The affective dimension of architecture: looking at the domestic space through the eyes of poetry

Abstract

This paper looks at images of the dwelling space through the poetry in Brazil, suggesting a unique time period: from Luis Guimarães Junior's parnasianismo to Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Manoel Bandeira, and Cecília Meireles's modernism, to the contemporaneity found in the Adélia Prado, Ferreira Gullar, and Manoel de Barros. The possibility of analyzing architecture through the eyes of poetry reopens the possibility of using aesthetics and imagination to discuss wisdom, build identities, and (re)configure the distance relation between the observer and the art object. Through poetry it is possible to find a dimension that is full of emotion and sensibility. Full of affection, architecture is a poetic ground. It is as permanent as the concrete and material nature of the physical space and its measurable and physical characteristics. The universes of poetry and architecture are available to the readers just as easily. This reading is extremely important if we consider today's need to situate ourselves as subjects in history before an artistic output in a globalized, yet not universal, world.