“The city should be for everyone”. According to Paulo Mendes da Rocha, “the city has to address the issues of coexistence, inclusion and the transformation of its own fabric”. This is the “battle” the Brazilian institution SESC is facing from its birth in 1946. As a non-profit private institution kept by trade businessmen, SESC primary aim is the welfare of workers and their family. However, the institution is also open to the general community. It was created with the purpose of providing to the society education, health, leisure, cultural and medical facilities. This approach to an inclusive architecture is reflected in the units that SESC has built across Sao Paulo; most famously the SESC 24 de Maio, by da Rocha, and the Sesc Pompeia, by Lina Bo Bardi. This two interventions have a fundamental role in the redevelopment of social functions within the tumultuous Brazilian community. In fact, “this cultural and recreational facilities have been part of political operations in the transformation of historic centres”, where architecture is the responsible for the existing urban and social environment rebirth, as the facilities are developed in abandoned transformed buildings, to give back to the city its own fabric. This was very unconventional for the 2nd postwar period, as the government was pushing for a massive construction of new buildings, also influenced by the advent of modernism in Brazil. The idea of an industrial architectural heritage din’t exist at the time. These interventions, especially Bo Bardi’s Sesc Pompeia, are revolutionary: they were meant for the preservation of the form, the structure and the idea of that place, working places where the work was hard becoming places for workers’ leisure. The architectural heritage meet the social, historical and political background. Therefore, this thesis will deepen the combination of means like businessmen’s fundings, collaboration between architects and users and the redevelopment of the industrial heritage, that allowed this institution to be powerful enough to express itself against hard existing social, political and economical conditions, thanks to a revolutionary architectural translation.
This institution is considered a worldwide recognised model. In fact, some European recreational and cultural centres which have references (or similarities) in the SESC projects will be used as examples of how the city can be redeveloped starting from its existing fabric. However, the contemporary city is disputed between those architects looking for a multifunctional architecture redeveloping the existing environment, and those who are focused on architecture as a performance, asking for “mono-functional signature” architectural work by a famous architect”. This debate is the second and conclusive part of the thesis, an analysis of these examples of the SESC-influenced buildings, both developing and facing challenges within the contemporary western cities, being preferred the construction and spreading of new ‘icons’. This landmarks’ construction with the aim of attracting tourism is making forget the importance of the development of an architecture based on the social sustainability, thanks to infrastructure containing various programs for the local citizens. The example of SESC in São Paulo—“quite a vertical and densely populated city, a city of great resources and also tremendous poverty, a city with a high crime rate, a city with severe traffic issues, and a city with public health problems”—it’s an evidence of the key role of architecture’s contribution in the urban development, currently threatened by interventions that do not better respond to modern cities requirements.