HEIndividual fellowship2024–2026

WBB · Women Building Brazil: a history of architecture from the perspective of self-building sites.

Horizon Europe — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration: 2024-09-01 → 2026-08-31
EU contribution: €191,760
Participants: 2
Scheme: HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF

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Results in brief

Women Building Brazil: a history of architecture from the perspective of self-building sites.

Women Building Brazil (WBB) sought to underscore women’s contributions to Brazilian built environment, focusing on contexts of self-building. Its main objective was to ethically address the neglect of both women and informal building practices in architectural and construction history, especially in the global South. This neglect was initially identified as a result of the patriarchal and colonial roots of architecture as a formal profession and discipline. The project thus argued for the expansion of our disciplinary scope to investigate diverse contexts through a gendered perspective, employing a novel method that combined oral history with disruptive archival research methods, and community-based participatory practices, guided by feminist and decolonial principles. Research took place in three diverse communities: quilombos (afro-Brazilian maroon communities), indigenous territories and informal urban settlements. These territories were chosen with the intention of bringing range to the definitions of self-built architectures, and to the analysis of diverse socio-technical and spatial transformations, not only in terms of building techniques, but especially in terms of varied socio-spatial arrangements. The main scientific objectives of the project were divided into three general actions: (1) recover; (2) analyse; (3) acknowledge women’s longstanding construction know-how. Two objectives (recover & analyse) relied in data collection for: (A) the characterization of women’s involvement in different contexts of self-built architectures historically and today; (B) the analysis of how specific socio-technical and spatial dynamics interfere in their participation; and (C) the understanding of how any observed loss of construction know-how affects women’s autonomy to make decisions about their built-environment. The last objective (acknowledge) employed community-based participatory research to (D) address women’s exclusion along a probable loss of know-how.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

Women Building Brazil (WBB) seeks to underscore women’s contributions to architecture and construction in Brazil, particularly in contexts of self-building. Its main objective is to address the neglect of both women and informal building practices in architectural and construction history, especially in the global South. The project will tackle that double historical gap by gathering personal stories and documentation on women builders. Its premise is that women’s involvement in self-construction was actually quite common in vernacular architecture but has been affected by the introduction of new building technologies and materials. Expanding our disciplinary scope to include vernacular contexts, WBB employs a novel method combining oral history with disruptive archival research methods and community-based participatory practices, guided by feminist and decolonial principles. This approach will be applied in three territories in Brazil where self-building remains a prevalent custom: quilombos (afro-Brazilian maroon communities), indigenous territories and favelas (urban informal settlements). These distinct settings offer new insights to help recover, analyse, and acknowledge women’s construction know-how. The outcomes of WBB include an oral history archive and a public video collection. The participatory process will also generate a memory artefact, co-created with interviewed women with the purpose of recognizing their expertise and strengthening their building autonomy. In summary, WBB offers a new methodological approach to a growing field of construction history and a gendered analysis that contributes to the broader discipline of architectural history. It maintains a commitment to open science through its research methodology and participatory practices, ensuing constant dissemination of its results. Most importantly, WBB actively seeks ways of empowering women in construction, giving them voice and reaffirming the relevance of their know-how.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

UNIVERSITEIT ANTWERPEN · AntwerpenCoordinatorBelgium
UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DA BAHIA · SalvadorBrazil

WBB · Women Building Brazil: a history of architecture from the perspective of self-building sites.

Results in brief

Women Building Brazil: a history of architecture from the perspective of self-building sites.

Project objective

Participants

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