Brazil: Restructuring the Urban 9781118972489, 9781118972465

Citation preview

Guest-Edited by HATTIE HARTMAN

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN May/June 2016

Profile No 241

Brazil: Restructuring the Urban

About the Guest-Editor

Editorial Helen Castle

Fore-thoughts: Learning from Lerner

Hattie Hartman 06

05

03/2016

Introduction Seeds of Change

Jaime Lerner 08

Affonso Eduardo Reidy, Pedregulho housing complex, Benfica, Rio de Janeiro, 1947

Urban Transformation in Brazil Hattie Hartman 10

Where to for Brazil’s Cities? Citizen Empowerment or Global Marketing?

A City at Play

Guilherme Wisnik

Rio de Janeiro on the Eve of the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games

Failing the Informal City

Ana Luiza Nobre 28

20

How Rio de Janeiro’s Mega Sporting Events Derailed the Legacy of Favela-Bairro Justin McGuirk 40

Maps to Hack, Synchronise and Decipher Unseen Cartographies of Rio

Rethinking Minha Casa Minha Vida

Gabriel Duarte 48

The Resurgence of Public Space

Dissatisfied São Paulo

Nanda Eskes and André Vieira 54

Francesco Perrotta-Bosch 60

Minha Casa Minha Vida illegal house extensions, Parauapebas, Pará, Brazil, 2012

ISSN 0003-8504 ISBN 978-1118-972465

Guest-Edited by Hattie Hartman

Linking the Formal and Informal

Alternative Visions of the Brazilian City

Favela Urbanisation and Social Housing in São Paulo

In conversation with Herzog & de Meuron Senior Partner Ascan Mergenthaler

Fernando Serapião 70

Brasília Life Beyond Utopia

Hattie Hartman

Thomas Deckker 80

88

Recife The Popular Struggle for a Better City

Salvador: The Struggle for Dialogue Within a Heritage City

Capibaribe River, Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil, 2014

Circe Monteiro and Luiz Carvalho 96

Sergio Ekerman 106

Curitiba Revisited

Landscaping Brazil

Five Decades of Transformation Maria do Rocio Rosário

The Legacy of Roberto Burle Marx

112

Alexandre Hepner and Silvio Soares Macedo 118

Sustainability

Counterpoint Designing Inequality?

A Clarion Call for a New Approach Joana Carla Soares Gonçalves

Ricky Burdett 126

136

Affonso Eduardo Reidy and Roberto Burle Marx, Aterro do Flamengo, Rio de Janeiro, 1965

Contributors 142

Editorial Offices John Wiley & Sons 25 John Street London WC1N 2BS UK T +44 (0)20 8326 3800 Editor Helen Castle Managing Editor (Freelance) Caroline Ellerby Production Editor Elizabeth Gongde Prepress Artmedia, London Art Direction + Design CHK Design: Christian Küsters Christos Kontogeorgos Printed in Italy by Printer Trento Srl

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EDITORIAL BOARD

Front cover: Top left: Mario Jáuregui/@telier metropolitano, Complexo do Alemão, Rio de Janeiro, 2011. © Carlos Cazalis/Corbis; Top right: Herzog & de Meuron, Arena do Morro, Natal, Brazil, 2014. © Photo Iwan Baan; Bottom: Street demonstration, Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil, 20 June 2013. © Yasuyoshi Chiba/Getty Images Inside front cover: Parisópolis São Paulo 2011. © Tuca Vieira

03/2016

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ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN May/June

Profile No.

2016

241

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A country on the eve of the Olympic and Paralympic Games is a country on the brink: most often on the threshold of resounding success or failure. An international event like no other, the Olympic Games makes the host nation the sole focus of the world’s media attention for its brief duration. The global broadcasting of luscious images of the host country, its cities and its sporting venues can make it the magnet for international commerce and tourism for years to come, or it can make a government the subject of ridicule at home and abroad; as with Athens 2004, where the billions spent on the Games is widely attributed to having added to national debt and Greece’s mounting financial troubles.

EDITORIAL HELEN CASTLE

Though the jury is still out at the time of writing for Rio 2016, to take the the Games has provided the vital opportunity for barometer to Brazil and to reflect on the widespread phenomenon of urban transformation that has taken place across the country in the run up to the Olympics and the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Hattie Hartman, Sustainability Editor of the Architects’ Journal, is uniquely placed to guest-edit this issue. With a background in urban design, she spent two years early on in her career working in Brasília. Continuing close family ties with Brazil has afforded her not only a mastery of the language, but ongoing contact with the architectural community. For this issue, she assiduously sought out Brazil-based contributors who coherently cover the theme. The spotlight is on significant aspects such as urban planning, landscape design and sustainable development, but also on different cities in turn: Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Brasília, Recife, Salvador and Curitiba. Articles highlight the distinct characteristics of each city, which vary greatly according to their cultural, climatic, political and social make-up. This pieces together a variegated picture of Brazil city to city, in terms of treatment of public space and the approach to housing provision and the upgrading of the favelas – with municipal authorities’ handling of planning and development ranging from the exemplary, as at Curitiba, to the often muddled and inconsistent. As highlighted by Hattie in her introduction to the issue, the image that emerges of Brazil in 2016 is not the optimistic vision that was anticipated five years ago when the country worldwide was being touted as a booming economy with its burgeoning market of middle-class consumers. For the last two years the economy has contracted and there have been popular protests that have sharpened the public’s appetite for an urban agenda that delivers greater social equality. What is apparent at the beginning of this Olympic year is that there is much to learn from Brazil’s moment on the world stage, from both the most innovative urban initiatives and lost opportunities alike.

Text © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Image © Helen Castle.

Hattie Hartman

London 2012: Sustainable Design – Delivering a Games Legacy John Wiley & Sons 2012 This comprehensive assessment of the sustainable design platform that informed the London Olympic and Paralympic Games examines the masterplanning and landscape of the Olympic Park as well as the detail design of the permanent and temporary venues to draw out best practice lessons from London’s Olympic experience.

Cover of The Architects’ Journal 22 March 2007 The restoration of Oscar Niemeyer’s 1958 Palácio da Alvorada (Palace of Dawn), the official residence of the Brazilian president in Brasília, was the subject of a building study in The Architects’ Journal by Hattie Hartman.

Cover of The Architects’ Journal 28 February 2013 Edited by Hattie Hartman, this is the AJ’s annual issue dedicated to green design. The cover features John McAslan + Partners’ Olympic Energy Centre in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London, 2012.

Atelier Ten

Invisible Architecture Laurence King 2015 Edited by Hattie Hartman, Atelier Ten’s 25th-anniversary publication is a thought leadership primer in environmental engineering.

ABOUT THE

GUEST-EDITOR

Hattie Hartman is an architect, urban planner and journalist with a long-standing professional interest in Brazil. Raised in the US and trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), she has been based in London for the past 25 years. Upon completion of her postgraduate studies, her first job was in Brasília, where she spent two years as an urban designer in the Distrito Federal (Federal District) Department of Public Works. Her work focused on Brasília’s satellite city of Gama, where she developed a detailed plan to address security issues in the service alleyways behind the residential lots. Before turning to journalism in 1998, she worked in both large and small architectural practices in Washington DC and then in London. Over the years, Hattie has made numerous trips to Brazil, interviewing Oscar Niemeyer in 1998 when he received the RIBA Gold Medal, and Paulo Mendes da Rocha in 2006 when he was awarded the Pritzker Prize. In 2007, she visited Niemeyer’s 1958 presidential Palácio da Alvorada (Palace of Dawn) shortly after it had been refurbished, which she documented in a building study for the Architects’ Journal (AJ). Hattie is sustainability editor at the AJ, a position she created in 2008 after joining the journal’s editorial team 10 years ago. She is responsible for its dedicated coverage of sustainable design in the built environment and maintains close relationships with leading practitioners in this area both in the UK and abroad. She lectures widely on mainstreaming green design and various technical aspects of sustainability, and brings this perspective to this issue of devoted to Brazilian cities. Hattie’s work at the AJ led to a commission to author an insider account of the sustainable design approach that underpinned the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Prior to the Games, when there was a strict press embargo, she interviewed more than 50 architects, designers and Olympic Development Authority staff for her book London 2012: Sustainable Design (John Wiley & Sons, 2012). Most recently, Hattie has edited environmental engineers Atelier Ten’s 25th-anniversary monograph, Invisible Architecture (Laurence King, 2015). Her forthcoming book Energy, People, Buildings for RIBA Publishing, co-authored with Judit Kimpian and Sofie Pelsmakers, is due to be published later this year. In addition to her ongoing role at the AJ, her work has been published in the Financial Times, New York Times, Architectural Review, Architectural Record, DOCOMO and Building Design. With this title of , prompted by Rio de Janeiro’s hosting of the Olympic and Paralympic Games this year, Hattie set out to explore the notion of the public realm in Brazilian cities, a concern often brushed aside in metropolises faced with urgent issues such as housing, sanitation and transport. Brazil’s challenging economic context and recent ‘right to the city’ street demonstrations make this issue of particularly timely.

