João de Barro: a arquitetura da necessidade

Abstract

This essay seeks to understand how self-taught constructions are carried out, focusing at the present time. Those expressions are developed without technical apparatus and specialty, however they’re stimulated by the need to 'inhabit'. The analysis of these self-constructions on the countryside of Alagoas reflects part of what the current Brazilian architecture is and how it manifests itself. In resume, the idea is to present the reality of a population who is not served by the civil construction technical service, due to many factors, more especially to the financial one; the neglect and unpreparedness that the public sector still faces in relation to urban planning; and the intimate relationship that occurs between builder and building on this process of creation. Therefore, focusing at an expansion zone in a city in the interior of Alagoas, the paper proposes an analysis, in a deep and intimate way, of the construction techniques, the architectural composition and the layout of interiors that are part of this almost forgotten architecture. Through this process of discovery and outlook, the objective is to reflect more clearly the social role of the architect and urban planner nowadays and to question how self-construction is seen before society, prohibited, but sovereign in numbers in Brazil.