Arquitetura da violência: um estudo das transformações das frontarias dos lotes no conjunto habitacional Neópolis em Natal/RN

Abstract

This study demonstrates an urban process that, although in a different way, has always existed in cities, nevertheless, currently it has been presented in an expressive way in places that suffer from the problems of urban violence. According to data on violence, Natal/RN is part of the group of cities in which crime and violence increase, allied to urban growth and the lack of effective public policies in the field of security. In this process, fear and the feeling of insecurity have materialized in current architecture, being named, among other concepts, as the Architecture of Violence, a new functional and formal pattern that has “redesigned” the city's architectural form. The objective of this work is to demonstrate how residential architecture, based on the analysis of the facade of residential lots in the neighborhood of Neópolis, was constituted over time, in an architectural typology of violence. The choice of the studied neighborhood was made due to the growth of crime rates linked, specifically, to the category Violent Crimes against Patrimony - CVPAT, over ten years. For each front of the lot, a form was filled out about the architectural changes and the safety measures used (security system, wall typology and visual permeability), which allowed to quantify and qualify such data from a diachronic study between the year 2011 and 2020. It is observed that Natal is also being modified within the perspective of the architecture of violence and, consequently, the residential architecture, which prioritizes self-protection in relation to the dangers of violent crimes on the streets to the detriment of the concept of housing and its relationship with the city thus produces a functional and formal pattern that grows not only in Natal, but in most Brazilian cities that suffer from growing urban insecurity. The immediate consequence of this is a population that has become isolated and that, increasingly, produces and reinforces a "common" fear in which architecture turns exclusively behind walls full of defensive strategies, but which, in practice, make a self-confinement and imprisonment of the residents.