Urbanos sim, modernos talvez : notas sobre a cultura de morar em Caxias do Sul

Abstract

The history of Italian immigrants and their descendants, in Caxias do Sul and region, has been told in countless ways and from different epistemological shades. This research seeks to approach it from the point of view of the architecture of their houses and, more specifically, the culture of living. The option for this object of investigation, the house, occurs because this is a privileged place for the study of intimacy, able to expose habits and customs of its residents, revealing aspects of the local culture. The choice of the house as object of study therefore allows a double approach; one concerns the history of its inhabitants and their habits, the motto of this investigation; the other, no less important, refers to the localized and peripheral examination of Brazilian architecture, thus contributing to the apprehension and comprehension of the totality of this production. In relation to this last aspect, this text points in the opposite direction to that which reinforces a unitary view, erasing differences, exalting dominant and dominating forms and dissimulating diversity.