Thought under construction: Excursus on the possible methodological machinations of Sérgio Ferro to guide Production Studies in Architecture, Design and Labour

Abstract

The written work of Brazilian professor, architect, and painter Sérgio Ferro has been increasingly visited, studied, and commented on, not only in Brazil and France – the country in which he went into exile, when he left Brazil in the early 1970s, due to the civil-military dictatorship that befell the country in that period – as well as in other parts of the world. The attention devoted to Ferro's theoretical work seems to derive from the way he approaches his objects and gives them a critical and theoretical treatment, particularly instructed by Political Economy, Hegelian Logic, and Marxian dialectical materialism. Taking as a starting point the material bases of his production, both in architecture and in the plastic arts, his fields of historical and research and theoretical reflection advance through fields previously hitherto unexplored, putting well-established and widely consolidated concepts on trial. This work tests some conjectures about the author's methodological strategies, seeking to establish references for the institution of a new field of studies in Architecture, Design, and Work, which we are calling Production Studies.