Discursive reading in architectural writing models with socio-visual hegemony for an approximation of the functionalist imaginary (1914-1930)

Abstract

This research puts into dialogue the concept of socio-visual hegemony in the materiality constructed of historical objects such as writing models on architectural facades, as well as the functionalism of the Bahausian paradigm questioned by its elements and its relationship-function in the materialized and dynamic structure, contradictory and historically conflictive of the social whole. The functionalist reading in the writing models suggested that they are not essential for a building and that, structurally, they were considered for an internal differentiation and systematic articulation as an alternative in that social reality. The writing models in architecture as materialized means of social practice, with the use of elementary materials in an urban space and hegemonic complex symbolic operators. Each symbolic representation, shaped letter, allows readability with differential discursive parameters from socio-visual hegemony as a conjugation of forces through a multiplicity of differential transformations-accumulations materialized at a given moment. The initial method was oriented with the identification of 49 objects of the functionalist delimited period and their exploration from the look of the design in a descriptive and interpretive way; setting specific areas of inquiry from the review of historical documentation to the exploration of cultural and ethnographic aspects. This study achieves a clear approximation between the concept of social-visual hegemony in writing models and the reconsideration of architectural social functionalism.