Autopia’s files: São Paulo’s highway infrastructure design archives – 1952-1985

Abstract

The field of transportation infrastructure renders a challenge to the researcher of architecture historiography, The nature of infrastructure design and the profile of the teams responsible for delivering, being distant from the traditional craftmanship of the modern canon as mapped by academia, renders a twofold responsibility: to map this professional niche, composed by multidisciplinary practices of consultive engineering, and that of analyzing the design’s ambitions through sources, whose language, albeit also originated from design thinking, are set far from the modern canon. Through the critical approach of Reyner Banham and the recent non-canonical historiography of architecture, we seek to mature a research tool that interprets technical documents, in the light of their ideological constraints. This article faces, through two case studies, the research experience at São Paulo’s municipal archives, as well as the state’s Highway Department, shares thought on their material conditions and its detailed listing, and points to the necessary actions for preservation and better interpretation of the archives, fundamental for understanding the history of infrastructure and its impact on the urban landscape.