"The sky is the limit...". Self-construction as an open work.
Housing; Self-construction processes; Diagrams; Open Works;
Self-construction is a fact in Brazilian territory, a fact of oceanic dimensions. People self-build
their houses based on conditions that they lived, were imposed and/or chosen often without
the participation of an architect. The ways of doing and their processes are still poorly
understood and this incomprehension makes it harder to establish the urban architects’
knowledge more successfully, especially in technical assistance experiences. This thesis
considers that these self-construction processes are crossed by a ‘different logic of doing’,
since the life’s conditions are different in relation to the ones considered to form the logic
present in architectural ways of doing. It argues that self-construction is an open work within
its condition of economic scarcity. It seeks to demonstrate that self-construction is open to
multiple diagrams. Understanding diagrams as an exhibition of forces relations, a concept
developed by Giles Deleuse. The built reflection indicates a way to understand the process’
logic of those who self-builds. It is understood that forces, based on the consensus of
macropolitics, go through the individuals and/or the collective of individuals who self-build,
and the relations between these forces can be explained by multiple diagrams, because also
multiple are the forces that go through a condition of life. Eight self-built houses are updated
in two stages, first in 2006, during a technical assistance experience, and later in 2014, at the
time of the doctoral research, both trajectories done with the author’s self-construction. From
the crossing of the chosen Seeds with the delimited Field, it comes the Fruits. Three diagrams
that expose the forces’ densities and characterize the life’s conditions of the people in the
eight self-built houses are elaborated: an economic diagram, a soil/ground diagram and a
knowledge diagram. Reflecting about the association of these forces’ relations on the eight
self-built residences, three conceptual diagrams are pointed: Patience diagram, Frida diagram
and Dream diagram, which indicate processes of subjectivity, opening up self-construction
and the people conducting it for the study of micro-politics.
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