IN-PERSON: Prague – Section B

Abstract

In the western culture, building can be understood as a way to survive life’s ephemerality; in this sense, it leads to an idea of being alive beyond a lifetime. If we place this issue in the urban context, we can see how it reaches the public sphere through the relation between collective memory and built form. Once the built form exists, it can give the materiality to memories for being used as a tool to support collective identity. In this regard, this paper focuses on urban industrial buildings suppressions due to imperative actions, which are based on economic and technological issues. As a result, it imposes a break between collective identity and urban built forms, since the removal of industrial buildings perhaps ignores its social contents. More specifically, this work investigates the demolition of an industrial building located in Curitiba – Brazil: it is a particular situation because the referred building sheltered an erva-mate’s (a local cultural product) factory. Furthermore, this ancient industry was replaced by a huge religious building, which led to a drastic transformation of the urban form and a radical disfigurement of the local surrounding. On the other hand, an important contradiction brought by this situation is the fact that it is located in Curitiba – a city internationally known for its successful urban planning and that made the preservation of the urban history one of its most significant flags. So, we ask: what are the intentionalities of the powerful urban agents and what memories their actions delete?