Arquitetura vernácula e popular: a taipa de mão no semiárido sergipano

Abstract

The use of earth as a building material has been notorious since the beginning of the Brazilian territory’s settlement. Until this day, houses built with wattle and daub are frequent in the Northeast region of the country. This technique, mainly used in popular buildings, uses a structural cage made of the weft of woods whose interlocking voids are covered with thrown wet clay. Due to the current association of these buildings as shelters for insects that may contain the protozoan causing Chagas disease, – Trypanosoma cruzi – numerous public policies guide the eradication and replacement of these buildings by others built in masonry. Due to the destruction of these buildings, representatives of vernacular architecture, this research aims to survey those that still resist in the semiarid region of Sergipe state. Therefore, a literature review on architecture in the semi-arid and building mapping techniques using digital tools was performed. Considering the Sars-Cov-2 pandemic as a prohibitive condition that caused difficulties in data collection in the field, it was necessary to seek out methods that could be used for a remote survey. Furthermore, an exploratory analysis was carried out with digitally available tools, in which it was possible to observe popular buildings built with earth in the legal semi-arid region. Initially, data were collected from the last demographic censuses conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), as well as the socioeconomic data of Brazilian families in poverty situations registered with the government through the CECAD Tab 2.0 tool. These initial data, however, did not present information about the geographic positioning of the dwellings, making it necessary to conduct a survey through the Google Street View software, allowing the visualization of images at ground level, being effective on searching for wattle and daub residences. From these data, maps and image database of the buildings found were generated, which allowed the selection of buildings with relevant characteristics for the analysis of the habitability and damage conditions. The work generated a discussion about the current use of wattle and daub in Sergipe, regarding contradictions related to patrimonial distaste, contemporary use for advertising purposes for tourism and also about how public eradication policies in these buildings act. Finally, the documentation produced in this work may contribute both to the preservation of the vernacular constructive memory of the studied region and to guide improvements of such dwellings.