“Tá aí uma coisa com a qual nunca me preocupei”: a arquitetura moderna de Teresina-PI por Araujo e Caddah

Abstract

Telling the city's history is also bringing out the story[s] from the people. They are the ones who create, dream, modify, relate to and compose the landscape in the incessant activity of dwelling, either through matter or through memory. It is through this discourse that this dissertation addresses part of the urban context of Teresina, capital of Piauí, more specifically the modern architectural trajectory from the discourse of two professionals who performed the city through clubs, residences, public buildings, commercial points, churches and even schools: Antonio Luiz Dutra de Araujo (1935) and Miguel Dib Caddah (1936), paying attention to the role of the architect as a fundamental part in the construction of the urban web. Because they left their legacies in the fabric of the city, I turned to orality as a legitimate source of research, investigating their narratives by listening to stories about the city through the experience of filtering their perspectives. In addition, based on the fieldwork guided by the discourse, I [re]cognized the works presented, using authorial photographs, produced in loco, as an essential tool to aid in the process of appropriating the built volume, recording and reporting the impressions that Modern Architecture of Teresina (AMT) carries and transmits, as a way of collaborating to activate the built memory and its architects and, with that, contribute to the expansion of local history. In view of this, it is demonstrated that, for affective or pragmatic reasons, the narratives of Araujo and Caddah dialogue with the potentiality of orality by revealing their own trajectories, making it possible to contemplate part of the modern architectural history of Teresina through the voices of the architects, evidencing the role of these two professionals in the discourse and understanding of modernity in Teresina and of the city in general.