Then, they met at the City Park. Architectural capital and its distribution in public space
architectural capital, habitus, public space, Parque da Cidade, Brasilia
Thinking about society and the various assets we have and through which we are part of it means understanding the different dimensions that constitute it. For the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, it is necessary to understand the various types of capital: resources, means, capabilities that we mobilize to meet our needs, and that characterize who we are. By including architecture in the constitution of society, based on the Spatial Syntax Theory (SST), we argue that the way we organize ourselves, as bodies in space and time, and the way we organize places constitute a social macrostructure, in which architectonic capital is inserted, as the subject's ability to mobilize architecture for their purposes. This capital refers to the resource that implies possibilities or restrictions to the ways of appropriating places and moving through them, and the conditions of visibility of the other; it is composed of spatial capital and building capital, the first referring to open spaces, with unrestricted access, the second, closed spaces, with restricted access. Architectonic capital is superimposed on other capitals – economic, political, cultural, ideological, social – by constituting the social class: the different structure and volume of the capitals that the social classes hold, constitute, diversely, for this very reason, the different social classes. A new topography is the core of this thesis: different social classes color places differently; and vice versa: distinctly configured places distinctly qualify the different social classes. The experience is formed by the Parque da Cidade Dona Sarah Kubitscheck and by the subjects who (differently) appropriate it. Parque da Cidade is located in the heart of Brasilia, the Federal Capital of Brazil. The content is structured in three parts: (i) Knowledge of the object of study; (ii) Survey of public life; and, (iii) Survey of architectonic capital and habitus. Among the operating procedures are document analysis, participant and non-participant observation, which resulted in the mapping of Parque da Cidade, and the application of questionnaires with people who frequent it, which enabled the construction of an indicator of architectural capital. The results show the relationships between the architectonic capital that the Parque da Cidade enables to form in the subjects (when they appropriate the Park), and the extra-park architectonic capital appropriated by the subjects: in the places they enjoy outside of here – residence, commerce, culture, work. It is not possible to understand the first without the second; and both say who it is.