Lelé's architecture of care: the Sarah Kubitschek hospitals as a strategy for birth centres and healthcare spaces

Abstract

The work of the architect João Filgueiras Lima, Lelé, holds an emblematic position in Brazilian architecture, revisiting with high degree of awareness several of the ethical, formal and constructive themes of the architecture of the modern movement of previous decades. His work has contributed to the construction of a transforming landscape in cities, designed for the community as an ecosystem connected by uses and bioclimatic adaptation to the surrounding environment. Flexibility and development towards industrialisation have been paths explored by the architect João Filgueiras Lima, better known as Lelé. Within Lelé's vast oeuvre, his healthcare architecture is still today key to a way of thinking and building spaces, inseparable from urban concepts of connection, adaptation, scalability and replicability. In this sense, this paper proposes a critical discussion on Lelé's works in healthcare, particularly the hospitals of the Sarah Kubitschek Network specialising in musculoskeletal rehabilitation, conceived with the crucial collaboration of the landscape architect Alda Rabello Cunha, the physician Aloísio Campos da Paz and the economist Eduardo Kertész. The aim is to discuss this architecture as a modus operandis in the process of city building, based on the premises present in its design, as well as considering its material pre-existence, in constant risk of deconfiguration and disappearance. The methodological approach is the case study of the Sarah Kubitschek Hospitals, in relation to their conservation, combined with a comparative-propositive analysis of the problematic of the architecture of care facilities from a gender perspective in other contexts. We examine the architecture of spaces for maternity and birth centres, but also those dedicated to providing healthcare for the elderly among others, in order to meet current needs for inclusion and care. The study connects with the research NAIX-EM in which the authors are involved at the Universitat Politècnica de València.

Postprint (author's final draft)