Advisor: Fernando Betim
Co-advisor: Felipe Süssekind Viveiros de Castro
Dissertation: Processes of weaving bodies: a search for understanding the Mebengokre (kayapo) houses
Defense date: 13/06/2017
Abstract
The present dissertation aims a cosmological and constructive investigation
of the kayapo housing. A subject which will treat the problem occurred after an
interethnic construction project on a Kayapó territory. Based on the study of this
special case, and its objective to build a house, it will be observed the encounter of
architecture, the “White one” and the “Mebengorke one”, in search of what it
would be the Kayapo architectural process. Thus, based on cross-information
obtained in Architecture and Anthropology bibliography, I intend to make
comprehensible this type of habitation as a result of constructing as well as daily
practices, which concern values and perceptions attached to the above-mentioned
civilization. Beforehand occurrences hat will provide this dissertation as a
guideline to this type of houses as a “third skin”, an inhabitable structure, a body
built by its inhabitants. The goal of this dissertation, therefore, is to demonstrate
the process of execution of the kikre – kayapo houses – and the living together in
their interior, underlining the importance of approaching Architecture and
Anthropology, as well as to develop considerations from the architectural point of
view about the indigenous construction and the effects of the historical encounters
between the national society and the Indian communities.