Text © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: p 6(t) © John Wiley & Sons Ltd; pp 6(ct&cb), 7 © The Architects' Journal; p 6(b) © Atelier Ten/Laurence King

FORE-THOUGHTS LEARNING FROM LERNER

Brazil is often portrayed as ‘the country of the future’. This constant refrain, initially penned by the Austrian writer Stephan Zweig in the 1940s, has reverberated in the country’s imagination for decades and was even cited by President Obama during his official visit in 2011. With its sheer size, mosaic of cultures united under one national identity and nd abundance of natural resources, Brazil has so often seemed poised to succeed. It is the fifth largest country on the planet and as the largest exporter of agricultural products cts behind the US and the European Union, its seventh largest economy. A history that merges indigenous peoples, Portuguesee colonisers, African slaves and successive waves of immigrants ts from many parts of the world makes for a rich cultural mix. Earlier in this decade, de, it seemed like the future had arrived after all. From a peak ak inflation rate of almost 2500 per cent in 1993, Brazil experienced erienced single-digit annual inflation for most of the nextt two decades, underpinning a period of strong economic growth and income distribution. The country’s GDP increased from around US$550 billion in 1994 to U$S2.4 trillion in 2014. Brazil seemed poised for these potentials to flourish and translate themselves into quality of life for its population. Hosting global events such as the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games seemed like the consolidation of this new status.

And what about our cities? Despite having roots in colonial times, urbanisation in Brazil only started to really gain momentum in the 1950s and followed a very steep curve. We experienced several decades of rapid population increase that was channelled into cities. In 1950, only 36 per cent of the roughly 52 million Brazilians lived in cities. By 2014, 85.43 per cent of the more than 202 million of us are urban dwellers. Initiatives to manage this growth through public policies were captained by all levels of government (federal, state, municipal), but it was, more often than not, an overwhelming task. Brazil’s metropolitan areas expanded without any guiding structure, accumulating deficits in basic infrastructure, public transportation, social housing and public spaces, often to the detriment of environmentally fragile areas. New legislation such as the federal Estatuto da Cidade (2001) reinforced the ‘toolkit’ municipalities had at their disposal to implement planning policies, but legislation alone did not effect much change. In this context, Curitiba is a city that stood out, demonstrating since the late 1960s that simple solutions and the political will to implement them could translate into important gains in quality of life. Giving pride of place to people over cars, Curitiba transformed the main commercial street in its historical centre into a pedestrian zone. Also, with the creation of dedicated bus lanes, which evolved to become what over 200 cities worldwide nowadays know as bus rapid

Parque Barigui, Curitiba, Brazil, 1972

transit (BRT), Curitiba put in place an integrated transport infrastructure, unique among Brazilian cities. The city also pioneered environmental solutions that worked with nature, not against it, preserving rivers and their margins as elements of its drainage systems and cherishing natural areas as public parks. Having had the fortune to be mayor of Curitiba three times (1971–5, 1979–84 and 1989–92), I had the honour of participating in these processes. Despite its tremendous potential, Brazil is also a country of missed opportunities. The positive economic trajectory peaked in 2010 and the anticipated legacy for the 12 FIFA World Cup host cities did not bear fruit. City management, overall, is having a hard time establishing scenarios capable of directing society’s efforts towards better urban environments. Time and effort is focused on extensive diagnoses and we still fail to correctly identify the problems and act upon them. Mobility issues are not solved by widening roads. Social housing provision is not solved by creating isolated, single-use projects on the urban periphery detached from city life. Safety is not addressed by gated communities with high walls and armed security. Drainage and water quality are not improved by channelling rivers. Misguided initiatives, such as the Minha Casa Minha Vida (MCMV – My House, My Life) housing programme, addressed the critical issue of housing availability, but more often than not delivered projects that were disconnected from jobs, public transit, leisure and cultural activities. A city

Text © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Image © Instituto Jaime Lerner, photo by Felipe Guerra

Part of the city's macro-drainage system, Parque Barigui is Curitiba's most visited park and has earned its place as an important landmark of urban identity among curitibanos since its inauguration almost 50 years ago.

is – or should be – an integrated structure of life, work and movement. Lack of leadership and increased bureaucracy are fed by the illusion that consensus is needed (or even possible) every step of the way before action. One could argue that democracy is the good administration of conflicts, of differences, of diversity. This combination of factors has caused a state of clear near paralysis in many of our cities. And in the lack of a clea development structure for a city, things happen according to other (il)logics. Mobility is an ever-increasing problem. Yet Brazil’s city dwellers – as recent demonstrations across the country show – are starting to pay more attention to politics and the quality of city life. And happily, some cities are rising to the many challenges they face. Rio de Janeiro is reclaiming its harbour by tunnelling a 7-kilometre (4-mile) long elevated highway to make way for pedestrians and public transit, and it is improving its mobility network with new BRT corridors. Cities are becoming more aware of the importance of the human scale and creating more spaces for pedestrians and bicycles, as can be seen in São Paulo’s pocket parks and cycle lanes. Recife has developed an ambitious proposal to recover its Capibaribe River. I am, thus, an optimist, and I believe that cities are not problems – they are solutions.

INTRODUCTION HATTIE HARTMAN

Seeds of Change

Paraisópolis Sáo Paulo 2005 According to its photographer Tuca Vieira, this helicopter view of Paraisópolis, a favela 15 kilometres (9 miles) southwest of the city centre which abuts the more affluent neighbourhood of Morumbi, is his mostly widely sought-after photograph even though it is more than 10 years old.

An aerial view of São Paulo favela Paraisópolis by photographer Tuca Vieira has been repeatedly reproduced for more than a decade to convey the inequalities of Brazilian – and global – cities. It generated more than 360 comments on Facebook (initially unbeknownst to the photographer) and featured on a banner in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall during a 2007 exhibition on ‘Global Cities’. Vieira’s plunging aerial view of swimming pools and tennis courts separated by a thin wall from the adjacent favela has been widely published because it epitomises the stark inequality of Brazil’s cities. It is impossible to write about Brazil – or its cities – without tackling inequality. This issue of explores the public realm in Brazilian cities, places which – like the beaches that line its coastline of over 8,000 kilometres (5,000 miles) – are accessible to all. This focus on urban design is distinct from the country’s exceptional tradition of modern architecture, about which countless tomes have already been written.1 Brazil’s architectural discourse has been largely dominated by its two Pritzker Prize winners – Oscar Niemeyer and Paulo Mendes da Rocha. However one exception is the recent resurgence of interest in Lina Bo Bardi, sparked by the centenary of her birth in 2014 and marked by several publications and exhibitions. Yet surprisingly little – until the last five years – has been written in English about Brazil’s other established or younger emerging architects. Likewise, much has been written about Brazil’s favelas, but little of a more general nature about Brazilian urbanism and public space. The historical centres of many Brazilian cities – from the backstreets of Rio’s Glória and Santa Teresa neighbourhoods to Belém’s mango-tree-lined avenues, and even some of Brasília’s residential superquadras – have a strong sense of place. That civic sense, places where Brazilians from every walk of life experience the city, is the subject of this issue.

Chart of annual percentage change in Brazil’s GDP 2009–15 Since 2009 when Rio was announced as the host city for the Olympic and Paralympic Games 2016, Brazil’s economy has experienced a severe decline. Source: International Monetary Fund: http://data.imf. org/?sk=dac5755f-a3bb-438a-b64f67c687e2cfd5&sId=1390030109571.

Why Brazilian Urbanism Now? This issue of was conceived five years ago in the frenetic run-up to London’s own Olympic and Paralympic Games. Brazil was experiencing a period of rapid growth driven by a surge in commodity exports to Asia and following the discovery of offshore oil in the Santos basin 260 kilometres (160 miles) off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. The spotlight was on Brazil as the next host country for both the FIFA World Cup in 2014 and the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games, which will run from 5 to 21 August and from 7 to 18 September respectively. Upon being named to host the next Olympics in 2009, Rio embarked on a multitude of transformative construction projects unseen in the city since Brazil’s capital was relocated to Brasília in the 1960s. Simultaneously, many of the World Cup host cities undertook the restructuring of their stadia, airports and transport connections to accommodate international visitors. It is these transformations that this issue of sets out to explore. The combination of sporting mega-events and economic boom (and post-2008 recession in Europe and America) suddenly made Brazil, and Rio in particular, a magnet for international architects and students. The UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) government department led trade missions to Brazil with a specific focus on the construction sector, and the September 2012 delegation led to £140 million in contracts for UK companies related to the World Cup and Rio 2016.2 In Rio, the opaquely named Museum of Tomorrow (Museu do Amanhã) by Santiago Calatrava was completed in 2015, and Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s Museum of Image and Sound (Museu da Imagem e do Som) will be this year. Foster + Partners and Perkins + Will established offices in São Paulo in 2012, and both are undertaking projects as part of the regeneration of Rio’s Porta Maravilha.

