Architecture for culture: urban culture and cultural facilities in Brazil and Latin America

Abstract

This research project intends to constitute an unprecedented contribution to the study of the production of cultural equipment in Latin America. Understood as a second stage of a project developed by the researcher since his post-doctorate, it intends to build an analytical-critical panorama that relates the characteristics of cultural facilities (institutional nature, type of collection, nature of property) and their architecture (authorship, scale, type of intervention, aesthetic, symbolic and technical attributes) with questions of socioeconomic motivation (distribution in the territory of cities and countries, ratio of equipment per number of inhabitants, social scope of equipment, maintenance and financing) and policy (motivation of construction or project, insertion in more comprehensive urban programs, and tourism projects). The proposal is based on the need for analysis and assessment of Brazilian and Latin American architecture produced from the 1980s onwards, as well as on the identification of the thought and the sociocultural conditions that underlie it. As contributions to the field of architectural theory, the project offers a historiographical approach (taking an inventory of recent architecture), and another critical approach (developing a conceptual instrument for its valuation). The dissemination of the research results will be done through publications and participation in academic events and lectures in undergraduate and graduate courses, in universities in Brazil and abroad, and the free availability of the studied material on a website. (AU)