Born in Slovakia in 1921, architect Hans Broos began his career in Brazil in 1953, after graduating in Germany in 1949. His brief European career was marked by the reconstruction of Germany, during which he worked alongside architect Egon Eiermann as his assistant at the Technical University of Karlsruhe. During this period, Broos came into contact with Le Corbusier and his principles of modern architecture. Aligned from the beginning with the architects of the Modern Movement, Broos developed his first works in Blumenau and Florianópolis, in the state of Santa Catarina, far from major Brazilian urban centers. Throughout his professional life, the architect addressed a wide range of programs—from residential and industrial to religious, commercial, and social projects—over a career spanning more than 50 years and nearly 400 projects. Of these, approximately 100 were built in various states, including Santa Catarina, São Paulo, Pernambuco, and Goiás. The architect passed away in 2011.
“Whether working with Roberto Burle-Marx on factory gardens in Santa Catarina, designing religious buildings that would become landmarks of São Paulo brutalism, or developing natural lighting and ventilation solutions in Pernambuco, Hans Broos participated in the development of the new architecture produced in Brazil's major urban centers. His work, however, was never fully assimilated into the founding narratives of modernity, perhaps because, carrying a solid education acquired in Slovakia and Germany, Broos never fully aligned himself with the country's canonical schools of modernism. His European experience found fertile ground in the marginal modernity that culminated in the creation of an important industrial park in the Itajaí River Valley, in the interior of Santa Catarina—an exceptional feat, given the context and the distance of this region from Brazil's major economic hubs. Hans Broos's architecture carries this exceptional quality, and this book, a fragment of his memories, attempts to fill some of the gaps of which history, with its framing, is made.”
Hans Broos: memória de uma arquitetura is the first book about the architect, one of the leading figures of Brazilian modern architecture. The publication is the result of the cultural project of the same name, approved by the Cultural Incentive Program of the State Government of São Paulo (ProAC) and sponsored by Companhia Hering. The cultural project had the blessing of Hans Broos himself in 2008, while it was still being formulated. The book is authored by André Luís de Lima, Guilherme Freitas Grad, and João Serraglio. It features a foreword by Luiz Eduardo Fontoura Teixeira and an afterword by Bernardo Brasil Bielschowsky. The graphic design was co-authored by Tina Merz.
The book's primary intention is to rescue—and prevent the fading of—the memory of the architect's professional work over his five-decade career. It is not intended as a definitive or all-encompassing publication, but rather as an atlas of memory to help pave the way for future studies on Hans Broos. The launch will take place during the SIM - Interdisciplinary Seminar on Museology at the Hering Museum, an event organized by the Hermann Hering Foundation in Blumenau, Santa Catarina, on October 10 of this year, the date on which Hans Broos would have turned 97.
Book Details
Authorship and editing: André Luís de Lima, Guilherme Freitas Grad, and João Serraglio
Foreword: Luiz Eduardo Fontoura Teixeira
Afterword: Bernardo Brasil Bielschowsky
Graphic design: Guilherme Freitas Grad, João Serraglio, and Tina Merz
Self-published. São Paulo, 2018
Number of pages: 192
This article was written by Eduardo Souza. The translation is powered by AI.