Chart of Brazilian real to US dollar exchange rate 2009–15 The value of the Brazilian real has dropped year on year against the dollar since 2009. Source: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve: www.federalreserve.gov/releases/ h10/hist/dat00_bz.htm.

Perimetral (Perimeter Road) Porto Maravilha Rio de Janeiro 2014

Map of Brazil’s urban settlement pattern

New York’s Columbia University established Studio X in Rio – Praça Tiradentes in the city centre – in 2011 as a forum for professionals, academics, policy makers and students to debate the city’s most urgent issues, and universities including Harvard, ETH Zurich, the Architectural Association (AA) and London Metropolitan took groups of students to both Rio and São Paulo, often to study the informal city. This influx of international architects has caused tension with Brazil’s own talented designers and has resulted in iconic projects that contribute little to addressing social inequity in the city and have a questionable impact on the public realm. Rio’s Olympic story, as documented in the pages of this issue, is not a happy one. The explosion of projects and international interest in the city has not resulted in interventions on a par with Roberto Burle Marx’s Aterro do Flamengo (Flamengo Embankment) (1965), a linear park built on landfill that remains a heavily used sports and recreational area to this day.3

A Country of City Dwellers Despite Brazil’s vast size, over 85 per cent of its population today lives in cities and almost half of those live in 22 metropolises of over a million people.4 Whereas previously urban growth had been ad hoc (with the significant exceptions of Brasília and Curitiba – more on both of these cities later),

above: The Perimetral, an elevated highway in the city’s port area regeneration zone, is being replaced by tunnels in order to link an area of 19th-century warehouses to the waterfront. The staging of a carnival celebration on the remaining segment of the Perimetral prior to demolition conveys the project’s symbolic significance.

left: Brazil’s largest cities and the majority of its population of over 203 million people are concentrated in the coastal region. The transfer of the capital from Rio de Janeiro to Brasília in the 1960s was a deliberate attempt to populate the country’s interior, and Brasília is today the country’s third largest metropolitan area.

preparation for the World Cup in 12 cities across the country in 2014 and for the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Rio in 2016 changed that. A new appreciation of the public realm focused attention on enhancing existing monuments and heritage buildings and addressing the needs of the country’s burgeoning middle class. Ambitious favela upgrade programmes were launched, including the high-profile Morar Carioca (Carioca Living) competition supported by Rio’s Institute of Brazilian Architects. Projects by Herzog & de Meuron, Santiago Calatrava, Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Foster + Partners have brought an external perspective to Brazil’s urban challenges and heightened interest in the country from architects and urban practitioners abroad. The main focus of this issue of , though, is on urban design interventions and architectural projects that represent a distinctly Brazilian approach and contribute to a strong sense of place in their respective cities: Salvador is as different from São Paulo as they are both different from Brasília. Other themes highlighted include the integration of landscape design in urban planning, a nascent interest in sustainable design, and community interventions that seek to address the enormous disparity between the lives of the country’s rich and poor.

Economic Vicissitudes The hosting of these international events coupled with an economic boom at the end of the last decade sparked a new confidence among Brazil’s public and private sectors that was reflected in the country’s rapid urban metamorphosis. A November 2009 cover of The Economist depicted Rio’s iconic Christ the Redeemer sculpture erupting from the Corcovado mountain like a rocket. Urban growth was fuelled by key policies of the Luís Inácio Lula da Silva presidency (2003–10), which empowered the country’s expanding lower middle class. The construction sector alone grew by more than 10 per cent between 2009 and 2010.5 One project more than any other epitomises Rio’s hubris during this period. Initially commissioned in 2002 by former mayor Cesar Maia, the Cidade das Artes (formerly the Cidade da Música, based loosely on Paris’s Cité de la Musique) is located in Barra da Tijuca, a sprawling area of western Rio (and also the site of the Olympic Park) characterised by gated condominium communities and shopping malls. Raised on pilotis to capture views of Rio’s bay and its mountains, the 90,000-square-metre (960,750-squarefoot) complex, designed by Christian de Portzamparc and completed in 2013, sits on an isolated site surrounded by major roads. A ground-level plaza landscaped by Fernando Chacel and originally intended to be open to the public is entirely surrounded by a security fence and contains no pedestrian connection to the adjacent Bosque da Barra park. A few numbers set the magnitude of change in context. Brazil’s population surpassed the 200 million mark in 2011. That same year the country welcomed 5.4 million tourists, less than one-fifth the numbers who visited the UK that year and less than the city of Barcelona welcomes annually. Rio, in order to meet the Olympic Committee’s requirements, increased its hotel capacity by 75 per cent in six years. But Brazil’s economic boom peaked with 7.5 per cent growth in 2010.6 A faltering economy since then precipitated a downward

spiral that caused widespread dissatisfaction over the federal government’s lavish spending on World Cup stadia, igniting massive street demonstrations during the football Confederations Cup in June 2013. In September of that year, Brazil featured again on The Economist cover with an image of Corcovado’s Christ taking a nosedive into Rio’s Guanabara Bay, with the query: ‘Has Brazil Blown it?’ A year later, Petrobras, the country’s state-run energy company, was exposed in a multibillion-dollar corruption scandal – by some estimates involving as much as US$22 billion in money laundering7 – implicating top government officials and executives of the country’s leading construction firms, including some involved in delivering the Rio Olympics. Further street protests in 2015 called for President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment, with her approval rating plummeting to 8 per cent in August 2015. In September, Standard & Poor’s cut the country’s sovereign credit rating to a non-investment speculative grade. Nine months before the Games, BBC Radio 4 reported that the Rio 2016 organisers had cut their budget by up to 30 per cent, impacting the opening ceremony (the budget for which was estimated at 10 per cent that of London’s), temporary structures, and even in-house photocopying.

Right to the City Deep-seated frustration with government spending on World Cup stadia and infrastructure,8 dissatisfaction with the status quo and a desire for change sparked an overwhelming reaction when Brazilians took to the streets in June 2013 – a phenomenon repeated numerous times since. In this country of street parties and carnival, mass political demonstrations in modern times are rare, perhaps a hangover from 20 years of military dictatorship last century (1964–84). For most architects, the years of military government were a dark era for architecture and urban design, with those who could in exile abroad (including Niemeyer in Paris) and others designing private houses for the top end of the market with little engagement in urban problems.

Christian de Portzamparc Cidade das Artes Barra da Tijuca Rio de Janeiro 2013 opposite: Located on a triangular site surrounded by major roads in an area of Barra da Tijuca characterised by gated condominium complexes and shopping malls, the building is raised on pilotis over a landscaped plaza that is completely enclosed by a security fence and devoid of connection to the surrounding city.

Street demonstrations Avenida Paulista São Paulo 20 June 2013 Brazilians took to the streets in unprecedented numbers during the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup to protest against the government’s spending on World Cup stadiums while pressing issues of transport, health and education remained unaddressed.

A faltering economy since then [2010] precipitated a downward spiral that caused widespread dissatisfaction over the federal government’s lavish spending on World Cup stadia.

Lina Bo Bardi SESC Pompeia São Paulo 1986 left: Housing exhibition spaces, a popular canteen, sports facilities and multiple indoor and outdoor communal spaces, Bo Bardi’s social and cultural centre remains a thriving hub of activity 30 years after completion and an ongoing example of urban civic space where people of many different backgrounds gather.

Excessive spending in response to FIFA’s extravagant demands has planted seeds of change, awakening Brazilians to their ‘right to the city’. Professionals likewise are more engaged and some of the best work lies in small initiatives happening on the ground and online. New English-language voices in Rio – Theresa Williamson’s RioOnWatch with its tagline of ‘community reporting on Rio’,9 and Julia Michael’s bilingual RioRealBlog10 – have brought insider views of the city’s transformation to a wider audience.

Key Themes The snapshot of urban design in Brazilian cities included in this issue of is not exhaustive. It includes examples of urban transformations – some built and some proposed – that replicate the qualities of places such as Burle Marx’s emblematic Copacabana sidewalk in Rio (1970), the pre-FIFA Maracanã Stadium (1950) or Lina Bo Bardi’s SESC Pompeia (1986), where all strata of Brazilian society intermingle. Exemplars are few, and disillusionment is high, particularly when it comes to Rio’s Olympic legacy. The essays are organised chronologically, thematically and geographically. An opening article by Guilherme Wisnik provides a historical overview from the Portuguese colonial city until today. A series of further contributions then focus on individual cities, including Rio, São Paulo, Brasília, Recife, Salvador and Curitiba. Housing is another strand of investigation, both formal and informal: Rio’s Favela-Bairro programme (1994–2008), the Secretaria de Habitação’s (SEHAB’s) Programa Guarapiranga (2005–12) in São Paulo, and the current federal Minha Casa Minha Vida (MCMV – My House, My Life) initiative. Two further articles highlight particular themes: one provides an overarching view of Brazilian landscape design, exploring the legacy of Burle Marx in

Brasil Arquitetura Nova Cidade Baixa Salvador 2010 top right: Commissioned by the private Fundacão Bahia Viva, projects of the ambition of this proposed masterplan for Salvador’s bay frontage, which takes a holistic view of waterfront development, are relatively rare in Brazil. bottom right: The Nova Cidade Baixa project proposed a restructuring of Salvador’s bay frontage between Campo Grande and Ribeira, including the city’s famous beaches of Cantagalo and Boa Viagem. The road was to be tunnelled in key sections, new cable cars were to link the upper and lower cities, and a public realm including cycleways and beachside promenades was proposed along the beachfront.

