Church of Saint Joseph of Anchieta-Pateo do Collegio

The renovation of places of worship

Abstract

Pateo do Collegio is the place where São Paulo was founded in 1554. The first buildings —a college and a church— featured colonial architecture in the 17th century, and the church in the 18th was abandoned after expulsion of the Jesuits from the country. Demolished in the late nineteenth century, in the early twentieth it was again owned by the Jesuits and a new building was built. In 2009 there was an important renovation of their places of worship, by Claudio Pastro. The arrangement of the elements is unusual and yet convenient. Pastro materialized the influence of the Second Vatican Council on art and architecture, being one of the authorized voices in Brazil that fostered paradigmatic experiences. The study of this reform is the object of this article: to analyze the elaborated and executed project, to identify the projectual solutions and to accurately record the contribution of this contemporary architecture.