Architecture and structure: reading and dissection of the OCA building at Ibirapuera Park

Abstract

This article establishes associations between the structure and the architecture designs of the Oca building, through graphic sources surveys unknown until the investigation beginning. The research started from a survey on some structures designed by the engineer José Carlos de Figueiredo Ferraz (1918-1994), whose part of the collection was destroyed by fire. Many of his significant structural design works are known, as the buildings MASP, FAUUSP USP's Faculty of History and Geography, and SESC Pompéia. The Oca building, designed in the early 1950s by Oscar Niemeyer and his team, with structural calculations done by engineer José Carlos de Figueiredo Ferraz, the shell of the building was the first designed by the architect and became a widely used in his later works. This research rescued part of the design drawings, which made it possible to relate architecture and structure. The method used several parallel and hybrid phases: a search for iconographic material and documents in public and private archives, which represent a dissection of the structure of this case study. The text is constructed by an introduction about the Oca Project in Ibirapuera Park, its development, observations about its possible etymologies, its form and relations with the structure.