The Magé's household

an architecture in eight acts

Abstract

The essay reads the metropolitan space from the daily narratives of eight black domestic workers, residents of Magé, who work in houses in the wealthy neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro. In particular, this reading allowed observation of both the infrastructural function of certain elements of architecture in the construction of this daily life – architecture functions as an ordinary device, an apparently neutral and natural background on which deep power relations inherited from the colonial period are manifested – as well as certain fundamental relationships between the memories of these women, their bodies crossing the metropolis, their desires and the history of the city where they live. The article presents these observations through eight fundamental times, extracted from the eight interviews: a common day, which, at every three hours, denounces and intertwines the bodies in the diaspora, the time that has no beginning or end, and the inherited territories.