16 June 1903: Henry Ford founds the famous car company that still bears his name in Dearborn, Michigan. Twenty-five years later, the American industrialist wants to give an urban shape to his vision: we tell the story of Fordlandia through a photographic essay by Dan Dubowitz from Domus Archive. This article was originally published on Domus 965, January 2013.
Fordlandia, the utopian city built by Henry Ford in Brazil (today in ruins)
On June 16, 1903, Henry Ford founded the iconic car company. Lesser known is the utopian city that the business man built in the Amazon in 1928. Have a look at Dan Dubowitz’s portfolio from Domus archive.
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- La redazione di Domus
- 16 June 2020
- Fordlandia, Brazil
The first part of this work by Dan Dubowitz brings back to light an instersting episode of the 20th-century American history.
In the 1920s, Henry Ford set out to build an ambitious series of new towns in North America, but when he was blocked by Congresshe looked abroad to fulfil his ambitions. In 1928 he started to build a new town and rubber plantation deep in the Amazon rainforest.
Ford’s “work of civilisation” sought to industrialise the jungle and tame it to his will. The local workforce was to be moulded to the Fordism of his US plants. Ford dismissed local knowledge and experience, and ignored the advice of his own agronomists who said rubber could not be grown in plantations in Brazil.
For the creation of the new city and plantation, he ordered the clearing of a section of virgin rainforest the size of a medium-sized American state. The plantation and the town were an unmitigated failure both economically and socially. Rubber was never produced commercially and the town was abandoned by Ford in 1944. Today Fordlandia is creeping back to life because the houses are free and the school is full again. The golf course, however, has disappeared, and the state-of-the-art hospital is also steadily being consumedby the rainforest.
Fordlandia is the first in a series of creative endeavours through which Dubowitz investigates the psyche and architecture of megalomania.
Dan Dubowitz, who trained as an architect, now practices as an urban designer and artist. Director of the design practice Civic Works, he is currently cultural master planner for the regeneration of part of the south bank in London. His artistic work ranges from his permanent city-scale artworks, such as the Peeps in Manchester, to long-term photography projects.
American manager’s villa. The villas for senior American managers and
their families were built on a hill along an avenue lined with mango
trees
Water tower. When it was built, it was the tallest structure in the Amazon. The Ford logo has disappeared, but the tower remains a symbol of industrialisation
Vultures. Fordlandia’s sawmill, where hardwood was processed. the surrounding hills, stripped of all the vegetation by colonisers, were densely replanted with rubber trees. As the sun melts the mist at dawn, a group of vultures appear perched on the roof of the abandoned building
A sleeping kid in a hammock
The canteen served meals for managers and workers. This was where the first riot broke out. Today it is the home of the former mayor
The hospital. Health care was free for all employees and their families. A 1940s Walt Disney newsreel documenting the hospital made much of the gleaming white cleanliness offered by North American modernity. Today it has largely been consumed by the jungle
The pump house supplied the water tower and was an important fire-protection facility for the town and plantation. Fire hydrants made by the Michigan Valve & Foundry Company in Detroit can still be found in the streets
Prefabricated grave markers were brought from Michigan for Brazilian workers who died on the plantation. Deceased Americans were rimpatriated in military-style tin coffins
Brazilian manager’s houses