Editorial | Places of Living: Revisited
Abstract
The theme "Places of Living: Revisited" of this 5th issue of V!RUS has attracted 23 submissions from which we are publishing 12: ten of them in the Submitted Papers section and the two other in the Project section. We understand these contributions as an expression of recognition of the journal by academic peers, from different knowledge areas and countries, which have demonstrated willingness to take part in the thematic discussions proposed by Nomads.usp - the Center for Interactive Living Studies, through V!RUS. Counting with these voices in this conversation, which we want increasingly wider and diverse, means, for us, a great honor and an incentive to continue on this process.
THEME This VIRUS' issue proposes to revisit the subject that originated Nomads.usp. Under the name of Center for Habitation and Ways of Living Studies, the group was created in 2000 around the interest for studying the evolution of family and of social structures, relating it to the evolution of living spaces' design. Eleven years later, we understand that living takes place not only within the habitation building, neither just in the physical realm of architectural space, but in a conceptually wide place, defined not only - nor always - by a project and its realization, but through habits, communication processes, experiences, interactions, conflicts, aspirations, along with commercial, political, economic interests among many others. We hope that revisiting such places of living through the rich dialogue offered by the collaborators of this issue of V!RUS could help expanding and complexizing the vision we have of our home.
INVITED PAPERS To delimit this discussion, we invited the psychologist and sociologist Monique Eleb and the architect and PhD in Philosophy Silke Kapp, who are posing key questions: Eleb retrieves the construction of the thought that combines habitation and lifestyles in France, that served as guide for many researchers in the world, including Nomads.usp, and of which she is one of the major experts. Kapp chooses concepts constructed in the field of philosophy as a starting point to question the production of everyday spaces of living. INTERVIEW A third guest, the communicologist and Ph.D. in Communications Ivana Bentes, presents another reading of places of living in the cities as conflict and claims spaces, including and frequently within social networking on Internet.
REVIEW We also invite the architect and PhD in Architecture Givaldo Medeiros to share a reading of recent projects of Brazilian houses, reviewing postures present in our modern architecture.
SUBMITTED PAPERS Among the researchers who submitted papers related to this subject, some are situated closer to Eleb's concerns, others are closer to the posture suggested by Kapp or to the questions outlined by Bentes, while others focus on the design thought, as Medeiros. In the first case are the Portuguese sociologist Sandra Pereira, who presents a study putting in relation apartments in today's Lisbon and ways of living; the French urbanist Mathieu Perrin, suggesting relations between the process of redemocratization of some societies and the consolidation of their gated communities; and the architects Luis Amorim, Cristina Griz and Claudia Loureiro, who present a study of apartments in the city of Recife as a real estate product and its relationship with ways of living.
In the second case, two submitted papers seek concepts in the humanities to help them building the sense of inhabiting. The architect and PhD in Education Rodrigo Gonçalves dos Santos uses the key of phenomenology to penetrate the space we inhabit; the Spanish architect Simona Pecoraio reads this space through a tripod formed by the theoretical concepts of dwellings, co-dwellings and undwellings.
Three are the papers working close to the issues addressed by Ivana Bentes in her interview. The space of living is perceived as an object of political demand in the text of the German architect and PhD in Arts Ursula Kirschner, who shares the concepts guiding the project More Altona, which involves the community of that district in the city of Hamburg. The Portuguese architect Daniel Lobo discusses on public spheres of living biased by people participation through two artistic projects, one in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and the other one in Karachi, Pakistan. The concepts of access and property are reviewed in the article of Germans Tom Bieling, designer, and Marc Bieling, economist, searching to understand the diverse interests that interact in the shaping of urban scenes, from a design viewpoint.
Finally, with the same clearly design concern of Medeiros, two papers address quite different issues. The architect and PhD in Information Technology and City History José Kós and the architect and PhD in Housing Themis Fagundes discuss the idea of environmental sustainability in applications of automation and information systems to housing projects, by evaluating entries presented at the Solar Decathlon program. In turn, the architect and PhD in Architecture Lara Barbosa discusses possibilities in architecture and design to conceive temporary shelters in disaster areas, focusing on a Brazilian case.
CARPET In the Carpet section, where invited researchers propose varied approaches to the central theme, in short, free-format texts, the places of living are perceived from different viewpoints, from multiple disciplines. Comming close to the discussion proposed by Eleb, the MSc. in History and Administration Maxime Barkatz makes the reading of the real estate production of housing, on an international basis, from his experience in France and Morocco. In the other hand, three texts track the path suggested by Kapp. The philosopher and PhD in Philosophy Marcia Tiburi takes us on an exciting diving in the tenuous zone where the words dwell and differences dialogue or mute; the psychologist and PhD in Psychology Maria Inês Assumpção Fernandes reflects on the meaning of living in psychiatric patients taken to live in conventional houses; and the philosopher and PhD in Philosophy Ruy Sardinha searches, from the heideggerian perspective of dwelling, to read recent public actions of living spaces production. In the perspective outlined by Bentes, the French filmmaker Odile Fillion, in a sensitive and attentive photo essay, recalls her visit to the Prestes Maia building, in São Paulo, during its occupation by social movements for housing. The artist and PhD in Arts Fábio Fon and the artist Soraya Braz comment the overlap between the public and private realms through their project Captas, which proposes a critique of cell phones use in public spaces. And the architect Fernando Maculan, the communicologists Alessandra Maria Soares and Cláudio Santos and the audio-visual director André Amparo propose relations among the city and its residents through the project AEurásia.
PROJECT Two housing projects are presented in this section, both exploring the idea of flexibility. The social housing proposed by the architect and PhD in Architecture Edson Mahfuz prioritizes evolutionary flexibility, able to absorb family changes during its life cycle, over the years. In the metropolitan apartment by the architect and MSc. in Architecture Guto Requena, flexibility is daily, constant, and must allow space suitability to different uses over a single day.
NOMADS PAPER At last, exposing an overview developed in a Nomads.usp's research work, the architect and MSc. in Architecture Felipe Anitelli and the Full Professor in Architecture Marcelo Tramontano seek contributing to explain the standardization reahed in São Paulo's apartment projects through an examination of the National Housing Bank BNH's action as funder of private enterprises in the city between 1964 and 1986.
We hope this mosaic, composed by such a rich and dense material, may fuel the debate about the nature and the design of the several places in which are effected so many ways of living in our days, inspiring and encouraging us to become, all of us and increasingly, propositional.
