Casas cearenses - estudo de caso: um lugar para identidade e sustentabilidade

Abstract

Environment issues, inhabitance crisis, unsafety, violence, and lack of identity reflect the conditions of life in great city centers. As a consequence of these matters, the degradation of life quality interferes in the welfare, the satisfaction and the happiness of mankind, in the maintenance of the human specie and of other living beings. As facing this reality, the city of Fortaleza, a new Metropolis and the fourth state-capital in the country, reveals itself as an appropriate delimitated space for this research. Houses of great quality have been destroyed to give place to real estate enterprises. As the most relevant environment unit constructed, the house (single familiar dwelling) is the human product that better reflects cultural, economical and social values of the people. Besides serving as a shelter, it is the place where life is established, through activities and relations that take place in it, strongly bounded to the culture of their residents. The designation house doesn't stand just for a model. Represents the physical and tactile objects (architecture, materials, props, forms and texture), the act of dwelling, of occupying its spaces and of establishing functions, activities, habits, natural resources management and social relations. This paper aims at verifying and identifying the values of taking over the residential spaces and the construction principles that survived throughout time and stand valid for the single familiar residence, conceming the case of Fortaleza, Ceará, in order to rescue them as strategies for sustainable inhabitance projects. The main dwelling types developed in the 20th Century in Fortaleza were identified and the opinions of specialists on architectural single familiar houses production and its relation to environment and to the state culture were also undertaken. At last, four residences in over ,twenty five years were specifically analyzed, relating architectural aspects to the way of life.