Territories of Ambivalence: Architecture and Dictatorship in 1970s Brazil

Victor Próspero, Princeton-Mellon Fellow
Miqueias Mugge, Brazil Lab

Brazil lived under a far-right military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985. This regime was deeply
entangled with the construction industry, which was the basis of the so-called “Brazilian
miracle” from 1968 to 1973: an economic boom based on authoritarianism and infrastructure
developments throughout the national territory. The making of new infrastructures connecting
the country and radically transforming its landscapes—with intense environmental impacts—was
one of the major objects of the regime’s propaganda. Some highlights were the dictatorship’s
discourse on fostering the Amazon “colonization” through its new roadways, or the advanced
concrete technology used in cases such as the Rio-Niteroi bridge and the São Paulo elevated
subway stations. This presentation will reflect on how the local architectural field (despite
political orientation) was deeply entangled in the regime’s functioning. Its active participation in
the making of a new built environment across the country is a revealing meeting point of
antagonist political spectrums through modernization epistemologies. Moreover, the regime’s
territorial planning and radical landscape interventions served as a reference for the architects’
imaginaries of “building territory,” constituting a central aspect of tension and ambivalence in
the field’s political and disciplinary culture.
 

Special funding for this session is provided by Brazil Lab and the Program in Latin American Studies.  

The Fall 2024 Mellon Forum on the Urban Environment is kindly sponsored by the Mellon Foundation and African Studies, Anthropology, Art & Archaeology, Brazil Lab, Center for Collaborative History, Chadha Global India Center, Effron Center for American Studies, English, French & Italian, High Meadows Environmental Institute, Humanities Council, PIIRS, Program in Latin American Studies, Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, and the School of Architecture.

Mellon Forum events are free and open to the public. Lunch is provided while supplies last.