Modern architecture, the construction site, and the inconvenient truth of materials

This text results from the dialogue established between two research projects within the field of Production Studies. One, a doctoral study, investigates the relationship between society and nature, highlighting contradictions within the concept of sustainability in architectural production. The other is part of ongoing postdoctoral research at the Institute of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of São Paulo (IAU-USP) and focuses on material culture, specifically studying aluminium production. Both studies explore their themes through the works of Sérgio Ferro, following the methodological approach of the project ‘Translating Ferro/Transforming Knowledge in Architecture, Project, and Labor’ (TF/TK). Bringing these two research projects together enables an illustration, from different perspectives, of how the capitalist model of value extraction operates behind architectural production, functioning as a kind of ‘illusion game’.