Abstract

AMARAL, Bernardo. From the critique of the building site to self management: Sérgio Ferro, Usina and self managed mutirões in São Paulo, Brazil. Finisterra [online]. 2020, n.114, pp.141-155. ISSN 0430-5027.  https://doi.org/10.18055/Finis19631.

The concepts of collective worker and critique of the building site developed by the Brazilian architect and theorist Sérgio Ferro, are crucial to understand the practice of architectural collectives that started emerging in the 1990s with the purpose of providing technical guidance to right-to-land and right to housing grassroots movements in the region of São Paulo. One of such cases is Usina - Centro de Trabalhos para o Ambiente Habitado (Work Centre for the Inhabited Environment) (Usina CTAH), founded in 1990, gatherer of an extensive experience in technical consultancy to social movements organized as self-managed building teams, usually called mutirões. This paper aims to analyse Usina’s work and methodologies of design, decision and negotiation processes in the light of Sérgio Ferro’s concepts, in order to better understand the importance of his work in terms of redefining architectural practice as a political, social and economic agency.

Keywords : Architecture; Sérgio Ferro; mutirões; Self-management; Right-to-housing.

        · abstract in Portuguese | French | Spanish     · text in Portuguese     · Portuguese ( pdf )