Experience on the Altiplano: Flávio de Carvalho and the South American naked civilization

Abstract

This article revisits some investigative experiences of the Brazilian Architect and Artist Flávio de Carvalho concerning man and the city in America, to recover his critical perspective on the canons of modern urbanism. By articulating anthropophagic assumptions within the field of urbanism, Flávio de Carvalho questioned the universalistic nature of technique in order to subvert notions of progress and civilization serving colonial and colonialist projects. The analysis of a trajectory of reflections, highlighted by the texts A Cidade do Homem Nu [The City of the Naked Man] (1930); A Casa do Homem Americano [The House of the American Man] (1947) and Meditações na Cordilheira [Meditations on the Cordillera], (1947), allows emphasizing the operation of displacing narratives and histories considered marginal to the forefront of the modern debate on cities. The reading of these urban proposals and political projects is supported by recent studies that link the decolonial debate to the disciplinary field of urbanism from a Latin American perspective. The argument is made about how the anthropophagic project for an urban-laboratory based on unconditional urban freedom developed by Flávio de Carvalho is grounded in studies of the history, social, and urban organization of pre-Columbian societies in the Andean Altiplano. Thus, the aim is to highlight other developments and legacies of modern urbanism and their potential to decentralize narratives of urban history.