In this essay, the architect and visual artist Sérgio Ferro outlines the first part of his theory about the contradiction that exists between an architectural drawing and a jobsite. Approaching the subject from a Marxist perspective, he discusses “the manufacturing process that produces architectural objects.” He shows that the term “merchandise” (as used by Marx) cannot be applied to architecture because the production process in this case is not constant. Ferro claims that the collective work performed (the project) originates outside; the means of production are also outside, which negates any possibility of being a “product.” His objective is therefore to define “the form of the merchandise,” arguing that drawing is a core part of the process, although separate from it. Drawing is what creates form, which works as an open channel since it must communicate as clearly as possible to those responsible for the construction. Ferro goes on to discuss onsite production (commenting on both its exploratory and alienating aspects). At the end of his essay, he criticizes Le Corbusier’s “Fordism” (industrial mass production), and looks ahead to a more humane time when architecture will be a more “organic” part of both the design and the construction of the project.        

Architect and visual artist Sérgio Ferro (b. 1938) graduated while Brasilia was under construction (1956–61); he worked for the architect Francisco Vilanova Artigas (in São Paulo), who was also his teacher, as was Flávio Motta. Ferro, Rodrigo Lefèvre (another architect), and the set designer Flávio Império started the group Nova Arquitetura. Ferro was a fierce critic of the profession, of its medium (drawing), and of what it produced. While still a student, he proposed discussing class struggle and the desirability of creating an alliance between construction workers and architectural draftsmen to generate an alternative aesthetic based on “a poetics of the economy” that would address truly national problems. This article shows that Ferro’s writing was influenced by leftist pro-labor French intellectuals, German artists from the so-called “Frankfurt School,” and Freudian psychoanalysis. His goal is to develop a critical theory with which to correct the flaws in architectural aesthetics and the production system. Both Ferro and Lefèvre had to get out of Brazil during the military dictatorship (1964–85); Ferro became a professor of architecture at the Université de Grenoble (France) in 1972; Lefèvre met a tragic death on a construction site in Guinea-Bissau in the mid-1980s. 

Described by Pedro Arantes as part of his thesis (published in two parts in 1976), this article, “A forma da arquitetura e o desenho da mercadoria” [The Form of Architecture and of the Drawing of the Merchandise] appeared in Almanaque: cadernos de literatura e ensaio, no. 2 (São Paulo: Editora Brasiliense, 1976), and in the third issue of “O desenho.” 

[As complementary, reading see the following articles by the author in the ICAA digital archive: “Arquitetura nova” (doc. no. 1111153); “Os limites da denúncia” (doc. no. 771159); “Pintura nova” (doc. no. 1090696); and “Vale tudo” (doc. no. 1090648)].