Geografia, Arquitetura e Arte: as edificações de madeira como elementos da paisagem de Irati-PR – uma interpretação da obra de Primo Araújo

Abstract

This research has its focus on wooden buildings as landscape elements. Based on a phenomenological approach, it empirically refers to the urban space of the middle-sized town of Irati in Paraná State (Brazil), trying to understand the transformation of landscape from wooden buildings and investigating their relation to other landscape elements. The empirical object are five colored drawings by a local artist known as Primo Araújo, which represent landscapes as interpretative connections between geography, architecture, and art. The theoretical approach refers to geographers like Herbert Lehmann, Augustin Berque and Paul Claval. Some of the interpretative categories are: a) perspective and chromatism in the drawings, as subjective aspects of the artist’s liberty, b) the contextual elements expressed in the landscape as natural and cultural aspects selected by the artist, c) the wooden buildings and their characterization as central elements in the selected oeuvre, and d) the remnants of landscape, which are still preserved in present times. Secondary sources, like local bibliographical documents and interviews, exploratory research in loco and photographic documents intensify and triangulate the relevant information in the drawings. In can be observed that the preeminent transformations of the urban landscape of Irati are linked to the typology of the buildings and to the densification process, the latter being connected to a significant reduction of natural elements. While the streets tend to preserve, as structural lines, the continuity of the landscape for a long time, the wooden constructions of the past are increasingly substituted by brick constructions. The few remnant wooden examples turn to become an architectural heritage, though also they are threatened. Thus, conclusively, art work like that of Primo Araujo allows for an imaginative reconstruction of the landscape, as well as the continuation of imaginations in present and future generations, alongside with the possibility to study landscapes of the past.