Projetos de escola em disputa: resistências pedagógicas à implementação do design moderno no Brasil na década de 1960

Abstract

The implementation of modern design in Brazil, which took place in the 1950s/60s, was a moment of dispute between divergent views on what should be the structure of a design school in an economically underdeveloped country, but with an immense cultural diversity. In this research, we investigated movements of critical resistance to what was being implemented as teaching and pedagogy in modern design, at the time of its institutionalization in the country. The research, in the field of design history, looks specifically at three cases of school projects developed in the 1960s: the School of Industrial Design and Craftsmanship, a project by architect Lina Bo Bardi located in the Solar do Unhão Complex, Salvador, Bahia, from 1961-64; the Parque Lage Studies Center, 1965, also a project of Lina Bo Bardi; and the 14-month strike at Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial – ESDI, between 1968-1969, a collective attempt to change the school's curriculum. In this research we developed a decolonial approach to the history of design in Brazil and sought to recover a debate between divergent views that guided the first years of the establishment of education and practice of modern design in Brazil, when it was disputed to what extent teaching should be based on external models, adapted or not, or should it be formulated based on the conditions of the sociocultural and economic reality of the country. As a way of imagining how these schools could have worked, as they remained paper schools, speculative and critical fabulations were mobilized as methodological tools. We believe that critically investigating these projects can help us think about design education today.