Do arquivo técnico aos álbuns de família: o morar no Bairro do Farol na Maceió dos anos 1940 e 1950

Abstract

The study aims through the images, graphic designs and photographic records, analyze, understand and reflect on the experience of living in the neighborhood of Farol, in Maceió, in the years 1940/1950. The documental investigation of the history of the urban residential architecture of Maceió occurred through the study of the official documents, that is, the graphic designs, which were extensively explored and cataloged, totaling about 1,000 documents between the 1940s and 1950s. At the same time, the new forms of living, linked to the tradition or to the modern embryonic repertoire, were also documented through the new technological resources provided by the cameras. In the case of these sources, material produced by the amateur hands of its former residents was listed, especially in search of a focus on the experience of living, revisiting their family albums. The "house" typology was indexed in the period of consolidation and expansion of the Farol neighborhood, where the dwelling connected to the local processes of urban modernization took place. In this neighborhood, the construction of new streets in search of high and ventilated urban scenarios, obeying the mentality of the time occurs. The new way of living was established under various fields of influence, especially the bungalow which, by lighting associations with the thought and aesthetics of the picturesque or being a full sign of local modernity, exposes itself in a new interaction with the street, its passers-by, the neighborhood and the city. If the graphic design provided the research with meaningful data about the projects, its location and trajectory of occupation in the city, its authors and forms of representation, the diffusion of images of family memories, in communicational terms, gave strength not only the affective feeling particular, but linked aspects that demonstrate the bond of awareness of the value of personal history to build urban history. Unlike the drawing that conceived it, the photographic image of the house revealed more clearly the customs and habits of the inhabitants and of their time. We used the ability to combine the analysis of "informal" photography of family collections organized as personal narratives fixed in albums that have crossed generations. The photographic image, even when posed, was sometimes able to capture the ambience the architecture, surrounded by human figures, the essence that escaped from the literary description and that the technical drawing, in most cases, did not even seek to contemplate.