Animated Architecture: Maria Luiza Mendez Lins and the Colonial Water Taps of Olinda, Brazil

Abstract

An uneasy relation between water contamination and social contamination plays out at the water tap (bica, fonte, chafariz) in Olinda, Brazil. Originally built to provide fresh water for the public and for ships, the taps are set in decoratively carved plaster or stone walls. Architecturally, they are beautiful, even when overgrown, disfigured by road and utility construction, or strewn with waste. Today, bicas are extraneous to centralized water, sewage or drainage infrastructure. Water flows passively from hillside crevices through the simplest of plumbing. Because the water table underlying the city is contaminated, the quality of water emerging from bicas is always subject to question. The politics of bica performance involves partially clad persons drinking and bathing in central areas of public space, where these architectural extensions of dead colonial powers are sometimes dressed illegally in murals and signatures of graffiti artists. Guided by Iza do Amparo, a painter from Olinda, this essay reflects on the connections among water architecture, social marginality, and street art.