Lamu is a living town off the Kenya coast. It was recently nominated to the World Heritage List. The town has been relatively undisturbed by colonization and modernization. This study reports on the early Swahili dwelling, which is still a functioning type in Lamu. It commences with a brief historical perspective of Lamu in its Swahili and East African coastal setting. It compares descriptions of the Lamu house, as found in literature, with personal observations and field surveys, including a short description of construction methods. The study offers observations on conservation and the current state of the Lamu house. It is concluded with a comparison between Lamu and Stone Town, Zanzibar, in terms of house types and settlement patterns. We found that the Lamu house is the stage for Swahili ritual and that the ancient and climatically uncomfortable plan form has been retained for nearly a millennium because of its symbolic value.

[pt] A pesquisa investiga as relações entre arquitetura e extrativismo pétreo no Rio de Janeiro, histórias de uma ascensão gradual que, após seu apogeu no século XIX, relatam o declínio desse longo protagonismo em relação a outras técnicas construtivas. Nesse sentido, o outeiro da Glória, sua igreja (c. 1730) e seu acesso (c. 1960), feito por rampas, escadas e platôs, são partes fundamentais do arco narrativo de uma cidade-pedreira. Manipular a composição humana-mineralógica desses fragmentos é imaginar uma reativação metamórfica capaz de pensar o chamado Mineraloceno para além dos minerais explorados como combustível ou metais preciosos. Em outras palavras, é colocar inúmeras arquiteturas pétreas no centro do espaço moderno-colonial nas Américas. A partir do tensionamento de seus fragmentos sólidos e lacunares, provocamos uma tradição arquitetônica que valoriza aquilo que é aparentemente eterno, que aposta exclusivamente no gigantismo da escalabilidade industrial e que se comunica por meio de uma materialidade alienada. Trata-se, portanto, de uma cartografia em tempo profundo, um entrelaçamento crítico e especulativo de ciclos geológicos e mineralógicos que, dentre outras coisas, tensionam o instrumento servil de um processo de dominação, extração e destruição em escala global, submisso à lógica capitalista e representado pela indústria da construção civil. Ao nos debruçarmos sobre esta matéria que participou ativamente da edificação de uma narrativa hegemônica sobre a cidade do Rio de Janeiro, podemos nos perguntar: quais outras histórias poderiam ser contadas a partir da pedra? / [en] The research investigates the relationships between architecture and stone extraction in Rio de Janeiro, stories of a gradual rise that, after its peak in the 19th century, report the decline of this long protagonism in relation to other construction techniques. In this sense, the Glória hill, its church (1730) and its access (1960), made by ramps, stairs and plateaus, are fundamental parts of the narrative arc of a city-quarry. Manipulate the human-mineralogical composition of these fragments also means to imagining a metamorphic reactivation capable of thinking about the so-called Mineralocene beyond the minerals exploited as fuel or precious metals. In other words, it is to place countless stone architectures at the center of the modern-colonial space in the Americas. By tensioning its solid and missing fragments, we provoke an architectural tradition that values what is apparently eternal, that bets exclusively on the gigantic scale of industrial scalability and that communicates through an alienated materiality. It is, therefore, a cartography in deep time, a critical and speculative intertwining of geological and mineralogical cycles that, among other things, tension the servile instrument of a process of domination, extraction and destruction on a global scale, submissive to capitalist logic and represented by the construction industry. When we look at this material that actively participated in the construction of a hegemonic narrative about the city of Rio de Janeiro, we can ask ourselves: what other stories could be told from stone?