OASE #77

In the architectural journal of Oase #77 you can find a lot of interesting texts about public spaces and publicness. These are interesting for Nicola and me but maybe also for others. The title of this edition is Publieke plaatsen/Accomodating the Public.

@ Martine: one text is 'on pavements and other public groundscapes' by Ana Luz. I think this could be very interesting for you...

Studentproject for Favela of the Future

A Brasilian friend of mine sent me an e-mail regarding a project of students at the UFMG for intervention in the favela of Serra, in Belo Horizonte. Since there were some people working on themes related to the favelas, this might be an interesting project.

Here is the e-mail. It's in Portuguese, so good luck ;-) let's see who still remembers some portuguese...

08/05/2009 - 12:00
As favelas do futuro
Por Chico Pedro
Uns estudantes da UFMG criaram um plano muito bacana para melhorar as condições dos favelados.

Aqui ninguém sabe que ele existe. Mas lá na Dinamarca forma premiados.

O link com algumas montagens e a explicação de uma parte desse plano é esse aqui:

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=544410

Aliás, conforme diz-se no link…”recebeu menção honrosa num dos mais importantes concursos internacionais voltados para alunos de arquitetura”

Agora, pergunto?

Qual a dificuldade de se fazer algo do tipo pelo Brasil afora?


Estudantes da Arquitetura projetam “favela” do futuro
Imagine uma favela ocupada de forma mais ordenada, com mais áreas verdes e espaços de convivência, melhor servida de transporte e capaz de produzir alimentos, energia e empregos.

Esse é o cenário traçado pelo projeto Uma microcomunidade resolvendo problemas globais, elaborado por cinco estudantes de arquitetura da UFMG. O grupo, que se debruçou sobre a realidade do Aglomerado da Serra, em Belo Horizonte, recebeu menção honrosa num dos mais importantes concursos internacionais voltados para alunos de arquitetura.

O problema é só um: nossa insuportável falta de sensibilidade.


If you click on the link you will find more information on this project.

...life next to Av. Agua Espraiada the landing of the new bridge.

Project Jan

What I want to do is to make an urban collage of very different aspects of the city of Sao Paulo. I want to make clear that the city is build up from so many different elements, people, sounds, buildings, shapes, objects, places, that is impossible to grasp the under laying intension the phenomenon.

The main purpose of my project is to try to represent this, and to create awareness about this. 

The medium I want to use is a (more or less) interactive medium that provides the possibility to explore the urban phenomenon. I do this by making a big web page.

In this webpage I insert:

A lot of overlapping images

Video fragments

Sound

Text 

Here I post some examples of collages by Rauschenberg, who made a lot of collages:

On other interesting collage by Paul Citroen

Sketch that I made for my collage:

If you want to know more about the progress of my writings, please contact me.

addition to Rutgers weblog "How to advertise without words"

This is what I found today in the city centre. Also a good example of advertising without words.

to get an idea...

if you want to get an idea of how many cortiços there actually are, check this link and be shocked..

http://mapa.habisp.inf.br/maprender

click 'layers' in the top bar, then 'detalhes' of 'habitacão' in the left column, then 'cortiços' and they will appear in green.

INVITATION - SP Urban ART Exhibition

the exhibition is about URBAN ART in São Paulo, and there will be exhibited all kind of urban  interventions and urban related art, such as grafittis, video, apropriations, even poetry...and many more...

and even an artist from your country will be there, Carmen van der Vecht, 

ever heard?

 

there will be some live performances in the opening day, April 15th, 

the opening will be at 7p.m, performances probably will happen between this and 10 p.m., I believe....

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

GALERIA OLIDO                                 

click to see the map

• A exposição Arte Urbana, com foco nas diversas vertentes de arte urbana paulista, reúne graffiti, sticker, lambe-lambes, apropriações, assemblages, vídeos, fotografias e poesia, entre outras manifestações. 

