Annex to the Ruy Barbosa House Foundation

Rio de Janeiro has a long tradition of open public spaces and outdoor activities. Our intention is to make the best out of this unique opportunity to modernize the CRBF’s intallations to integrate a valuable semi-public void that’s currently disconnected from Assunção Street. The intention is to improve the logistic and operational conditions of the annex while simultaneously allowing for a new (controlled) permeability through the garden to São Clemente Street, creating a connection through an architectural and lanscaped complex of rare quality.

Our proposal takes advantage of the opening for negotiations between CRBF and the town hall to flexibilize certain occupation paramaters, to suggest another alternative, one we consider more benefic both from an urbanistic point of view and from an enlargement of physical installations point of view.

The basic idea is to unblock the back of the garden, connecting it directly to Assunção Street. The “eastern half” of the Main Building would be demolished (4 pavements above ground floor) and replaced by a landscaped void according to the existing pattern in the garden (new reflecting pool as coverage and thermic isolation of the underground). This demolished area would be rebuilt along with the new program in a 10 pavement tower exactly on top of the “western half” of the Main Building (Auditorium), thus not using the 3 lots delimited in the construction notice of the “annex to the annex”, and liberating those sites for a logistic area (loading dock, service accesses) of the new complex.

The benefits of adhering to such strategy can be huge, both for the Foundation and for the neighborhood, and the city. It’s about a unique opportunity to offer infrastructure and adequate work conditions to one of the most important cultural institutions in Brazil, while at the same time integrating the built and landscaped complex to  the immediate urban domain, granting value to a semi-public space of profound meaning.