Concrete Answers

A moon size lump of hard matter hovers in the stratosphere. Without warning it explodes and sends  countless shards of reinforced concrete hurtling to earth where they embed themselves in random distribution patterns governed by the slippery movements of the real estate market. For the uninitiated, a walk through any large Brasilian city can be highly disorientating. Incomprehensible planning decisions, colliding buildings, and chaotic assemblages of residential towers contribute to a visual cacophony that seems to defy logic. Yet despite the superficial diversity, almost all tall buildings are constructed using cast in-situ concrete, whilst housing on the periphery is universally built out of hollow terracotta bricks. Construction details are replicated from one site to another, and all buildings regardless of their location use factory produced components such as precast concrete floor planks, tiles, and window frames. In this sense it is a built landscape that is clearly the result of industrialised processes. However, in neither the city centre nor on the periphery will you see the widespread use of prefabricated building systems of the type found in most European cities. In the aftermath of the second world war in Europe, the transition to factory-based pre-fabrication was considered the only viable solution to resolving the twin effects of urban destruction and the appalling living conditions of much of the working class. Experiments took place in the production of modular steel, aluminium, and timber kit houses, but there was to be only one victor, and that was concrete.  The transformation of urban skylines was dramatic, as were changes in the building labour process. In societies such as the old Soviet Union where the State played a central role in the production of housing, the technological basis of the construction industry was totally transformed. Construction workers were retrained as fitters, assemblers, and factory operatives, and by 1990, over eighty five percent of all new buildings in Moscow were constructed using prefabricated concrete panels. The situation in Brasil was, and remains, very different. With little direct State regulation, the building industry is dominated by capitalist contractors who are largely disinterested in addressing issues of urban poverty. With a vast reserve army of low paid often unqualified building workers at their disposal, there is little financial incentive for them to invest capital in the development of new technologies capable of pre-fabricating housing on a large scale. Moreover, in terms of the reproduction of capital and the maintenance of the rate of profit, it is essential that certain sectors of the economy remain labour intensive. The construction industry fulfils this role, and as long as this remains the case, it is difficult to imagine any long-term and pervasive improvement in the housing conditions of the Brasilian working class.