Os artistas participantes são:

Alessandra Goya, Binho Ribeiro, Bonga, Célia Saito, Chã, coletivo Ocupeacidade, Danila Bustamante, Danilo Fernandes, Dingos, Graphis, Gejo, Gêmeas (Carolina e Isadora Krieger), Guto Lacaz, Jaime Prades, João Pimenta, Jullie Poslednik, Júlio Dojocsar, Mônica Jackson, Ota, Péricles Martins, Popó, Renato De Cara, Pastore, Rodoxxx, Rogério Cavalcanti, Sinval Garcia, Tathy, Vine e Wolpy. É mostrado ainda o projeto “Hambler”, da artista holandesa Carmen van der Vecht, que tem foco na moda direcionada a jovens moradores de rua. Na abertura da mostra ocorre uma performance de Andréa Guilhermina, Joaquim Lino, Lina Gomes e Brone Lozneanu. A curadoria é de Danilo Blanco e Fernando Zelman (de 15/04/09, às 19h, a 30/05/09). 

ADRESS » Centro: Av. São João, 473,

tels. (11) 3331-7703 / 8399 e 3334-0001, r. 2006. 

Ter. a sex., 12h/20h30; sáb. e dom., 13h/20h30.http://www.centrocultural.sp.gov.br

Squat!

http://noticias.terra.com.br/brasil/interna/0,,OI3700154-EI8139-ABG,00.html

squatted ex-INSS (instituto nacional de siguranca siocial) building near 9 de julho that burned out a couple of years ago. the occupance was organized by the FLM (organized squatter movement) just started yesterday to put on political pressure. Tomorrow they will talk to representatives that are coming from Brasilia. Flavio, Marleen and I went to visit late this afternoon.

How to advertise without words?

In 2006 the Municipality of Sao Paulo banned the use of written words and big billboards on façades. Since then, the commercial activities of Sao Paulo have been finding out new ways to continue advertising their products and services. So far I’ve identified 4 strategies:
- Claim a colour! Colours attract attention, so painting or cladding the entire façade of the building helps. Optional is to paint the sidewalk as well.
- Move! Use moving elements to attract attention. Human beings with flags also do the job.
- Depict! Instead of writing about the merchandise, visual signage can be made by painting on the façade or the shutters of the building.
- Open up! Make the building as open as possible to the street, so the inside merchandise is completely visible.
Is Sao Paulo changing from a city full of letters to a city full of colour?

Urban Think Tank / u-tt (only dutch)

Interesting article on Archined about 'Informele stedenbouw'. 

http://www.archined.nl/nieuws/april/informele-stedenbouw/

(only in dutch) 

Een vrij recent artikel van een lezing van Urban Think Tank, die zij gegeven hebben op de Academie van Bouwkunst in Amsterdam. (Zij zijn ook bekend van die documentaire over Caracas.) Zeker de moeite waar om even te lezen.

When you you cannot read dutch and you want to know something about this very interesting office see there website: 

http://www.u-tt.com/ 

...the true issue...

“The true issue is not to make beautiful cities or well-managed cities, is to make a work of life. The rest is a by-product. But, making a work o f life is the privilege of historical action. How and through what struggles, in the course of what class action and what political battle could urban historical action be reborn? This is the question toward which we are inevitably carried by our inquiry into the meaning of the city.”

 – Raymond Ledrut, “Speech and the Silence of the City”

