User:Soysiecg/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Architecture of Brazil

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because it seemed interesting and I am currently studying art history. This subject matters because it is important to know the origins of buildings in order to preserve and take inspiration from them for future builds. It helps us as visitors and viewers understand the culture surrounding these types of buildings and reasons behind certain design choices. Knowing how communities originally create buildings out of surrounding materials also helps us understand the surrounding environment and geology of the time.

After first looking through this article, it seems to be missing a lot of information and only have a small section on a few categories. The organization is also lacking and isn't very concise.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section:

The first sentence of this article mentions other countries instead Brazil itself. The introduction area should talk more about the country of Brazil rather than other countries. It works when they say other countries influenced Brazilian architecture but it should not be in the first sentence. The section does touch on what the rest of the article will talk about. The lead section mentions architecture in WWII but there is no section for that.

Content:

The content is mostly relevant to the topic but not in depth. The content mentions different eras of the architecture including modern day but once again doesn't have many details. The content only talks about one or two architects but has barely any information on indigenous architecture which founded the ideals and style for modern buildings. The article seems to focus a lot on one specific architect rather than the Brazilian architecture in general. There is only one small paragraph for indigenous buildings and processes. The paragraph for Oscar Niemeyer is longer than almost every other paragraph about the architecture itself.

Tone and Balance:

The page doesn't convey any specific bias towards a certain side but once again talks about one architect and almost only his contributions. Indigenous communities have been excluded because after they were the original builders and created the foundation for all of the work being done today. There is more information about the colonialism and that impact/style in the 16th century.The article also calls colonists "explorers" and "creators" rather than addressing any negative issue that most likely occurred. Aside from these biases, there are no emotions attached to the writing and it is not written in a persuasive way. They could also add a few examples of styles but they chose to focus on only the presidential palace, Palacio da Alvorada. Along with this, they could point out specific parts of the building and explain more architecture rather than just influences.

Sources and References:

The article uses a few .com websites as well as .org. However, it also sources from a professor publication as well as a couple of books. The authors of these are mostly men with a couple of women; one of which is a Spanish professor who taught and a school in Versailles. The sources are mostly from after the year 2000, but there are two that are pre-1990s. Some of the links work but I was not able to access all of them. After looking on Google Scholar and CSU course reserves, I found many articles that relate to this topic. Most of them aren't super recent but there were still a good amount after 2000 ce with the most recent being from 2018.

Organization and Writing Quality:

The organization is done poorly. It does a decent job of chronologically listing the different eras of architecture but it inserts other categories within these sections and it makes it hard to read. The writing also isn't very concise and the sentences don't flow well but I haven't noticed any spelling errors. Major points have categories but more major points need to be added such as examples o work and influences on people now or even back then.

Images and Media:

There are quite a few images posted to this article and I think they do a good job highlighting the topic. However, almost the only information on the photos is a short sentence as the caption. The article makes no other mention of these "iconic" examples. I think that if the captions just mentioned what the image was and possibly the year built, there could be smaller sections for the explanations. The images are laid out in a way that makes sense, but once again need to have more of an explanation to go along with them.

Talk Page Discussion:

There is no active talk page. The article is rated C-class and is under the category of Brazilian arts.

Overall Impressions:

I think that this article did a pretty decent job of laying out the basics of Brazilian architecture but needs more detail of Brazilian life, especially referring to indigenous cultures. A strength would be talking about what cultures influenced the architecture but a weakness would be the organization and clarity. I think this article is underdeveloped and needs more research done to it.