In Concrete as Weapon, Sérgio Ferro analyses how the use of reinforced concrete in modern architecture was not just a technical innovation, but a tool of capitalist control. He argues that this transformation displaced workers’ knowledge towards architects and engineers, consolidating labour exploitation and hiding it under the aesthetics of modernism. Modern architecture thus served as an instrument to reinforce the division of labour and the accumulation of capital.
It gives a brief historical overview of the social and trade union struggles of construction workers, mainly in France, which were controlled by the introduction of reinforced concrete as the predominant technology. The text was written in 1980 and forms part of a long production that the author, a native of Brazil, produced while in exile in France, in which he provides elements for rethinking the history of architecture from the stonemason or construction site. Ferro proposes to reconstruct the history of the production of spaces by looking at the work processes, the forms of organisation of the workers, the adoption of new technologies, the role of the technicians, among other aspects. The text was the basis for the lecture that Ferro himself gave at the IV Encuentro Latinoamericano de Arquitectura Comunitaria, held in the city of La Plata in 2018, the first and only lecture that the author gave in a Latin American country other than Brazil (Durante and Martínez, 2023).
Reference: Durante, M. E., & Martínez, V. S. (2023). Arquitectura, luchas sindicales y producción del espacio: Traducción de Sergio Ferro “El concreto como arma”. Crítica y Resistencias. Revista de conflictos sociales latinoamericanos, (17), 182–206.
Free access (English): http://www.mom.arq.ufmg.br/mom/01_biblioteca/arquivos/kapp_18_how_look.pdf
Free access (Spanish): https://www.criticayresistencias.com.ar/revista/article/download/318/882/1485