Reverse graffiti

via videosift.com

Informality and the question of Legitimacy Part 1

The impressions of the first days and the discussions so far touch certain topics with very problematic discourses. When it comes to the informal city and its relation to formality, key concepts of equity, legitimacy, and tolerance gain a pivotal role in discussing the past and present conditions but also in formulating any future vision. An informal life seems less than before (if it indeed has ever been motivated by freedom) subject of a self-conscious expression or political nature but a process stemming out of necessity. Still informality as a surviving strategy has to answer to its legitimacy to certain extent. As formal provision is causal to informal service and production circles (houses, economy, services, etc.) society at large has tendency to take tolerant stances towards the informal city. But there is also another side to it Informal lives sometimes follow the logic of profit maximisation or is aimed to accelerate socio-economic accession. Particular problematic I trust are socio-economic layers of the population informal and formal spheres overlap. The lower middle class or higher strata of the poor could represent dimensions of possible frictions. If a household gains greater wealth by choosing (!) for informality the question of legitimacy arises for the comparable households paying taxes and higher charges by their formal lives. Regularization schemes must have been carefully applied. So far walking some areas of favelas indicated that their – if boldy put – has been partly wealth accumulation as well on the cost of the large urban community (and the tax payers)
Without the intention to elaborate on an argument my intention was to give another illustration that informality escapes any black white distinction. Informality is the safety net for the most marginal population groups but at the same time a source of market-distorted competition for some on the costs of others, with the open end of illegal and illicit practices, harming society at large.

for those willing to improve the portuguese skills. at today's O Estado de S. Paulo, probably the biggest newspaper here, a two-page article on the cortiços. amongst other things, there's the discussion about the rise on the price per square meter on the cortiços. apparently, comparing rents, the price at the cortiços is higher than at formal rich neighborhoods such as Morumbi.
here goes the link, and if anyone is interested i can help (sort of) with the translation.

http://www.estadao.com.br/estadaodehoje/20090412/not_imp353477,0.php

Lina Bo Bardi - Sesc Pompei

Today we (Bart, Martine, Rutger and Jan) visited the Sesc Pompei by Lina Bo Bardi. When you want to see a very interesting piece of architecture, go there. Beautifully designed. 

I consider this building as dialogue between sensuality and brutalism. 

It is free to enter and you can ask for a guided tour. (Go to the room on your right after entering the gate. Tell the person behind the desk that you study architecture. We didn't had to pay for it, but I don't know if this is normal or if we are very privileged.)

Intense Week

Monday morning, a place called Cantinho do Céu, just an optimist name for what we called until that moment “favela”. Near Bilings reservoir, an artificial lake, and surrounding this place, an (in) formal area, a place where people bought some lot and without any infrastructure build their houses, self made house most of it.
The municipality is doing now what they call “urbanization”, paving the streets, sewage system, street lights and etc, giving them some minimal conditions of life, and surrounding the lake, there´s a project for a big public space, a park for the people.
Life is going on in this place, some children playing in the streets, people walking around, the corner´s bar open, an integration of neighbors, like a small city inside the city. Most of people works 2 or 3 hours far away by bus, but there are some that have little comercial points , where they sell the most necessary things.
Although the needs, people are really proud of their places, they work hard, brick by brick, so for them their houses is just like a little piece of heaven (cantinho do céu), and who are we to put their houses down, self made houses, with no technical support, but with strong symbolism for them. How does it feels to put you away from your house and put you inside a typological plan, that does mean anything, with 10 other blocks of apartments with no self identity.
All they have are they identity, how can we take them the only thing they have?
The contrasts, the huge shopping mall… the fake fans, the fake tree smell, the fake building, the fake green plants… An artificial place for flesh and bone people.
Fake -bright - flowers ou true -wilted- flowers?

Tuesday… Paraisópolis, again, a really positive name… The streets full of cars, people, a crowed place! So we take a tour from inside, and the landscape changes, the more inside you go, more it changes… The self made construction, the stairs, each one with their own design, but with the same materials, it get me to think if it´s their path to heaven (paraísopolis – city of heaven), the higher you go, near you get.
Cidade Tiradentes shows the sense of community… how it works and give them a meaning, and something to fight for. The project is really heavy, that kind of stamps that the municipality do, but it got a meaning when the people who lives in the place worked hard to build that. This bring them the sense of identity, a sentimental value more important that this money value. Just sorry for the fences…
Wednesday afternoon… Alphaville, an island totally apart of the city. An artificial world, with fake architecture. Jails.
Viglieca lecture… “Search for hypotheses besides the design”
Thursday… Lecture at Sehab, intenses discussion about the projects. They are searching ways, understanding that the municipality have to deal with many problems… But do they discuss the projects, architectural theorys? Sometimes it seems they are fifty years behind the contempopary discussions. Although from Cingapura and the destruction of hundred houses they are going forward, searching news ways... The project of apartments... it led me to think... if they don´t create a private feeling in the place - as they tried , will the residents build fences around it?
Cortiços. Human beings living with no minimal conditions, no water, no bathrooms, no private spaces. 5, 8, 9 years in this condition, it is something unimaginable… So far they get used to it, and stop fighting for...