The wave of optimism that swept Brazil in the first decade of the 21st century has succumbed to a tide of gloom and distrust of the status quo.

contemporary practice, and the other challenges the direction of Brazil’s nascent sustainability agenda. Not surprisingly, uncontrolled growth at the periphery, proliferating favelas and gated communities, and the need for improved urban mobility are common themes that emerge from these pages. A particularly potent example is Héctor Vigliecca’s Parque Novo Santo Amaro V (2012), where shortly after moving in residents wanted to fit security gates to privatise areas intended as communal space, as described by Fernando Serapião in this issue (pp 70–79) and captured in a recent Architectural Review documentary.11 These complex challenges are heightened by the lack of coordination and often conflicting agendas of Brazil’s three tiers of government (federal, state and municipal), which all play out differently at the municipal level. Herzog & de Meuron senior partner Ascan Mergenthaler, responsible for the practice’s work in Brazil, observes: ‘Brazil is one of the very difficult bureaucracies in this world. It feels Kafka-esque: a lot of paperwork, a lot of layers, a

lot of people who have to tick boxes and sign certain documents. You have to know how to navigate and there are no shortcuts. It is very time-consuming’ (see the interview with him on pp 80–87).12 This tends to be further exacerbated by changing political administrations, where the agenda of one mayor shifts course under a successor. Belém is one city where political continuity has enabled consistent urban development, reclaiming the riverfront for people, preserving historical buildings and embellishing parks and natural areas. Likewise, Curitiba established its Instituto de Pesquisa e Planejamento Urbano de Curitiba (IPPUC – Institute of Research and Urban Planning) in 1965, which to this day operates in an advisory role to the mayor’s office regardless of political vicissitudes. Though Curitiba is renowned internationally for its exemplary planning, and the federal government adopted its Estatuto das Cidades (Statute of Cities) in 2001 based on Curitiba’s example, this statute has had little impact to date.

FIFA World Cup Arena Corinthians (Itaquerão)

Notes 1. See for example Elisabetta Andreoli, and Adrian Forty (eds), Brazil’s Modern Architecture, Phaidon (London and New York), 2004 and Zilah Quezado Deckker, Brazil Built: The Architecture of the Modern Movement in Brazil, Routledge (London and New York), 2001. 2. ‘UK Firms Celebrate Contract Wins for Rio Games’, 12 March 2013: www.gov. uk/government/news/uk-firms-celebratecontract-wins-for-rio-games. 3. The Parque do Flamengo was the subject of the exhibition ‘Jardim de Memórias: 50 anos’ (Garden of Memories: 50 years) organised by the Ministério da Cultura e Centro Cultural Correios (Ministry of Culture and the Post Office Cultural Centre), from 1 October to 29 November 2015. 4. See http://data.worldbank.org/ indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS and www. citypopulation.de/Brazil-Cities.html. 5. Matt Watts, ‘Rio Trade Mission Analysis: “Brazilian Architects Keen to Learn”’, Architects’ Journal, 12 March 2013: www.architectsjournal.co.uk/ news/daily-news/rio-trade-missionanalysis-brazilian-architects-keen-tolearn/8644140.article 6. International Monetary Fund: http:// data.imf.org/?sk=dac5755f-a3bb-438ab64f-67c687e2cfd5&sId=1390030109571 7. Ruth Costas, ‘Petrobras Scandal: Brazil’s Energy Giant Under Pressure’, BBC News, 21 November 2014: www. bbc.co.uk/news/business-30129184. 8. The Financial Times cites Brazilian government spending on the stadiums at 8 billion Brazilian reais, and on public transport at 17.6 billion Brazilian reais. See Joe Leahy, ‘Brazilians Face a World Cup Comedown’, Financial Times, 3 June 2014: www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ d381fe88-e9a4-11e3-99ed-00144feabdc0. html?siteedition=uk#axzz3s8O7EeYE. 9. www.rioonwatch.org/. 10. RioReal – A critical and constructive view of the transformation of Rio de Janeiro: http://riorealblog.com/. 11. See the Architectural Review’s video: From favela to gated community: a documentary, 5 June 2015: http://www.architectural-review. com/buildings/from-favela-to-gatedcommunity-a-documentary/8684318. rticle?blocktitle=FIlms&contentID=12431 12. Telephone interview with Hattie Hartman, August 2015. 13. For a fast-paced insight into life in Rocinha, see Misha Glenny, Nemesis: One Man and the Battle for Rio, Bodley Head (London), 2015. 14. Stefan Zweig, Brazil: Land of the Future, Cassell (London) 1943; reprinted as Brazil, A Land of the Future, Ariadne Press (Riverside, CA) 2000.

São Paulo 2014 Located 20 kilometres (12 miles) east of the city centre, São Paulo's new World Cup stadium was accompanied by extensive infrastructure works with little consideration of the public realm.

Text © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 10-11 © Tuca Vieira; p 13(t) © Pedro Rivera Monteiro; p 13(b) © Dilton Lopes; p 14 © Hufton+Crow; p 15 © Globo/Getty Images; p 16 © Nelson Kon; p 17 © Brasil Arquitetura; p 18 © Mauro Restiffe

Urban waterfronts, particularly former port areas, are a development hotspot in many Brazilian cities, such as Rio’s Porto Maravilha, Recife’s Estelita Quay, Salvador and Porto Alegre. In numerous instances, former ports or industrial zones are under intense pressure for high-end residential or commercial development, with minimal consideration given to urban design or public access to the water. Salvador’s ambitious Nova Cidade Baixa (2010), a privately commissioned masterplan for Salvador’s trafficcongested bay frontage, was an attempt to structure this development in a holistic way. Achieved by tunnelling vehicular traffic, the proposal by São Paulo-based Brasil Arquitetura in partnership with local architects envisioned a revitalised public realm with extensive pedestrian promenades and cycleways along an important stretch of the bay. The project was abruptly shelved when the mayoral administration changed. The wave of optimism that swept Brazil in the first decade of the 21st century has succumbed to a tide of gloom and distrust of the status quo. Many projects, particularly in Rio, were led by construction companies who ignored local design talent. Many of the new World Cup stadia are located on remote sites on the urban periphery with expensive infrastructure that is now under-utilised. As Ana Luiza Nobre points out in her article in this issue (pp 28–39), Rio has been seduced by high-profile beachfront projects by international architects that turn their back on the rest of the city. The introduction of cable cars to two favelas with a third proposed for Rocinha,13 one of Rio’s largest and most well-established favelas that sprawls over the hills between affluent Leblon and São Conrado, is a highly visible investment that smacks more of marketing than of meaningful transformation. While the Olympics and most of the FIFA investments represent a missed opportunity, a glimmer of independent initiatives from civil society may suggest a new, more incremental way forward for Brazilian cities. Be it Occupy Estelita in Recife setting the stage for the River Capibaribe project (see the article by Circe Monteiro and Luiz Carvalho on pp 96–105), pocket parks and the reclaiming of the Minhocão (‘big worm’) Elevado Costa e Silva elevated highway in São Paulo (see Francesco Perrotta-Bosch’s article on pp 60–69) or Herzog & de Meuron’s new gymnasium in Natal’s Mãe Luíza favela (pp 80–87), the seeds planted by street protests and bottom-up initiatives may deliver transformations more suited to Brazil’s context in leaner times. São Paulo’s latest Plano Diretor (2014) (p 65) and the initiatives of the privately funded Institute of Urbanism and Studies for the Metropolis (URBEM) (p 67) also point in the right direction. In the 1940s, Austrian writer Stefan Zweig sought a haven from Nazism near Rio de Janeiro where he penned his well-known ode to the country Brazil: Land of the Future (1943).14 As leaner times lead to belt tightening, one can only hope that these seeds will germinate and that Brazil will realise its potential as a country of the present.

Le Corbusier Plan for Rio de Janeiro 1929 Le Corbusier envisioned Rio with a series of megastructures linked by a serpentine infrastructure.

Guilherme Wisnik

This image can be viewed in the print edition of the issue

Citizen Empowerment or Global Marketing? An awakening interest in public space in Brazilian cities is emphasising the value of existing civic areas. Guilherme Wisnik, a critic, curator and professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo, looks at the history and potential future of Brazil’s urban spaces. He highlights how despite the introduction of innovative Modernist design in the mid-20th century, which forged ‘a new relationship between architecture, urbanism and landscape design’, more recently the country’s cities have been subject to the vicissitudes of market and political forces.

