Conceived within the scope of a very well defined intellectual movement, the project, in modern architecture, aimed not only to build, but also to organize furniture and objects in living spaces. They intended to teach how to live, to indoctrinate the users about the correct way of using the living machine. The Marquês de São Vicente condominium, located in Gávea borough, Rio de Janeiro, was developed in this way by the architect Affonso Eduardo Reidy and built with the conviction that it would accomplish that program, as the idealists conceived of it. Starting with this premise, we visited many apartments in the complex and interviewed the residents of one of the buildings so as to develop a morphologic analysis of the existing configuration thet had been done by them, tho know the common sense discourse, so that it could be related with the original project and, afterwards, with the discourse of reason. In other words, we tried to know the other side of history, i.e., to learn how the others - the residents - built that room in their own imaginary.