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.

Inflatable Informality

What we see here is maybe the most basic principle of making a shelter to sleep, obtained by making use of a plastic sheet, and the warm air that is blown in the air through the grating of the metro. This scene is photographed in the city centre of Sao Paulo on a large public square. Interesting to see is how people start to ‘steel’ little parts of the public space to create a temporary shelter. This is something to think about when we speak of ‘public’ space. It can be conceived as very public because there is the possibility to make a public space ‘private’ for a certain period of time. (Without romanticizing the phenomenon itself.)

Traveling everyday

On Jardim Pantanal (second day), we had the opportunity to get in real touch with some settlers, and were invited to have a cup of coffe and some bolachas with a very friendly family on their own house. The father (I forgot his name) told me something that I could’t get out of my mind: he works in São Bernardo do Campo (a municipality that is part of the ABC, the industrial heart of the metropolitan area of São Paulo), and spends no less that 3 hours daily to go and 3 hours to come back: at least during six hours of his day he is commuting. He also told me that he leaves his home at 4 am and comes back at 8 pm: not much is left for him to be with his family or to rest. He is a plumber and probably doesn’t earn much money: nevertheless, he has built himself a nice, decent and big house during many years to shelter his family through his hard work.

That is one of the most terrible sides of São Paulo: the long journeys that most common people have to take from far-away and poor neighborhoods to the most central areas where are all the services and all the jobs. This is an expression of the center-periphery dynamics which has been the main characteristic of the urbanization process in São Paulo during the XX century. Here is a map by GoogleMaps showing an ideal route from Jardim Pantanal to São Bernardo by public transport, just to illustrate how hard it is to commute for many of the residents of the metropolis in the lack of an efficient mass-transportation system.

Accessibility and Segregation

In how far does the complex convoluted building structure of for example Paraisopolis that is vertically only accessible through steep stairs discriminate disabled or elderly people? May this say medivial urban setting create certain age group concentration within more/less accessible parts of the 100 by 200m blocks? Might be interesting to take into consideration for the group of Dan and Jasper.

SOME PICTURES FROM ABOVE

These pictures were taken from the book São Paulo Metrópole, by Regina Meyer, Marta Dora Grostein (she was with us during our visit to Cantinho do Céu) and Ciro Biderman. They give us a different perspective about the streets and alleys of São Paulo's informal settlements.

Cantinho do Céu and Jardim Gaivota: informal, poor and precarious occupation on the southern part of São Paulo, an area that should be preserved for its environmental fragility and strategic importance for the whole metropolitan area.

Cantinho do Céu: the strip which will be transformed in a linear park on the Billings reservoir shore through a slum upgrading program. On the back, the power lines that separate that community from the rest of the (informal) city.

Jardim Pantanal on the eastern part of the municipality of São Paulo: note how it's settled on the Tietê river lowland area of environmental protection (APA-Tietê), which for many years was a problem for the residents who had to get along with the floods every year. This is one of the poorest slums in São Paulo, and lacks all kinds of basic urban services and regular infra-structure.

Paraisópolis-Morumbi: the worldwide famous contrast between the rich neighborhood and the poor and informal huge slum. Physical proximity combined with extreme social distance. It’s (hardly) possible to observe the original regular grid that crosses the highly dense settlement.

