Universitätsbibliothek
Weimar Open Access

Priscilla Nogueira

• Brazilian battlers’ housing discusses the self-production of dwellings in the circumstances of the socioeconomic rise of the so-called Brazilian new middle class, occurred on the first decade of the years 2000. Battlers are a precarious working class of about 100 million people, who have used their recently increased purchase power to informally solve their private housing demands, planning,Brazilian battlers’ housing discusses the self-production of dwellings in the circumstances of the socioeconomic rise of the so-called Brazilian new middle class, occurred on the first decade of the years 2000. Battlers are a precarious working class of about 100 million people, who have used their recently increased purchase power to informally solve their private housing demands, planning, building and renovating their homes themselves, with limited technical knowledge and almost no access to formal technicians as for example architects. The result is a mode of housing production, which spreads over the territory in micro-local self-initiatives and informal social practices of construction and management. With the support of a controversial manpower, this practice presents all sorts of technical complications, but at the same time expedient ways of affordability and creative spatial solutions for ordinary constructive problems. Such initiatives have consolidated Brazilian informal settlements and peripheral subdivisions, attending a demand poorly responded by the government. This research recognises the benefits of the self-production, but questions the conditions under which it happens and asks if it really collaborates for a true social rise of those who are engaged in it. With an empirical and qualitative approach and taking dwelling construction processes leaded by battlers as main information sources, the academic work responds if and how the socioeconomic rise of the Brazilian battlers has exactly affected the self-production of dwellings. For that, battlers’ self-production of dwellings is analysed and discussed in five main aspects: 1) acquisition of land and real state, 2) building overtime, 3) space and creative power, 4) technical complications and building materials and 5) manpower and know-how.…