دانلود کتاب Change (and continuity) in Domestic Space Design: a comparative study of nineteenth and early twentieth century houses in Britain and Recife, Brazil

This thesis investigates the spatial configuration of late nineteenth and early twentieth century houses in Britain and Recife, Brazil. Its underlying purpose is to verify whether the British preeminence over the country’s economical and political life of that period, a fact thought to have promoted alterations in socio-cultural modes of behaviour, has left any detectable traces in the way houses are designed to enable the realisation of those modes in space.

The central assumption of the methodology — known as space syntax —applied to this research is that cultural ideas are present in buildings as they are present in the minds of their designers and inhabitants. It follows that a study of the spatial structures of houses in Britain and Recife, a major focus of British presence in Brazil, could reveal the extent of the influence of one culture over the other, as well as contribute to further th e knowledge of the domestic architecture in both countries.

House plans designed between 1840 and 1930 in Britain are analysed and results compared with those drawn from the investigation of dwellings in Recife. These provide representative examples of the housing panorama before and after the arrival of British residents in the city.

The work attempts to show that the spatial configuration of post-colonial houses built during and immediately after the period in which the British presence in Recife was st ronger defines a theme of cultural continuity. This helps to refute the myth that these houses are testimonies of a culturally debased architectural period. It also minimises the importance of the role that the British presence in Recife might have had in reshaping cultural modes of behaviour.