The floating community of Lago Catalão - Iranduba AM: : an urban fabric over the waters

Abstract

This study investigates the space - self-built and self-managed on the waters - of the community
of Lago Catalão (Iranduba AM), highlighting its resilience and ability to adapt over time to river
regimes, subjected to floods and intense droughts under the context of climate change. Characterization
of site and way of life combined with morphological analyses, indicate that there is a spontaneous
consciousness in the community, through which floating typologies and spatial arrangements on the
waters are (re)produced, thanks to the possibility of collective appropriation of floodplains. There is a
singular spatial dynamics in the floating settlement which restructures itself seasonally over water,
respecting a gradient of the public-private transition and conditions of access to the river and the
mainland, and demands the proposition of new categories of morphological analysis for the proper
characterization of the spatial reconfiguration process of floating buildings: agglutination, expansion,
exchange and transference. Such processes are adaptive responses to hydrological cycles, neighborhood
relationships within the family group, and the need for rotation of common use floating platforms. All
these movements are possible thanks to the fluidity of the water, which unlike the earth, does not attach
buildings to the ground or allows the fixation of lots.