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Sérgio Ferro (1938–2024) was a Brazilian architect, artist, and Marxist theorist, known for his critical approach to architecture and labor. A co-founder of the Escola Paulista (São Paulo School), he emphasized workers' autonomy and the democratization of the construction process. His work blended radical theory with artistic practice, influencing alternative architectural practices in Brazil and beyond. Ferro also produced significant paintings and writings, critiquing capitalism's role in architecture.

For issue #127, we feature an excerpt from his essay "Paris to Dubai" (2002), where Ferro critiques how capitalism shifted construction materials (e.g., iron, concrete) to undermine workers' autonomy and knowledge, replacing craft-based labor with engineered systems controlled by capital.

A trend gradually arose during the nineteenth century of transforming construction labour from formal subsumption into real subsumption, even without industrialisation. The economic objective of this transformation, as in the case of large-scale industry, was a raise in relative surplus-value, by increasing productivity of labour and diminishing the value of products needed for the reproduction of labour-power — meaning wages. Up until then, it was the productive body of construction that possessed the constructional know-how, despite the increase in the division of labour and the bolstered oversight of the building sites this situation became highly problematic after the fall of the Second French Empire (1870). Prior to that, labour organisations, which were forbidden, limited, and almost always clandestine, did not have the necessary magnitude to seriously oppose capital’s domination. But some years after the Commune (1871), the political climate and the establishment of the less authoritarian and repressive Republic allowed for more consistent labour organisations to form. At the end of the century, the first unions were created. Having little faith in the dubious parliamentary Republic, the unions went on the offensive, clearly driven by a class consciousness. They were led by socialists, communists, freed Communards, and most of all, anarchists. Beyond fighting for improved labour conditions and higher wages, the main, short-term goals were productive autonomy, self-management, and social revolution. Many — and not only the militant — workers considered it both possible and imminent. Marx thought so, and the majority of the youth declared themselves to be socialists. Even the neo-impressionists, who were close to the anarchists, sought to prefigure the ‘harmony of complementary colours’, which they believed should characterise the forthcoming equalitarian society. The workers’ unrest grew, and the many strikes between 1890 and 1910 worried the ruling class and encouraged their sympathisers.

Construction workers participated actively in this awakening. And they had a considerable advantage in a struggle that privileged direct action or confrontation in the workplace (beloved by the anarchists): their near exclusivity of construction know-how. It was easier to halt a building site as the master of operations. They were not so easily replaceable as workers were in industry, and their organisations, which were still structured by trade, favoured solidarity. To make the employers’ lives even more difficult, their frequent strikes dried up the source of the most generous masses of surplus-value, essential to production as a whole. For capital, times were dire. 

In a manner that was seemingly unpremeditated but had actually been planned for some time, capital involved in construction found an exit strategy. Without giving it much importance, Michel Ragon notes:

"It is interesting to remember that the iron frame emerged as a consequence of a carpenters’ strike in 1840. Seeing as the strike lasted a long time, effectively paralysing the construction work, Creusot’s companies had the idea of making iron beams in series. Even though this replacement material did not completely dethrone wood, it did give rise to a new craft. From then onwards, the mechanic would go on to substitute the stonemason, just as the engineer would fill in after the architect’s dismissal. [...] the industrialists had used the iron frame as a ‘strike breaker’."

Herein lies the secret ingredient, as old as time: to get the upper hand in a power struggle, the best strategy is to change the rules of the game. Now it was the material that had been changed (and later it would be the code itself to change). 

The gains for capital that this change provoked were yet to be revealed. What initially impressed capital, aside from the capacity to break strikes, were the cost savings for production. The use of iron was thus limited to constructions linked to constant capital or to the circulation of commodities — engineers’ territory. The rationality imposed by the need for thriftiness produced wonders: railway stations, markets, bridges, palaces for industrial and commercial exhibitions. But much like reinforced concrete, iron rarely appeared in the works of architects, or, if it did, it was as a substitute, carefully disguised: fictitious rock in concrete, classic pillars in cast iron.

It was only later, at the turn of the century, that concrete began to attract attention. Its advantages went far beyond the mere issue of production costs. Concrete did not rely on a tradition of craft nor lead to a know-how that would accumulate on the workers’ side with power to weld their alliance (indeed, the same happened with iron: even to erect the Eiffel Tower at the end of the nineteenth century — the monument to the glory of that metal — it was necessary to involve carpenters, the only ones capable of undertaking such demanding work with the required precision). Neither concrete nor iron constituted the material basis for any craft at the forefront of the labour struggles, as wood and stone did. The two materials require calculations, structural studies, precise technical details, exact quantities. This is specific and complex knowledge that has little similarity to the empirical know-how and estimation practices of stonemasons and carpenters. It was inevitably concentrated in the hands of engineers and higher educated technicians, who were clearly not rushing to share it with the workers. The latter’s weapon in the form of know-how gave way to the former’s weapon in the form of knowledge. A chiasmus of the weapons: the building site’s declining know-how provoked disqualification; as knowledge grew, so did the power of prescription. This turnaround reinforced relative surplus-value, meeting capital’s interests in the face of the increasing pressure for shortening the working day, that is, reducing absolute surplus-value.

Little by little, timber and stone deserted the building site, up until their tacit proscription during early modernism. Stonemasons and carpenters, those intractable agitators, were no longer the main axis of the building sites. This fact, together with police harassment, forced the more politically active among them to immigrate. Many came to Brazil, mostly the Italians and the Spanish, because of the similarity of the language. They generally had the same profile: excellent in their crafts and anarchists. The Brazilian labour movement owes them a great deal.

Excerpted with permission from Architecture from Below: An Anthology by Sérgio Ferro, published by MACK Books.

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