The day I visited Afuá t: architecture from riparian people

by Bianca Moro de Carvalho (Brazil)

Making a local connection Brazil

The relation between dwelling in the cities and the homes of the riparian people in the forest is something that helps us understand how life in urban areas have to be in harmony with the environment. Most residents of Macapá (Capital of Amapá State , located in the very north of Brazil) have a riparian origin. They came to the city in the hope of finding fixed jobs and having access to public services such as healthcare and school for their children. Those families also bring their way of life with them: they build homes on swamp areas, reproducing a situation that is common in the whole region, but that turn the city into chaos. The life of riparian people in Afuá is very curious. It takes four hours and a half to travel by boat from the port of the City of Macapá to Afuá. The trip is quite an adventure owing to the wilderness of the Amazon River that starts with the simple task of tying a hammock, getting to the city and renting a taxi-bike, because there are no cars in Afuá. Going on foot or by taxi-bike one can get acquainted with and understand how the residents live. Even with serious basic sanitation problems, they manage to live in harmony with nature. The city is calm, simple and very colorful; there is a collective sense of organization. It is interesting to point out that its residents have esthetic concerns with their homes; the presence of communication media such as television and internet has probably influenced them with some more daring solutions. The homes are also interconnected by bridges where all streets are built from wood; some have already been replaced with concrete bridges, but generally almost everything was designed to make use of wood. The dwellers build their homes on piles to protect them against the force of the river. Public spaces such as parks and streets are suspended and therefore form a large floating city, where the use of motor vehicles is not permitted as well as the construction of concrete buildings; almost all over the city one sees constructions on piles. Pink, orange and atomic green are marked vibrant colors present in the facades of buildings. In the ornaments of the balconies, the same rule applies: a fiesta of lilac with orange and several other color combinations. The kitchen is a interesting space that shows the relationship of riparian people with the water. It included the so-called jirau structure, a place where people wash the fish before preparing it to prevent the smell from invading in the house. Most people do not know the name of the street where they live. To find a location, one has to be guided by visual signs such as: “Do you know where there is a green house with an orange roof? Near the pink house close to the blue one?” That is how people give directions. Urban infrastructure also consist of wood things spread on the bridges, where there is always a trashcan or a bench for people to sit on and look at the rivers, to experience something happening: there is always someone bathing, fishing or arriving from or going on a trip. The market area has buildings where products that are part of the meals in the region are sold: fish, lots of fruits, mainly the acai. The lack of assistance in regard to needs for human survival imposes a harsh reality on those people: moving to a capital city. In the case of Afuá, the closest capital city is Macapá. The visit to the city Afuá is a fantastic experience, because at the Amazon rain forest capital cities, when riparian people seek to reproduce their old way of life, the result is often negative. In the forest, where resources and also space are abundant, the relationship with nature is more harmonic; people take what they need to survive from nature; that is an example of sustainable life, there is certainly a big lesson that clearly translates the relationship man-nature in the forest: reconciliation.