Madeiras horizontais

The exploration of the Araucária (araucaria angustifolia), a tree commonly found in vast regions from Southern Minas Gerais to Northern Rio Grande do Sul, determined a particular economical cycle that goes from the 1900s to the 1950s. It also determined a typical construction style: the house made of Araucária. These two observations are extrapolated from traditional historiography, which nostalgically associate this architecture to regionally dominant ethnic groups. This study focuses on a group of buildings produced at the beginning of the 20th Century in the states of Paraná and Santa Catarina. Although these constructions are recognized as historical heritage, they are understood as exceptional, unique, and isolated events. These buildings are entirely made of lumber - signaling the transformation of nature through an industrial process. This study exams key questions regarding architecture’s modernity discourse: the rational and systematized use of raw materials and construction methods, the design as an expression of logical production rather than a historical tool, and the technique itself as ethics. Property owner’s economic and social class contradicts prevalent practice and academic tradition. A new order of taste, comfort and modernity is established. Contrary to the traditional house made of Araucária, which has its enclosed structure and edges of constructed volume built with vertical boards and beams, the buildings studied here have horizontal boards only as an exterior wall. The building’s structure (balloon-frame) is located in between the exterior and the interior walls. This style of construction is characteristic of the North American industrial process, which united sawmills and railroads during its colonization period. The buildings studied here, those with horizontal boards - directly associated with the “sawmill owners,” and those with vertical boards - used by sawmill workers, or used as warehouses and commercial buildings, share a common origin: the industrial process of wood exploration developed in North America during the 19th Century. Other characteristics that unite these buildings and put them in the historiographic process of modern architecture construction are: rationalization of construction; coherent use of form, method, and material; capacity of replication and patronization; suppression of ornaments; and valorization of technology.