The Cooperative Community of Camurupim predates this project. Its land was first collectivized by the Catholic Church as a result of extreme inequality between a small minority of landowners and majority rural workers. Father Domingos Puljiz founded the cooperative on the first portion of purchased land, Camurupim, in 1967. Largely rural, the region and its villages had little infrastructure and housing. The 1970 drought in the Northeast brought the region to political prominence, during which time Médici was forced to contend with its long history of national neglect. His response, the National Integration Programme (PIN), included the plans for development of a “Transamazon Highway,” irrigation infrastructure, and “export corridors” in the Northeast. The federal government’s attitude towards the region was one of infrastructural expropriation, eventually amounting, however, to little real investment or interest in the amelioration of living conditions.
In 1975, a contract was drawn between CODEVASF (Companhia de Desenvolvimento do Vale do São Francisco), an institute of the federal government as part of a decree signed by then-President Geisel, and ELC (Electroconsult), a Brazilian company, who hired Lina Bo Bardi. The contract stipulates characteristics and the scope of the project: “individual parcels of land with distribution that intends to optimize the productive activity. Settlement of 380 families, 180 cooperative members and over 105 small and medium-sized landowners in the area, making up 75% of the total number of existing residents.” In 1977, however, CODEVASF determined that an “urban centre” was unnecessary, terminating the project.
The 1975-77 project was planned by Italian-Brasilian architect Lina Bo Bardi. Although she had little experience in urbanism, Bo Bardi was likely hired due to her presence and experience in the Northeast, an uncommon characteristic when the de-facto centre of the country was in the developed Southeast. Between 1958-1966, Bo Bardi moved to Salvador da Bahia to teach at the university and direct the Museum of Modern Art (MAM-BA), for which she designed the adaptation, among several other projects. This period of her life had a lasting influence on her career, imbuing it with a strong and focused political dimension, cementing her belief in the architect’s capacity to transform reality. A self-identified leftist, Bo Bardi was opposed to the military dictatorship but took advantage of the opportunity to implement public works in the Northeast. She was nevertheless weary of the autocratic nature of the contractors, evidenced in her personal notes in which she criticizes the position an ELC representative.
Dr. Muzio from ELC in Recife thinks that the house is not important. From the research, however, it is very important. It’ll give them confidence. They are discouraged. They think a brick house is the ultimate dream… They think the house is very important. (orig. O Dr. Muzio do ELC de Recife acha que a casa não é importante. Pela pesquisa feita é importantíssima. Daria a eles confiança. Eles estão desanimados. Eles pedem como um sonho máximo casa de tijolos... Eles acham a casa muito importante)
Manifesto
In response to an anti-welfare sentiment and rhetoric, Bo Bardi wrote a kind of manifesto on public housing which was published in the Diàrio de Notícias of Salvador in October 1958. Evident in this text is her pragmatic and populist approach as well as her fierce condemnation of real estate speculation and rhetorical philanthropy. It also contains some early intimations of what would be implemented in her proposal for Camurupim; where the autonomous construction of housing would introduce public work in a positive light to inhabitants.
Enough of these philanthropic improvisations that ignore the real roots of the problem. Enough of the self-consoling lies and distortions that arise for no other reason than to salve guilty consciences. We urgently need to implement a national plan for public housing based on reliable statistical data and sound social and humanist reasoning. … Public housing is a right, not a gift. The state has a duty to resolve the situation and its first step should be to debunk the myths and distortions put about by the private sector, by real-estate speculators and by those who are aware of the injustice, but instead of resolutely attempting to tackle the problem trot out self-justifications to ease their consciences. To do this we need to eliminate a whole list of things: abstract optimism, scepticism about state intervention, the belief that the poor are to blame for the slums, the habit of prioritizing the interests of the individual over those of society.
Modest Utopia
Bo Bardi’s approach to utopia is itself distinctive, eschewing the hegemonic conception of utopia as “u - topos” or no place, “eutopia” or good place, as well as the settler-colonial conception of America as a tabula rasa. Instead, her offering is firmly rooted in place, evidenced in project’s origins in ethnographic field work, her assertion of a non-normative position, and the defensive stance of protecting an indigenous culture she deemed to already be utopian. In an interview, Bo Bardi said of this project:
I was working on the banks of São Francisco River, in Propriá, in the Camurupim community. I saw marvellous things there, from the fishermen’s network to certain pieces of furniture that were being made, using no more than juxtaposed laths, looking like some Japanese works. This is neither handicraft nor something nostalgic, it is something of the people, an invitation to a great National uprising to research our own true necessities.
