?
How to build hope in the subjectively bankrupt ?
What resources would restore the financially drained?
How to interpret chance?
How to interact with it?
How to design, from individual dreams, a collective delirium?
How to see, in the physical ruin, a subjective palace?
How can construction lead to other artistic processes?
How to build with habit?
How to design in physical, material, programatic and cronological uncertainty
How can design be a compass, and not a fate?
How to draw what can be done?
How to build an impossibility?
How to see in the floor a door, in the door a window and in the window a floor?
How to reinvent banality
How to learn and teach trough making?
How to make of the house a document of futures that will never happen?
Mouraria 53 is an experiment in architecture and inhabitating Exchange starts intervention. Through four years, property-owners lend the ruin to a group in promise of receiving it at a better state in the return. They put $9.000 in the idea, an insufficient value if considered in formal practices of refurbishment. The ‘house’ was abandoned since at least 10 years. In order to make compatible the house that would be returned (an expectation of ‘dull’ spaces for rental ) and the house which would render the dreams of our team into (infinitely specific) spaces, two designs are simultaneously made: project ‘USE’ and project ‘RENT’. As time is short, construction runs parallel with design. House is built for the necessity of building, there is no initial objective to the house beyond it’s own construction. Construction happens in collective with unskilled people. Motivation occurs through possible trade-offs with the house; musicians see a possible space for concerts, psychologists a consulting room, sociologists an uncanny ‘community’ to study, university teachers a construction school... Each possible program informs project ‘USE’, altering spaces and designs. The house becomes an experiment in density and agreement between different uses. The nature of the workers informs a kind of detail and aesthetics. Design is understood and built through orality. Drawing is constant in parts of the collective, but communication is rarely
graphic. A materials network is built through social media and contact with architects. These are joined to a methodology of ‘deconstruction’ – instead of demolition. Materials align to design in a paranoiac manner; everything we have achieves the quality of everything we need. What lacks in experience is overcome by the network; teachers from the university act as consultants in the experiment, even if it occasionally contrasts their opinions. The house is aware of normative standards but experiments beyond its regulations. All attempts to predict time failed by the impossibility of predicting the amount of voluntary work, the productivity of unskilled workers, the speed in experimental processes and the revelations of a house with unknown structure-infrastructure. Throughout the first two years, experiments in use takes place in what is, objectively, a ruin. The nature of found materials, in a city where recycling barely exists, points to a construction which is experimental, but nevertheless also ‘traditional’ in a way; the intervention in the house is not ‘scenic’ – a common feature in most artistic occupations of ruins. Wood is the material which conceptually represents the house. Its ability to re-adapt, while keeping memory of an old space makes
it ideal. In a house where the ‘new’ is built with the old, intervention and preexistence blend – everything is read as a continuous process. When breaking the walls, signs of older transformations are found – the ‘first’ document is actually a refurbishment plan from the 1930’s – without clear beginning or ends spaces are perceived as constant metamorphosis Available money is mostly spent in transportation and workforce. Traditional workers become teachers to the collective; the manner of building and thinking from those masters incorporated to the project. The house – as an object – is not the precise execution of a set of drawings, but a palimpsest of multiple projects, materials, conversations and dreams (project ‘USE’ has about 30 autocad revisions). The spaces, alignments and objects in the house are keys to understanding a process of continuous change. It is building not as an architect, but as a game of chess; a tactical architecture in the sense that each act is an interpretation of the immediately previous moment of the house and its inhabitants – a garden of forking paths. New construction suggests future interpretation, new inhabitants suggest different uses, different uses suggest new construction. The house is ran by a collective: photographers, architects (with parallel activity in woodworking, visual arts and design), a sociologist, producers and a lawyer. The unity of the group isn’t based on
common goals or previous friendships, but the sole act of making the house. Throughout the years, people came close or drove apart from the project - current formation reflects the act of collective building up to this point As the Great Wall of China, which is said to have been built in small, but complete, parts. We build the house – not as a whole – but in a series of poetic acts 09/02/2019.
Mouraria 53 is composed by: Alan dos Anjos Dário Sales Junior Fernando Gomes Filipe Duarte Iago Lobo Júlia Bittencourt Pedro Alban Rodrigo Sena Previous people in the collective were: Ivan Depasiri Davi Fernandes Pedro Teixera 53mouraria@gmail.com @53mouraria