theme 2 memory strand 1 design histories: tradition, transgression and transformations abstract author(s) Introduction Recife, the capital of Pernambuco, in Northeast of Brazil, was going through expressive social, political, economic and urbanistic transformations in the beginning of the 20th century, especially as from the 1920s. These transformations were also revealed in the intellectual and artistic ields through the opposition between modernists and regionalists — the latter led by Gilberto Freyre. Lula Cardoso Ayres, visual artist, graphic designer — between the 1940s and the 1970s — and teacher, was who best visually manifested in his work Freyre’s regionalist ideals. Considering that aesthetic choices are umbilically tied to the social agent’s actions in the social space and to the habitus, in the sense elaborated by Pierre Bourdieu (2005), the research problem of this paper consists in identifying how the aesthetic dispositions (the taste) of Lula Cardoso Ayres were visually manifested in his Graphic Design pieces — through his action’s strategies within the erudite artistic ield, the educational system and the cultural industry ield. The general objective is to redeem Lula Cardoso Ayres’ graphic design works, taking into account its symbolic capital and the position of the Design in his work as a whole. The speciic objectives are: to establish correlations between his works of art and his graphic design works; to promote the appreciation of Pernambuco’s graphic memory; through the joint efort with several collections of the Recife city, to make public the abundance of research material owned by those institutions, encouraging thus new historical researches. The justiication of this research is found in Ayres as a pioneer in the ield of Design in Pernambuco, since he was one of the few renowned artists in the State to regularly dedicate himself to the design activity — he worked for approximately thirty years in the Brazilian Graphic Industry (IGB) — and had an intimate relation with Gilberto Freyre’s regionalistic, traditionalistic theories, which helped him to establish a modern aesthetic in Pernambuco’s Design and to search for an Northeastern identity in his works. modernity, regionalism, Pernambuco’s design, Lula Cardoso Ayres keywords Lula Cardoso Ayres was the modern artist and designer who best visually reproduced Gilberto Freyre’s regionalistic theories. This paper discusses how his diferent activities within the production of symbolic goods in Pernambuco are visually manifested in his graphic design. Modernity and Regionalism in Pernambuco’s Design: Lula Cardoso Ayres Rafael Efrem rafael.efrem@gmail.com Federal Institute of Education, Science and Techonology of Paraiba Blucher Design Proceedings Dezembro de 2014, Número 5, Volume 1 www.proceedings.blucher.com.br/evento/icdhs2014 Efrem, Rafael; "Modernity and Regionalism in Pernambuco’s Design: Lula Cardoso Ayres", p. 219-224 . In: Tradition, Transition, Tragectories: major or minor influences? [=ICDHS 2014 - 9th Conference of the International Committee for Design History and Design Studies]. São Paulo: Blucher, 2014. ISSN 2318-6968, DOI 10.5151/despro-icdhs2014-0026