Guilherme Marcucci: Ecletismo na Arquitetura Pelotense (1860-1901).

Abstract

During the 19th century, changes in Europe brought a migration flow to the New World, especially after the second half of the century, causing demographic growth and expansion of cities. Around 1860, Pelotas urban area was developing due to economic resources from jerked beef production, which were used for constructing buildings. At this period Marcucci, an important character of the history of construction in the city, along with other immigrant professionals, arrived in Pelotas. They planned and executed several projects, both public and private, such as hospitals, chapels, clubs, town halls and residences. Although he worked in public projects, Marcucci excelled in residential ones. This work aimed to show Marcucci´s contribution to the city, presenting similarities and differences between his architecture and the one produced in his country of origin – Italy –, in Brazil and in neighboring countries, like Argentina and Uruguay. For that, books, manuals, magazines and images which represented the architecture produced during the 19th century in these places were researched. Through an analysis based on Argan´s principles, that considered the distribution in plan, the construction technique and the decorative elements, the works which represented the architectural language of the time were chosen to be compared to Marcucci´s ones, in order to reveal the strongest architectural influence on his production. This study proved it would not be possible to precisely discover the origin of the inspiration for each element of his production; however, it was possible to identify the architectures of Montevideo, Buenos Aires and Italy as the main influences on his architecture.