Though modest, this conception of utopia is no less radical. Rather, it transgresses the hierarchic paradigm of a patronizing imposition. Bo Bardi’s perception of Brazil, even as an Italian emigrant, is filled with admiration for the resplendent and exuberant culture. She does not seek hope in the abstract, nor in the nostalgia/novelty binary. Rather, her disposition is defensive against “sinister real-estate speculation,” homogenization, loss of “true autochthonous culture.” The utopian vision she maintains is non-teleological by design, instead aspiring to an “architecture of freedom.” This is a markedly unconventional approach to architecture with an explicit social goal, standing out particularly against the common authoritarian nature of architectural utopias—individually conceived total worlds, where every inhabitant’s social (and sometimes domestic) life is accounted for.
This urgency, this inability to wait any longer is the real basis of the work of the Brazilian artist, a reality that needs no artificial stimulus, a rich culture within reach, a unique anthropological wealth, with tragic and fundamental historical happenings. Brazil became industrialized, the new reality has to be accepted to be studied. A “return” to extinct social activities is impossible, the creation of handicraft centres, the return to craftsmanship as an antidote for an industrialization that is foreign to cultural principles of the country is wrong.
This disposition is further grounded by Bo Bardi’s mode of operation. Primarily anthropological, she spends months doing field research, implicating herself in the quotidian lives of the rural community. We can see in her drawings of the landscape the prominence of nature, and in her notes, a sense of the particularities of the people who already live here. She recorded particular things such as where they would have their meals (in the kitchen, a main room, outside), where they washed their clothes, kept food, their animals. She makes note of such sidelined domestic banalities as where the children slept—separately or with adults—little possessions like vases, flowers, and birds. Though the proposal is simple and functional, it maintains a richness in these details.
The architect is a master of life, in the modest sense of knowing, from how to cook beans, how to build a stove, how the sanitary facilities work, how they take a bath. They have the poetic dream, which is admirable, of an architecture that provides a sense of freedom.
Urban/Rural Plan
The project is organised in 400 circular plots which follow the topology of the hill and river, with a large public square at the top, created by a perimeter of public facilities for work and education. A central tension between public and private is central to the project. Neither is given more or less importance, as in projects which seek to liberate the domestic by making private life public, or in those which seek to escape public complex
ity in a self-sufficient, private sphere. Rather, a balance between these two equally valued facets of life is crucial to the planning. The circular plots serve several functions; they indicate a non-urban typology, and generate common areas between the plots which afforded de-centralized social contacts. These “terreiros” would have trees, benches, and fountains. The introduction of an urban type plan—with public facilities and infrastructure—was mediated by acknowledging and designing space for the preservation of the inhabitants’ rural activities such as cultivation of gardens and raising livestock. At the same time, relative proximity to the centre was important, as circulation was conceivably to be done on foot or by donkey. Contained within these circular plots would be both outdoor agrarian activities and rectilinear housing types.
Type Houses
Based on typical dwellings and habits in Camurupim, three type houses were designed. They all share common characteristics: a couple’s bedroom in the centre, kitchens connected to the outdoors, charcoal stoves, tables in the kitchen, central living rooms, and balconies or porches. The “type-family” consisted of two parents, five children, and one infant, though this is by no means rigid or a requirement.
Casa Tipo A is planned with an octagonal dormitory for the children, whose beds are on the perimeter, with a central living room, and the expected features of the main bedroom and washroom in the middle of the plan, and a generous kitchen with a table and a semi-outdoor stove. Casa Tipo B is quite similar, with the most private areas of the house in the middle of the plan, surrounded by more public uses such as the kitchen and porches. Casa Tipo C is a smaller square plan, similarly functional and is reminiscent of Bo Bardi’s previously designed houses in Itamambuca (1965) and the Casa Cirell (1957). This house, in particular, was conceived to be adaptable to swampy areas, as it was elevated from the ground.
Construction
The project’s commitment to its context extends to the conception of its construction. In addition to maintaining the use of local materials was the mindful decision to utilize familiar construction systems, manifest in the timber structures, mud walls, tiled or thatched straw roofs which extended over balconies, and clay floors. These processes were encouraged, organized, and facilitated by the architect: “prefabricating panels of wood…making dimensions equal, and standardizing building elements.” Local knowledge and labour were elements used by Bo Bardi in order to achieve some degree of autonomy among the inhabitants, a strategic move whose carrying out would have doubtlessly been informative to subsequent architectural projects and sociological knowledge.
All images c/o Instituto Lina Bo e PM Bardi.