Thoughts of a brain-dead

Thoughts of a brain-dead

After four days of CSI Sao Paulo my mind is spinning and I finally want to sit down to write some reflections on my experience so far - day by day. And I am trying organising my thoughts but it is not much there.
And I am thinking of what I have seen while my mind is still trying to remember at least one of the names of the people how has guided us to day to the Cortico’s … all these clean laundry …you see it everywhere.

Maria I think was the name from one of the handful people who brought us to the Cortico’s and was also showing us around. In an old industrial round down building people, the poorest of the pore, are renting space to live with there families. 46 families, if I remember right, are living in self constructed separations in the inside of these buildings. I am amazed by the cleanliness and the necessity for decoration thus you see a lot of very nice details, and of course the clean laundry, ...lots of it!
You see happy and energetic kids, beautiful. There is a lot of music too; the atmosphere is relaxing but I can still not relieve tension.

The day before (day three) we have been to Alphaville, a gated community of wealthy people. It was hard to enter that era even we had an appointment, everything was excellent organised and planed like the registration of our passport numbers. But they found something to make it even a bit more complicated; so we had to wait. After all we where allowed to enter - guided, but we did not get permission to walk around freely. This was so fare the only housing area where I have seen no laundry drying outside.

On day two we have been to Paraisopolis. I have been in the subgroup which was focusing on public while walking through the neighbourhood. The public is basically the street. The stairs in front of the house the main street with its bars and shops is where the people gather. Like in most informal neighbourhoods the build structure is very dense. However you see a again the laundry and based on the lag of space the laundry is dominating the scenery in the public. I have been impressed to see a self organised primary school which is according to our guide even financed by the community.

On day one I was placed in the subgroup with the topic “formal-informal economy”. The first place of informal housing we visited was Cantinho do Ceu.
The main streets where like usually the most activity is, in public live as well as in economy, we only got to see from the car. The times we stopped have been a kind of short to only nearly getting a picture of how the economy works, unfortunately.
In the afternoon we visited the extreme opposite side of the economy world, Parque Cidade Jardim, a fancy shopping mall with upper class housing on top of it. Here in Parque Cidade Jardim I had for the first time the feeling not to know where I feel more out of place – in the informal or the formal (?).

In conclusion Sao Paulo is a diverse city, something we knew before. New to me was the experience, also if people where looking at us in the informal neighbourhoods as well as in the upper class areas, that I felt welcome in Cantinho do Ceu, Paraisopolis and in the Cortico’s. Here people where smiling though they where not in Parque Cidade Jardim or Alphaville.
… so fare.

Paraisopolis materialised

The organic growth of the settlement of Paraisopolis can be found in all its successive stages. People settle starting with the materials that are less durable and easiest to get. Wood and metallic panels dominate the newest parts. The next step in improving the house is to add shutters and doors.
In the case of paraisopolis, the most common initial types are aluminium shutters wooden panel doors. Successively properly produced doors and glass windows are added. The panel materials might also be painted or covered in slurry coating. Perforated bricks are the next step, substituting the panel materials.
When the addition of an upper floor is desired, concrete columns are cast in between bricks and a cast concrete or a prefab metallic staircase is added as well. The upper floor is made using prefabricated floor beams (similar to a part of a Dutch breedplaatvloer), in between which either polystyrene foam or ceramic bricks are placed, and on top of which concrete is cast.
The later succession in the favela materialisation is the addition of better windows and doors, the cladding of the facade with tiles or stucco, and much more various elements such as balcony railings and facade systems. Eventually, whole buildings might be substituted by concrete cast buildings.

Within the whole neighbourhood, we can see this entire succession of materials going from the initial stages in the lower, risky or lateral areas, to the most developed and sometimes even formal building along the high streets that are part of the 200 x 100 m grid. Over here we can find eventually the extraordinary designs of the Assemblea de Deus church buildings and more consolidated economic activities.

Day 2 07/04/09 Paraisópolis