When it comes to architecture, scale is inevitably mentioned for graphic and two-dimensional representation of the built area, land size, and city extension. Architecture is a grand discipline with robust constructions and large areas, but the field of action is vast, encompassing "smaller" scales: essential housing, restricted land, and small cities.
The small city of Caruaru in Pernambuco hosts Jirau. Operating since 2010 and directed by Bernardo Lopes and Paulo Patriota, the office creates original architecture in a restricted context. It is a design thought that alternates and relates scales understood as opposites. This results in an architecture different from that conveyed and disseminated and a broader formal repertoire.
Despite the small scale of its headquarters city, its projects are large. Jirau's approach to each project focuses less on total square footage and more on subverting repeated precepts that are rarely thought of in another way. Social housing expands from vertical buildings to neighboring housing developments; standardized houses with gable roofs give way to pure forms with a contemporary feel; commercial buildings completely divided into small rooms become free floors.
Jirau's region also imposes restrictions: informality prevails, and technological resources are limited. As Mies van der Rohe once said, "less is more," and in the case of Jirau, "doing more with less" is both an attitude towards practice - in the context of social housing construction - and proof of the Miesian maxim.
The website's description states that small interventions build the city. In addition to reinforcing the idea of a network of relationships that form and radiate their consequences (thus expanding the scale), this idea reflects the design approach of altering certain aspects of construction programs in a way that keeps creation ongoing, increasing the scale of architectural work in terms of repertoire, solutions, and built examples.
Jirau's activities have a relevant impact on contemporary architecture. The origin is in a small city. The performance is on a large scale. Caruaru's small scale magnifies Jirau's architecture practice (and results). The projects demonstrate the office's approach. Check them out:
Habitação Social Wirton Lira
Architect's House
Novo Jardim Social Housing
Casa Neblina
Residencial Clodoaldo Sampaio
Edifício Agamenon Empresarial
Copa House
