SPATIAL HIERARCHIES AND DOMESTIC LABOUR IN BRAZILIAN HOUSING

PERMANENCIES FROM THE CASA-GRANDE TO THE MODERN APARTMENT

Abstract

Brazilian housing presents marked structural continuities in spatial organization, from the colonial period to the contemporary apartment. This article examines the spatial hierarchies structuring urban middle- and upper-class housing in Brazil, analysing permanencies and transformations from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century. Through historical-typological analysis supported by critical bibliographic review, we argue that the tripartite sectorization into social, intimate, and service areas materializes long-term structures linked to domestic labour, class, gender, and race. The colonial casa-grande established the organizational matrix reproduced in nineteenth-century urban townhouses and consolidated in the modernist apartment, perpetuating the segregation of functions and people. Recent transformations, intensified after the 1990s and accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, indicate real possibilities for rupture with this model. We conclude that substantive changes in domestic spatialities depend on broader social transformations, not merely on individual design decisions.