Brazilian cities today are experiencing a surge of citizen awareness and activism in defence of public space. In the midst of a global zeitgeist of ‘springs’ and ‘occupy’ movements, a large proportion of urban Brazilians seem to be waking from centuries of historical lethargy in which public matters were treated as private, personal favours. In urban terms, this means that sparse and insignificant public spaces in these cities, ignored during decades of urban roadway development, are becoming the focus of heated conflict in the name of the public interest. These disputes are an indelible sign that such spaces have a true public use. Numerous recent examples of this citizen outpouring extend beyond São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and include really interesting cases of activist confrontation of realestate speculation and the bureaucratisation of public space usage. These include the Occupy Estelita (Ocupe Estelita) movement in Recife, Pernambuco and the weekly Praia da Estação (Beach at the Station) phenomenon of cultural events in Belo Horizonte in Minas Gerais. In addition, there are the battle to preserve Parque Augusta in São Paulo and community engagement to find new public uses for Largo da Batata (Potato Place) – a public plaza that used to be a busy nucleus for itinerant traders who moved on during nearby redevelopment and never returned – also in São Paulo, through the efforts of the A Batata Precisa de Você (The Potato Needs You) movement (see pp 60–69). This positive situation is echoed in architecture and public works commissions such as Praça das Artes (2013) in São Paulo, where Brasil Arquitetura, in partnership with Marcos Cartum, have created a public cultural complex in

the city’s historical centre by linking three streets to a new urban plaza (see p 69).

A Poetic Reduction of Nature Historically, the development of Brazilian cities under Portuguese colonisation followed no abstract plans to impose public order by means of city design. Contrary to the Cartesian grid that structures most cities of Spanish colonisation around a ‘plaza mayor’ (central square), Brazilian cities tend to be organised more around the demands of certain buildings and adaptations of their particular layouts and irregular plots than by an overriding guiding principle. Equally, public squares were rarely a generator of urban form, but emerged rather from the leftover spaces in the irregular configuration of urban lots – called largos – or later evolutions of church courtyards, patios and grounds.1 They are, then, spaces that were not initially conceived as public, and once they became public, only precariously managed to remain so. This urban structure predominated well into the 20th century, until the decisive entrance of modern architecture created a new local tradition. In 1929, with large-scale plans for Montevideo, Buenos Aires, São Paulo and, mainly, Rio de Janeiro, Le Corbusier forged a new relationship between architecture, urbanism and landscape design. That is, through the mediation of the architectonic gesture, nature was incorporated into the built environment in enormous structures that replicated its sinuous line. Modern Brazilian architecture, under the influence of Le Corbusier, ceased to be ‘a fortress against the environment’ and became ‘a poetic reduction of nature’.2

Monte Serrat Fortress Salvador Brazil 1580 Brazil’s earliest structures were a fortress against the environment.

This is the feature that defines the lightness of Rio de Janeiro’s modern architecture, spearheaded by Oscar Niemeyer from the 1930s to the 1960s. Architectonic versions of Le Corbusier’s urban plan for Rio can be seen in the work of diverse carioca architects, such as Affonso Eduardo Reidy’s Pedregulho housing complex (1947) in Rio or Niemeyer’s Copan Building (1966) in São Paulo; a lightness that also expresses itself at urban and landscape scales in Burle Marx’s fluid design of the grand sidewalk of Copacabana beach (1970), and the exuberant landscaping of the Aterro do Flamengo (Flamengo Embankment) (1965), a partnership between Reidy and Burle Marx.

Brasilia: Apogee and Crisis in Urban Modernisation Inaugurated in 1960, Brasília represents a climax in the art of design and construction in Brazil, as well as being the largest Modernist city design in the world. Planned as a ‘pure’ and autonomous administrative centre in which different social classes would share the same housing and urban services, Brasília was, meanwhile, the swansong of

Brazilian modernisation, since the whole idea of controlling urban growth within the city became a chimera immediately after its construction. In fact, a significant part of the public debt that fed uncontrolled inflation in the 1970s and 1980s resulted directly from Brasília’s construction. During these same decades, the country experienced explosive urban development and the impoverishment of its cities, leading to the rapid growth of favelas. In the more than five and a half decades between Brasília’s inauguration and the present day, the country’s population has practically tripled, from 70 to 200 million.3 With the great migration from rural areas to cities, the rate of Brazilian urbanisation has jumped from 45 per cent (still predominantly rural) to 85 per cent, characterised by the swell of urban centres and uncontrolled growth of their suburbs and favelas. Brasília’s original nucleus, the Pilot Plan, was designed to house 500,000 inhabitants. Today, including the surrounding ‘satellite cities’, the metropolitan area numbers approximately 2.8 million inhabitants, making it the country’s fourth largest city.4

Affonso Eduardo Reidy Pedregulho housing complex Benfica Rio de Janeiro 1947 The sinuous lines of Reidy’s housing block echo its topographical setting.

Affonso Eduardo Reidy and Roberto Burle Marx Aterro do Flamengo Rio de Janeiro 1965 Built on landfill, the Aterro do Flamengo (Flamengo Embankment) created a magnificent waterfront park in central Rio that is actively used to this day.

Neglected Cities To understand the plight of Brazil’s leading metropolises, a comparison between São Paulo and Mexico City is revealing. Despite having initiated construction of subway systems in the same era – at the end of the 1960s – Mexico City’s network today is two and a half times the extent of São Paulo’s. While the former has 202 kilometres (125 miles) of track, the latter has only 78 kilometres (48 miles), while Rio de Janeiro boasts a pitiful 40 kilometres (25 miles). It should be noted that public services in general have been poorly maintained in Brazilian cities since that time. Since the 1990s, issues of crime and public safety have dominated the daily life of urban Brazilians. Explosions of violence reflect both Brazil’s growing social apartheid and the decline of state power in relation to parallel structures such as criminal factions linked to drug trafficking and rural oligarchies. As a result, an urban model that might be called an ‘archipelago city’ has evolved in the face of these blatant social inequities. Favelas and luxury condominiums are often separated only by a simple wall.

In the 1990s, a sharp polarisation emerged in urban discussion and practice, which gave rise to a series of organised social movements such as the homeless (semtetos) who struggle for the right to occupy abandoned buildings in the centre of large cities. Urban policy-makers responded with increased sensitivity and understanding of informal settlements in the form of favela upgrade programmes, self-build social housing construction initiatives, and in São Paulo the construction of an extensive network of 45 public schools called Centros Educacionais Unificados (Unified Education Centres) or CEUs (between 2003 and 2009). These were conceived as community centres and many have evolved into thriving neighbourhood hubs. In a broader political sense, these gains are reflected in the creation of Brazil’s groundbreaking federal city statute, the Estatuto da Cidade, which was adopted in 2001. Considered to be among the most advanced urban legislative acts in the world, it includes consultation with civil society in the development of public urban-planning frameworks, such as the municipal strategic masterplan, the

Parisópolis São Paulo 2011 The well-established Parisópolis favela contrasts with the affluent towers of Morumbi beyond.

Faaveelaas and luxury co ondominiiums arre offten n separated only byy a siimple wall.

Alexandre Delijaicov, André Takiya and Wanderley Ariza CEU Rosa da China São Paulo 2003 A network of 45 Centros Educacionais Unificados (Unified Educational Centres), or CEUs – schools which are intended as neighbourhood hubs – were built in São Paulo between 2003 and 2009.

Plano Diretor. Moreover, it recognises the social function of urban land, introducing progressive taxes on vacant land or empty buildings in areas of public interest. Unfortunately, much of this legislation has yet to be implemented. One positive exception is São Paulo’s recently adopted Plano Diretor, approved by the municipal government in 2014. Sadly, Brazil still lacks the conditions to establish a coherent and consistent urban policy that cuts across and unifies the various spheres of public power: federal, state and municipal. This situation is further complicated by the fact that local policies are at the mercy of the political parties that govern each of these levels of government – often with conflicting interests. Furthermore, the almost complete absence of technical groups with architecture, planning and engineering expertise makes it difficult for municipal departments to resist ever-oscillating electoral currents. This means that medium- and long-term plans often end up being shelved.

