agenda

Monday.Besides all the specifics regarding city insertion, infrastructure, function, adequacy of the architecture, I observed another fundamental difference between cantinho do céu and the fancy shopping mall we visited. The two spaces establish opposite relations with the existing water. In cantinho, the future linear park project turns buildings and population to the water reservoir, providing attenuation of the environmental damages, and the possibility of controlled leisure utilization. Nature being rescued as part of the city tissue and urban life. On the other hand, the design of pq cidade jardim goes on the contrary intention, showing clear interest in avoiding the river+highway. The built complex turns itself to its own center, thus defining the inner atrium as a simulacrum of public space and rejecting the river. Tuesday.Both Paraisópolis and Jardim Pantanal are areas within the formal city and lack of basic infrastructure as proper sewer systems, water+energy distribution, and basic equipments. The first consolidated using the grid and city insertion of an unoccupied area that had been lotted in the 20’s, shockingly in contrast with the adjacent neighborhood of Morumbi, one of the richest of SP. the latter developed in the outskirts of the city, in the eastern region, a peripheral area at the margins of Tietê river. In spite of precarious conditions people were always nice and warm, inviting us to their houses, their lives, their struggle, leaving us the feeling of their necessity to be visible. Wednesday.And we went to vigliecca & associados, one of the most interesting architecture offices in São Paulo. Héctor Vigliecca is from Uruguay, but has been working in Brazil since the middle 70’s. His discourse is based on the defense of professional ethics and quality in establishing relations between public and private spatiality. For him, architecture should maintain its social role by keeping legibility and precision in defining spaces, allowing controlled expansion of the spaces without the loss of identity and citizenship. Héctor believes in the strength of representation as an instrument to reassure the role of the architect. Even though he is a constant partner of the municipality, in the proposals for many precarious areas as Paraisópolis and Heliópolis, not always his projects are followed in essence, as we’ve seen in Paraisópolis. Thursday.Now we had the opportunity of confronting Vigliecca’s discourse with the municipality discourse. On one side, the architect’s will of a project for the city, as seen with his empathic proposal for Paraisópolis. On the other, the municipality’s defense for the neo-liberal city, saying that everyone has choices and it’s not up to city hall to intervene in the convictions of the inhabitants of Paraisópolis, by proposing buildings they don’t agree with, despite their qualities. As a result we have the municipality’s project we’ve visited, that even though includes dwelling, infrastructure improvement and the construction of health and education equipments, do not reverse the lack of connection with the formal city. Afterwards, we went to visit some cortiços and everyone, including Brazilians, got really impressed of the sub-human condition people are living in, despite the smiles on their faces. Its ashaming how everyone gets used to precariousness.

Stair park

The initial planner of the site now occupied by Paraisopolis must have been Dutch, not having thought about the hilly landscape on the site. The square kilometer, now home to approximately 100,000 people, was divided into blocks by a simple 100x200m grid of streets. Some of these grid lines however go up and down the hillside so steeply that they can never function as a street. Such was the case with one grid line that connected the area with the circumfering road network.
Recently the municipality transformed this to-steep-for-a-street space into a stair park. Parallel to a staircase there is a terraced park which enjoys great popularity amongst de Paraisopolian children.
Grid and public space are also the key elements in a proposal of the architect Hector Vigliecca for restructuring the entire favela Paraisopolis. His focus is on the inner space of the grid blocks, which is so densely built that any contact with the public domain is impossible. He proposes to open up this inner world and introduce new residential buildings that improve housing conditions and shape urban space in one. Since the buildings stretch from one block center to another they effectively open up the grid blocks towards the grid streets. The municipality first approved and then rejected the proposol. It would require too much demolishing. An understandable concern if Viglietti's plan were rigid. But it's a simple scheme that gets repeated in each block. Why not simply try it out in one block and see how the neighbourhood responds, see where it needs adaptation or leave it as one unique intervention.

One attempt to restructure Paraisopolis, seemingly simple, yet bold for the staircase ends right besides a series of luxurous residential towers. Another seemingly compex yet smart and potentially much more flexible than it appears.