Manchester Building

Memory and speeches in modern architecture in Joinville (SC)

Abstract

Architectural production can be a way of materializing speeches and powers in the urban fabric. In Joinville (SC), the modern architecture presented itself as an artifice to make the discourse of amplified work in the city become tangible. The decades of significant economic progress in the city converged with the decades in which buildings with a modern language were built in the central urban area. Progress, driven mainly by industrial development, generated the rise of industrial power and the business community in Joinville. The investment in a modernized image of the city demonstrated the current progress. In architecture, this vision materialized in buildings with a greater number of floors, the opening of large avenues, and the implementation of new technologies, contrasting with the urban fabric linked to the period colonial. The city was fertile ground for buildings that demarcated this sociocultural cycle. Based on the study of the Manchester Building, this text aims to understand the reflection of the city's industrialization and the nickname "city of work" in its buildings and urban organization, materializing discourses and becoming visible the memories of the period. The building marked, and still marks, the urban landscape of the city of Joinville. Its construction represents the moment of great economic expansion of the Joinville industry and its facilities were used by representatives of this growth. In the “city of work”, the Manchester Building is a concretization of this speech, symbolizing the robustness and grandeur of the image that was intended to be conveyed.