Explosive Urban Growth In 2003, then president Luís Inácio Lula da Silva announced the country’s imminent economic ‘spectacle of growth’. This was met with scepticism by most of the population

Marabá Pará Brazil 2013 This monotonous housing estate devoid of amenities is located on the urban periphery and is typical of much of the housing delivered through the federal Minha Casa Minha Vida (My House, My Life) programme since 2009.

at the time, but it became credible at the end of the decade when the Brazilian economy passed practically unharmed through the 2008 financial tsunami, leading to an unprecedented influx of foreigners seeking work in the country. One clear example of this optimistic outlook was the São Paulo state government’s decision in 2009 to engage Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron to build a cultural dance complex in the middle of a downtown neighbourhood occupied by homeless people and crack users. In this case, despite the high standards of the architectural project, what the proposal made clear was a disconnect between Brazil’s global aspirations – and those of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro – and the segregated and divided realities of its cities. In the case of Herzog & de Meuron’s unbuilt Cultural Complex Luz (2012) (see pp 80–87), this discrepancy led to heated criticism – primarily due to the project’s high cost and its gentrification effects – which resulted in the government’s abandonment of the project. But returning to Lula’s 2003 decree, it would take a decade to notice that while the cities of the southeast had, in general, slowed their growth, medium-sized cities in the

north, northeast and central-west of Brazil were growing faster, in both economic and demographic terms, and in urban expansion. This confirmed the country’s centreperiphery spatial transformation, of which Brasília had been the initial step. If the construction of Brasília, a half-century ago, represented development of the country’s central region to promote national territorial integration, a by-product of this initiative was the Trans-Amazonian Highway, constructed during the military regime and inaugurated in 1972, around which many cities grew. The development of these remote areas followed a predatory logic with bursts of pioneering exploration resulting in gauche and miserable city satellites adjacent to extractive settlements for copper, bauxite, gold and rubber mining, without any investment in public space. Though a few neighbourhoods were actually planned for the top executives of these companies, the predominant development pattern was informal urbanisation – spontaneous and precarious – created by the sudden influx of people in search of work. The recent growth of medium-sized cities in Brazil’s north, northeast and centre-west regions is a new phenomenon resulting from the Lula government’s explicit

Suape Port Recife Pernambuco Brazil 2013 Developed over the last 30 years, this industrial port complex employing more than 30,000 people has experienced explosive growth devoid of any urban planning.

policy of economic decentralisation (2003–10). The federal government has thus instigated major infrastructure projects and provided the cash and labour to build them. These include the Transposition of the São Francisco River project in Pernambuco (begun in 2007); the Transnordestina railway linking Pernambuco and Ceará e Piauí (begun in 2006); the reconfiguration of the Suape Port close to Recife; and the construction of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam on the Xingu River in Pará (due for completion in 2019). Further investment has been allocated to commercial mining and the mechanisation of agriculture (especially soya beans), linked to the growth of Brazilian agro-business in the international market, and in the Minha Casa Minha Vida (MCMV – My House, My Life) housing programme, which during its first phase (2009–11) delivered one million housing units specifically for residents who earn up to 10 times the minimum salary. National economic growth and the rise of a new consumer middle class, the so-called ‘C class’, spurred this expansion despite the global economic crises that affected Europe and North America during this period. From a spatial perspective, these cities follow the laws of individualism, improvisation and urgency in the

complete absence of any orchestrated vision for the public good. Tall mirrored-glass clad buildings sprout in the central areas in the midst of low-rise housing, while large condominium complexes appear on the outskirts, often outside the cities.

Between Media Spectacle and Citizen Activism Brazil was capitalising on this growth spurt when it dived head first into the world of international sports events, winning the bids to host the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games. It is now widely accepted that these mega-events transcend the world of sports and involve massive infrastructure investment accompanied by rampant real-estate speculation. They have thus accentuated the country’s internal social disparities, creating a powerful tinderbox that ignited popular demonstrations on the streets of numerous Brazilian cities during the Confederations Cup in June 2013. With all the construction to prepare Rio to host the Olympic Games, the city has recovered an economic dynamism that it has not experienced since the federal government relocated to Brasília half a century ago. This investment is generally associated with a positive reduction

in violence in recent years, and the apparent success of the state government’s policy of favela pacification. Its so-called Unidade de Polícia Pacificador (units of police pacification) involve the occupation by community police of favela communities previously controlled by drug trafficking and organised crime. However, the urgency of the timeframes and the enormous scale of the works in question for both the World Cup and Olympics has served as a pretext for a complete lack of public transparency and an absence of competitive bidding for these projects. The entire process has been characterised by a lack of consultation with the communities affected and minimal public communication about what would actually be built. This absence of transparency has been accompanied by a tacit sympathy for iconic works with facile marketing appeal, such as the Porto Maravilha revitalisation project with Santiago Calatrava’s 2015 Museu do Amanhã (Museum of Tomorrow) (see pp 36–7) as its centrepiece and Jorge Mario Jáuregui/@telier metropolitano’s Complexo do Alemão cable car (2011) – two important emblems of the new Rio. Clearly, Brazil today is polarised between the urban marketing strategies of these global media events, on

the one hand, and the simultaneous empowerment of its citizens, expressed through political demonstrations and tactical urbanism actions in public spaces, on the other. Two examples are Recife’s Occupy Estelita movement, and Belo Horizonte’s Praia da Estação. In 2012, the Occupy Estelita movement began blocking plans to transform Recife’s downtown port area into a private luxury condominium complex. For several weeks in 2014 during the World Cup, activists camped out in an area adjacent to the José Estelita wharf and hosted a series of informal concerts and academic lectures on the themes of resisting land repossession and opposing market ‘laws’ and real-estate speculation. This represents an entirely new phenomenon of citizen engagement in Brazil. Praça da Estação esplanade is located in front of Belo Horizonte’s former railway station (now a museum), initially inaugurated in 1922. The mayor’s office issued a decree in December 2009 banning events near the station in order to keep people away. In response to this, community groups organised a festival there every Saturday with participants in beach attire to make the point that open and unfenced public space could be used and accessed by all social classes in true democratic fashion. This notion struck

deeply in Minas Gerais, an interior state with no beaches. Combining political and spontaneous activities, music and dance parties – enriched by water and sun, but equally animated on cold and rainy days – have now occurred regularly each week for more than five years. The surprising strength of these popular movements has placed the urban question prominently at the centre of Brazil’s political and social agenda. These acts of resistance and public unrest are at odds with the homogenising impact of real-estate speculation that still dominates Brazilian cities. Why is it that the social contribution of architecture has declined so precipitously in a country that built an entire capital just 50 years ago? The expectation today is that the vibrancy of Brazil’s new urban activism – intimately linked with occupying public spaces – will positively influence the way our cities are built. In this sense, the urban policies put in place by mayor Fernando Haddad in São Paulo since 2013 suggest a positive direction: an approach that favours bus lanes and cycle paths, for example, and understands that cities are for people and should not be sacrificed to the sterile whims of the market translated into built form.

Jorge Mario Jáuregui/ @telier metropolitano

Notes 1. See Manuel C Teixeira and Margarida Valla, O urbanismo português: séculos XIII-XVIII, Portugal-Brasil (Portuguese Urbanism From the 13th to the 18th Centuries), Livros Horizonte (Lisbon), 1999, p 218. 2. José Lins do Rego, ‘L’Homme et le paysage’, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, 42–43, 1952, p 3. 3. Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE – Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), 2007: www.ibge.gov.br/ home/estatistica/populacao/contagem2007/default.shtm. 4. See: www.citypopulation.de/Brazil-DistritoFederal.html.

Cable car Complexo do Alemão Rio de Janeiro 2011 opposite: This 3.5-kilometre (2-mile) long cable car has six stations that serve the Complexo do Alemão favela, home to more than 70,000 people.

Occupy Estelita protest Recife May 2015 Protesting the demolition of waterfront warehouses slated to be replaced by a luxury condominium development, demonstrators carry a banner which reads, ‘The city is ours. Occupy it.’

Text © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: p 20 © FLC/DACS, 2016; p 21 © Cristiano Mascaro; p 22 © Leonardo Finotti – [email protected]; pp 23(t), p 23(b) © Nelson Kon; 24-6 © Tuca Vieira; p 27 © Manolo Lima Jr/Fotoarena/Corbis

Ana Luiza Nobre

Whatt will be the outccom me of th he la arg ge-sscale e co onsttrucctiion n progrram mmes an nd un nderrdelive ere ed pro omisses und dertaken in n pre eparrattion n forr the e 20 016 Olympic an nd Para alym mpic Games? Ana Luizza Nobre e, Assoccia ate Pro ofe esssor of Archittecturral Histtory y at th he Pontifi fical Cattholicc Un niverrsitty of Rio o de Jan neirro and d Hea ad of Resea arcch and d Edu ucattion n at the In nsttitu uto o Morreirra Sallles, gazzes in nto o her cry ysttal ball and d asks wha at the ong going g leg gaccy of Rio 20 016 6 migh ht be e. Rio de Janeiro: key map locating major landmarks, projects and Olympic venues Rio’s hilly topography covered with tropical rainforest has meant that urban development has historically hugged the coastline, expanding to the west. The Olympic Park is located in Barra da Tijuca, around 35 kilometres (22 miles) west of the city centre. Olympic venues are clustered in four zones, served by new bus rapid transit (BRT) lines that will significantly improve access to certain areas of the city after the Games.

