Modernity and urbanity in the architecture of two hospitals in downtown Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

This paper intends to analyze the architecture of two modern hospitals located in the Rio de Janeiro city center and the formal relationships that both establish, each in its own way, with the form and elements of the urban landscape in which they are inserted. An urban landscape that is now protected as cultural heritage did not happen when the mentioned hospitals were built, whose typological principles will serve as methodological tools for the formal analysis of their architectures. But always related to the historical layers of the urban context in which they are inserted, and the consequent monumentality they thus produce. The Souza Aguiar Municipal Hospital and the National Cancer Institute José Alencar Gomes da Silva are the case studies analyzed and show how simultaneous and diverse the relations of contrast and analogy between new and old typological models of architecture and city can be.