field of literature. “Shameless Copy” challenges the current notion that constant innovation, attention-grabbing novelty, and originality at all costs constitute an irrefutable dogma.
The São Paulo-based firm, known for its austere, pragmatic buildings, exhibits eight of its single-family home projects in this labyrinthine space: Casa Maracanã (2009), Casa Mipibu (2015), Vila Matilde (2015), Casa Guaianaz (2018), Casa Cruzeiro (2019) Casa das Jabuticabeiras (2019), Casa Indianápolis (2020) y Casa Lírio (2020-). The models, made of basic neutral grey materials, are presented simply and straightforwardly, like all of Terra e Tuma’s work. It is not the beauty of the individual models that counts, however, but rather the relations established between them. Set up as a series, in a darkened space, with very precise lighting, some of them are placed in front of a mirror in which the following project is reflected.
In all of the houses designed by Terra e Tuma the material elements and the typologies are similar, copied from other works of Brazilian architecture. The process of repetition or copying fosters the perfecting of the technique adopted and their adjustment to different lots, budgets, and client demands. The fact that their works are at once copied and different suggests a detachment from tradition, to be observed in the theory of “the New” formulated by Haroldo de Campos. According to the literary critic, certain important works are hybrids, amalgams, full of contrasts, as they carry within themselves multiple references to striking earlier works. They form part of the “plagiotropic movement of literature,” a kind of “oblique ramification, as the growth of certain plants is designated in botany.”
Copying and plundering are part of the creative process.
Photography: Arturo Arrieta