In stark contrast to the mission of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which purports to promote equality and a positive legacy for the Games’ host cities,1 Rio de Janeiro is a city ravaged by inequality – and set to remain so. With the opening of the Games in Rio only a matter of months away, there is very little indication that the Olympic experience is to have more than a limited beneficial impact on the city’s 6.3 million inhabitants. Many legacy promises have been abandoned or delayed until after the Games. The cleanup of Rio’s Guanabara Bay languishes unresolved, as does the recuperation of the lagoon complex bordering the Olympic Park in Barra da Tijuca, around 35 kilometres (22 miles) west of the city centre. Furthermore, Mayor Eduardo Paes’s ambitious Morar Carioca (Carioca Living) project (the goal of which was to provide urban infrastructure to 260 favelas by 2020) has not moved off the starting block, nor has the city’s proposed planting of 34 million trees to compensate for environmental damage associated with the Olympic plan. And despite the decrease in crime cited in official statistics,2 the city’s ‘pacification’ policy adopted over the last seven years – based on police militarisation – is a long way from containing urban violence. Meanwhile, the city is chock-a-block with new projects. In addition to the Olympic installations there are new museums, hotels, public spaces, real-estate ventures, corporate investments, infrastructure projects and a mega restructuring of the port area touted by the municipality as the locomotive for Rio’s ‘modernisation’ process. But what real legacy will remain after the Games? In a city with so many chronic problems, what expectations have been fulfilled, and what opportunities have been definitively lost?

Major projects initiated in Rio de Janeiro between 2009 and 2016 Graphic presentation of major projects initiated in Rio since the winning of the Olymic bid, showing links to designers (left) and contractors (right).

Ca ale end dar of Mega-E Eventts

Ch hang ge of Sce ena ario o

It is worth pointing out that the Olympic Games are just the endpoint of a calendar of mega-events that began with the Rio de Janeiro 2007 Pan American Games and intensified with the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (2012), the FIFA Confederations Cup and World Youth Day (2013), and the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Rio endured a long period of economic and cultural stagnation following the federal capital’s move to Brasília in the 1960s, and the city’s plight was exacerbated by decades of conflicting political alignment between federal, state and municipal government. This sequence of mega-events has mobilised resources from both the public and private sectors and created a series of new opportunities for the city.

To understand Rio’s predicament, one must bear in mind the changes in Brazil’s national landscape since 2009, when the city was chosen to host the Games. At that time, the entire country was riding high on the euphoria of petroleum discovered in Rio’s seabed, to such a point that the 2008 global economic crisis minimally impacted the national economy. A period of optimism ensued, sustained by a conjunction of factors, including federal policies to generate work and income, the growth of the middle class, and the selection of the country as host for this sequence of international events.

Investors, developers, architects, universities and businesses of various sorts have included Rio in their plans. And in an urban landscape notable for its spectacular natural setting, cranes as tall as skyscrapers soon became the most visible expression of the boom in both public works and private projects. These sweeping changes involved the radical transformation of places loaded with symbolism – such as Maracanã stadium which, despite being a national landmark, had its internal spaces and roof completely refurbished (and stripped of character) to meet FIFA’s requirements. However, little by little, foreign investors became scarcer – an early signal that initial expectations would perhaps not be met. Many projects were shelved and work was interrupted on various construction sites.

But signs of a Brazilian crisis began to appear in 2013 when popular demonstrations erupted across the country, openly questioning the government that had lured them in on promises of urban redemption based on these mega-events. Critical questions like the collapse of infrastructure and urban services, social inequality, public safety, and the eternal conflict between public and private interests were repeatedly aired in the public forum of the street. The multitudes that faced-down police truculence in the demonstrations were not simply demanding improved public transport, but also sanitation, health and transparency. For Brazil, this was an entirely new phenomenon, and one that persisted throughout 2015 and expanded to include calls for presidential impeachment. A shocking nine fatal accidents occurred during the construction of World Cup stadia and exposed just how much legislative leniency in the bidding process for public

Perimetral, Porto Maravilha, Rio de Janeiro, 2014 The Perimetral (Perimeter Road) was the name of the elevated motorway running along Rio's waterfront which linked the international airport to the city centre. As part of the Porto Maravilha project, the Perimetral was demolished and traffic rerouted through a tunnel, in order to link an area of 19th-century warehouses to the waterfront. New-build projects include commercial towers by Foster + Partners and Kohn Pedersen Fox.

The e countryy’s econo omic, poliitic cal and urb ban n crisses deterrioratted furtthe er in 20 014 4 when a serrie es of sccandals att Petrrobra as, th he sttate e ene ergyy co ompa any y, were re eveale ed.

Jorge Mario Jáuregui/ @telier metropolitano, Cable car, Complexo do Alemão, Rio de Janeiro, 2011 While comparison to the famous cable car at Rio’s Sugarloaf Mountain is inevitable, the one at Complexo do Alemão was the first of three new cable cars in Rio’s favelas. A second was completed in 2012 in Morro de Providência, Rio’s oldest favela located just a mile from the Porta Maravilha waterfront redevelopment area, but only officially inaugurated in 2014. A third cable car proposed for Rocinha, one of the city’s largest favelas in the city’s affluent zona oeste (west zone), is a source of controversy.

works contributed to satiate the greed of FIFA and its building contractors. And even if public safety during the World Cup was generally considered a success, problems of transportation, accessibility, sanitation, habitation and safety remain chronic in all 12 host cities. To make matters worse, the country’s economic, political and urban crises deteriorated further in 2014 when a series of scandals at Petrobras, the state energy company, were revealed. The allegations directly affected the construction industry with denunciations of corruption involving leading Brazilian contractors, including some of those responsible for Olympic sites. The country’s gross domestic product plummeted and unemployment shot up.

‘S Sanittatio on Yes,, Cable Carrs No!’ If Rio de Janeiro offers something refreshing within this appalling national landscape, it is thanks to what the Olympic Games signify in terms of employment opportunities, even if only for temporary jobs. Brazil’s second largest city is not much different from the rest of the country, where more homes have TVs (97 per cent) than sewerage (64.3 per cent).3 In the Olympic city, 30 per cent of the population still has no access to a public sanitation system, and even in areas with real hook-ups, only about half of the sewage is treated before flowing into rivers or the sea. This explains why residents of Rocinha (one of the largest favelas in the city, located in the affluent southern zone) are demanding basic sanitation rather than the cable car that current President Dilma Rousseff has promised, the third system of the sort that would be installed in the city’s favelas in the last four years (after the Complexo do Alemão and the Morro da Providência), with

resources from the Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento (PAC – Growth Acceleration Programme).4 Just like the panoramic elevator that connects the Cantagalo favela to Ipanema, these infrastructure projects undoubtedly have a utilitarian dimension beyond their tourist appeal. They do not contribute, though, to overcoming the implicit social stratification of territorial occupation that typifies Rio. In truth, in a city in which nearly one-fifth of the population lives in precarious, if not inhuman conditions, the public policies focused on favela urbanisation are still intermittent, oppressive and far from inclusive. Meaningful involvement of the affected residents is negligible. What is notable is the emergence in the last several years of new social and political actors in the public sphere, along with diverse community organisations, such as the Instituto Raízes em Movimento (Institute of Roots in Movement) and Observatório das Favelas (Observatory of Favelas),5 which challenge the stigmas of criminality among the city’s poor favela communities by strengthening their social and cultural capital.

Mob biliity and Diispla aceme ent The most significant legacy of the Olympics in Rio is likely to be several new public transport arteries, even though these projects privilege some areas at the expense of others and not all of the new system will be fully operational by August 2016 when the Games open. For example, despite controversy, construction of a new metro line between Ipanema and Barra will help integrate distant areas of the city. In addition, four new lanes for the exclusive use of the bus rapid transit (BRT) system – large-capacity buses

Diagrammatic map of the relocation of favela residents in Rio de Janeiro, Lucas Faulhaber, 2015 The map identifies favelas that have had evictions – the majority located in affluent parts of the city or those with imminent development potential – and the areas where families have been relocated.

Olympic zones

Port redevelopment

Favelas where evictions took place

MCMV public housing

inspired by the model of transportation adopted by Jaime Lerner in Curitiba in the 1970s – include the Transolímpica (Barra da Tijuca–Deodoro), Transoeste (Barra da Tijuca–Santa Cruz), Transbrasil (Deodoro–Centro) and Transcarioca (Barra da Tijuca–Ilha do Governador). The works and scale are enormous. The last one alone involves the construction of three underground tunnels, 10 viaducts and nine bridges (two financed by the state) along its 39 kilometres (24 miles). A light-rail transit line is also being constructed in the city centre, although its run is too short to significantly impact the overall transport network. And there is a plan for extensive cycle paths – totalling 230 kilometres (140 miles) – that would be the largest cycling network in Latin America, despite lack of investment in infrastructure and safety for cyclists, not to mention the challenges due to Rio’s hilly topography, tropical climate and traffic congestion. A substantial portion of BRT lines was already planned in the 1960s by the Greek urbanist Constantinos Doxiadis. But what finally justified the implementation of the system was the necessity to integrate 33 competition locations, grouped into four Olympic clusters, with a distance of up to 30 kilometres (19 miles) between them: Barra da Tijuca, Maracanã stadium, Copacabana and Deodoro. The ‘heart’ of the Games is in Barra da Tijuca where the Olympic Park, Athletes Village, and International Broadcast and Main Press Centres are located, yet the Opening and Closing Ceremonies and track-and-field events will take place at Maracanã, while equestrian, shooting and other events are sited in Deodoro, and water events in Copacabana. Access to the Olympic locations has been facilitated by the new BRT lines, while large metropolitan areas like the Baixada Fluminense in Rio’s less affluent north zone continue unattended. Nevertheless, it will be a great challenge to integrate the different sports sites.

