A Hygiene Hypothesis

摘要

Rio das Pedras is a growing favela in western Rio de Janeiro. Across the street from it looms a massive abandoned residential high-rise project. Built before the favela, these buildings have no windows, no elevators, no electricity, no plumbing. There is nothing but vacancy-spiders, branches, chipped cement floors and ceilings, walls choked in leaves. Their exterior skin, once tightly sealed and thermally regulated, has long since fallen away. Stripped of their innards, these towers are literally shells of their former selves. Air conditioner-sized openings in the facades frame the world beyond. Tropical plants grow through them, invading the interiors. The failure of technology is palpable. And yet, it is the straightforward use of commonplace construction elements-concrete frame and brick-that permits this housing project to remain standing. It is a monument to a time that stood for a better life. Construction of these six residential towers-containing 982 residential units in all-began in 1977. But before they were finished, the buildings began to sink into the marshy ground beneath them; the foundations could not support the towers. At the same time, a diseased banking network further thwarted the project's completion. Nearly 40 years later, these towers, once expected to be a part of a larger development known as the Delfin project, remain uninhabited-a monument to modernism's failure, tree-shrouded and silent.