This project aims to inventory the history and industrial heritage and investigate the uses of requalification within the urban landscape of the city of Rio Grande (RS). The city at hand is the oldest in Rio Grande do Sul, host to significant cultural historical landmarks. It also had an important role in the industrialization of the state and the country, from the end of the 19th century until the end of the 20th century, being the only place with a seaport in the region and the host to the first woolen fabric factory in Southern Brazil (Rheingantz Factory, from 1873). The industrial park that came to the city was the base for a work class movement of great importance and that resized urban and social life in the aim of benefitting this working population. However, parts of this past and of the traces that are still perceptible are in danger of being abandoned or forgotten. Thus, this project aims to investigate the history and heritage of the main factories and spaces related to the industrial past of the city, its history and heritage, and make the material available as an inventory and digital map that shall encourage the preservation of the local industrial heritage and industrial tourism.

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The project was approved in Public Notice 08/2019 by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) under the case number 151171/2020-3 and was carried out in the Federal University of Pelotas (UFPel), Graduate Program in Social Memory and Cultural Heritage, by researcher Professor Olivia Silva Nery, Ph.D. (CNPq Junior post-doctorate researcher) and by Professor Maria Letícia Mazzucchi Ferreira, Ph.D. (project supervisor and full professor at UFPel), between December 2020 and March 2022.