by Jon Lackman | 23 May 2007 | Americas, Architecture
Diane Brand writes on “Sets and Extras: Ephemeral Architecture and Urban Ceremony in Rio de Janeiro (1808-1821)” in the latest Journal of Latin American Studies (15:3). In the early 19th century, the Prince Regent of Portugal fled to Rio ahead of Napoleon’s anticipated arrival. There, “the royal family indulged in a combination of ephemeral architecture and military pomp … [creating] triumphal arches, false building frontages and an elaborate choreographing of clergy, troops and courtiers … Temporary urban embellishments of this kind had a long history in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Portugal and France.” Not always entirely successful, those in Rio included one faux arch a contemporary called an “architectonic abortion.” Even at their best, their inevitable dismantling “alerted the citizenry to the potentiality of the modifications and their associated political augmentations.”
