Des-Habitat

Des-Habitat by Paulo Tavares is a powerful exploration of how modernist aesthetics and colonial histories intersect. Originally published in 2019 on the occasion of the international research initiative and traveling exhibition Bauhaus Imaginista, this book-length essay examines the Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi’s influential 1950s magazine Habitat, which juxtaposed modern art and architecture with Indigenous and popular crafts. Through his writing and a series of design strategies like re-appropriation, collage, and displacement, Tavares reveals how Habitat’s modern visual language obscured the colonial contexts from which these materials were sourced. Des-Habitat invites readers to critically engage with questions of oppression, complicity, and decolonization in architecture and design.

Paulo Tavares is an architect, author, and educator whose work spans architecture, visual culture, and advocacy. His projects have been featured in major exhibitions and publications worldwide, and his other books include Lucio Costa era Racista? and Derechos No-Humanos. In Brazil, he leads the spatial advocacy agency autonoma and teaches at the University of Brasília.

This publication was republished in a second edition in 2021 and again in 2023. The third edition celebrated the Brazilian pavilion at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale—curated by Tavares and Gabriela de Matos, and awarded a Golden Lion.