Lelé in Abadiânia

Architecture, Politics and Technology

Abstract

This paper looks at architect João Filgueiras Lima's (1932-2014) time in Abadiânia-GO and discusses its implications. Although brief (1982-84), this period in Goiás State proved crucial for the architect and his career, especially for the development of industrialized production that would follow. The aim is to broaden the debate about the political, social, economic and technological purposes that surrounded Lelé at this time, showing that the Abadiânia experience was not restricted to the design and production of prefabricated prototypes for the famous Transitory Schools. The small town in Goiás was also the scene of a profound change in Lelé's way of facing the course of his own architecture and its production relations. In this context, besides convening the roles of key people for the development of the socio-political and religious project headed in the town, two works produced by the architect are investigated for their contributions to the theme: a residence and a plant nursery. Far from the modernist imaginary of total prefabrication, these works bring Lelé closer not only to the critical theory of Sérgio Ferro and the Arquitetura Nova group, but to a constructive knowledge typical of the vernacular architecture of Goiás in the 18th and 19th centuries, where, by means of a simple, collective, smaller, more artisanal and less mechanized work, the production relations on the construction site were altered in favor of a participative and emancipatory architecture.