Even more critical are the numbers of people arbitrarily relocated and the extent of property disappropriation precipitated by these infrastructure interventions. Despite the difficulty in obtaining precise information, data from the mayor’s office itself reveals that more than 20,000 families were relocated between January 2009 and December 2013 as part of public works associated with the Olympics, such as the construction of roadways and the rebuilding of the port area.6 Many were transferred to recently constructed housing units funded by the federal Minha Casa Minha Vida (My House, My Life) programme. Located mainly on the urban periphery, these projects suffer from extremely low architectural, urban design and construction quality and are lacking in nearby infrastructure or services.7 Meanwhile, a generous hotel package of financial incentives has resulted in a surge in hotel construction and renovation in order to meet the city’s commitment to the IOC to increase its capacity from 29,000 to 50,000 beds by 2016.

Po ortt Area Reg gen nera ation One of the most fascinating aspects of Rio’s recent construction surge has been seeing vestiges of the past surface after many decades beneath the asphalt. Cais do Valongo (Valongo Quay), in Rio’s port area near the historic city centre, is one such case. It is here that hundreds of thousands of slaves disembarked from Africa. The quay was discovered accidently during the works in the port area. Baptised Porto Maravilha (Marvellous Port), the intervention in this historic area calls for some 5 million square metres (55 million square feet) of new construction and is the ultimate symbol of the process of urban transformation currently underway in the city. The project is premised on the demolition of the Perimetral (Perimeter Road), a nearly 7-kilometre (4-mile) long elevated highway and its replacement by a

Baptised Porto Maravilha (Marvellous Port), the intervention in this historic area calls for some 5 million square metres of new construction and is the ultimate symbol of the process of urban transformation currently underway in the city.

tunnelled route. Foreseeing a population increase of up to 100,000 people in the area over the next decade, the mayor’s office created construction incentives such as the Certificado de Potencial Adicional de Construção (CEPAC – Certificate of Potential Additional Construction) to attract investors by increasing the buildable area. The argument put forward by the city was that money raised by the sale of the CEPACs would be reinvested in urban infrastructure and services. However, the auction was conducted in a single lot by the Caixa Econômica Federal , which, in the end, conferred substantial control of the port area operations to a single agent of a financial nature at the federal level with little stake in the urban design quality of the project. The Vila da Mídia e de Árbitros (Press and Referee Centre), intended as one of the anchors of Porto Maravilha, was relocated to the western part of the city without explanation.

Perimetral (Perimeter Road), Porto Maravilha, Rio de Janeiro, 2014 The demolition of the four-lane Perimetral and redevelopment of Rio’s deteriorated port area is the municipality’s key Olympic project in the city centre.

Bernardes+Jacobsen Arquitetura, Museu de Arte do Rio (Rio Museum of Art), Rio de Janeiro, 2013 The new art museum occupies two adjacent existing buildings – the early 20th-century eclecticstyle Palacete Dom João and its Modernist neighbour – which have been joined together under a new undulating concrete roof. The roof terrace is the initial stop on the museum visitation circuit and offers spectacular views of the renovated Mauá Square, Calatrava’s Museu do Amanhã (Museum of Tomorrow) and Rio’s Guanabara Bay.

Santiago Calatrava, Museu do Amanhã (Museum of Tomorrow), Rio de Janeiro, 2015

The 5,000-square-metre (53,820-square-foot) museum is the flagship building in Porta Maravilha, a major redevelopment of Rio’s port area by the Porto Novo Consortium, the country’s largest public–private partnership. With operable roof wings clad in solar panels, the building is signature Calatrava and houses a science museum where visitors can explore possible scenarios for the future of the planet through exhibitions on subjects such as population growth, consumption patterns, climate change, changes in biodiversity and technological advances.

Ne ew Muse eum ms The first of the new museums to be completed was the Museu de Arte do Rio (Rio Museum of Art) in 2013. The Bernardes + Jacobsen project dramatically integrated two existing buildings with an undulating concrete roof supported on slender pillars. A few metres away is Santiago Calatrava’s Museu do Amanhã (Museum of Tomorrow) (2015). As in the case of the art museum, the criteria for the selection of the architect were never clear. And yet the museum’s prime site is exceptional: an inactive pier right in Guanabara Bay. With a focus on science and technology, the 15,000-square-metre (160,000-square-foot) museum is wrapped in a rhetoric of sustainability. Its most dramatic visual element is a retractable roof with a 70-metre (230-foot) wingspan, said to capture the maximum of sunlight. Its iconic architecture speaks to an image of Rio as a tourist destination, but it offers almost nothing in terms of meaningful public space.

The third museum of the bunch – and the only one that resulted from a competition, albeit of a closed sort – is the Museu da Imagem e do Som (Museum of Image and Sound) designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and due for completion in 2016. The museum occupies a narrow site on Copacabana beach, the famous sidewalk of which, designed by Roberto Burle Marx, has been reinterpreted as a vertical boulevard, a slab that unfolds upwards from the street, zigzagging its way along the building’s facade. The result is one more iconic building with a stunning view of the city, consistent with the self-celebratory rhetoric that surrounds the architectural expression of the new Rio, and another frontal posture facing the sea that espouses a selective relationship to the complexity of the contemporary city. And in so doing, it reiterates an ideologically loaded concept of the cityscape that once again faces the beach and turns its back on the favela behind it.

Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Museu da Imagem e do Som (Museum of Image and Sound), Rio de Janeiro, 2016 Facing Copacabana beach, the museum’s facade incorporates a vertical promenade, which according to the architects is a reinterpretation of Roberto Burle Marx’s mosaic pavement along the beachfront, intended to ‘curate’ views of the bay for visitors as they move through the building.

Ollymp pic Park k Of the many projects underway, the only one that resulted from a public international competition was the Olympic Park in Barra da Tijuca. The masterplan, by international firm AECOM, divides the triangular plot into two symmetrical parts separated by a catwalk that references Burle Marx’s Copacabana promenade. There, in an area of more than a million square metres (over 10 million square feet) at the edge of a lagoon, are concentrated installations for 16 Olympic and 10 Paralympic sports, the International Broadcast and Main Press Centres, and a hotel. The problem here is the extent of investment in infrastructure, highquality venues and facilities without a clear plan for how they will be adapted after the Games. Instead of contributing to the revitalisation of the city centre and to the reduction of the inequalities and socio-spatial segregation that are chronic in Rio de Janeiro, the Olympic Park forms part of the propaganda for mega real-estate development underway in this distant western zone of the city. Even retrofitting existing structures went unexplored, with the exception of the Arena do Futuro (Arena of the Future) dedicated to handball and goalball, the steel structure of which is to be dismantled and reused in the construction of four schools.

Olympic Park, Barra da Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro, July 2015 Facing the Jacarepaguá Lagoon, the triangular site masterplanned by AECOM centres on a curving promenade, a reference to Roberto Burle Marx’s Copacabana pavement. Far left is the International Broadcasting Centre. Venues include (left to right): the Olympic Aquatics Stadium (temporary; swimming and water polo); Olympic Tennis Centre (centre rear); Future Arena (right front; handball); Carioca Arenas 1, 2 and 3 (basketball, judo, wrestling, fencing and taekwando); Rio Olympic Velodrome (track cycling); Rio Olympic Arena (gymnastics); and the Maria Lenks Aquatics Centre (diving and synchronised swimming).

Lopes Santos Ferreira Gomes/AndArchitects, Arena do Futuro (Arena of the Future), Barra da Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro, 2015 Used for handball during the Olympic Games and goalball during the Paralympic Games, the Arena of the Future has been designed in order to be dismantled and reconfigured into four schools. To ensure delivery of the legacy schools, the construction contract includes within its scope dismantling the arena and rebuilding the four schools in their final form.

But it is just beyond the border of the Olympic Park that the full extent of the lunacy of Rio’s Olympic undertaking is revealed. A battle between the mayor’s office and residents of the so-called Vila Autódromo has been ongoing since the 1990s. A small community (about 450 families) installed themselves in the 1960s on the then deserted banks of the Lagoa de Jacarepaguá, a piece of land that suddenly became extremely valuable due to the location of the Olympic Park. With the assistance of teams from two universities – the Instituto de Pesquisa e Planejamento Urbano e Regional (IPPUR – Institute of Urban and Regional Planning and Research) of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), and the Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF) – Vila Autódromo residents proposed an urban redevelopment plan as an alternative to relocation. Despite its embryonic character, the Plano Popular da Vila Autódromo (People’s Plan for Vila Autódromo) became a citywide symbol of the political struggle against evictions, even winning Deutsche Bank’s prestigious Urban Age Award. Yet the silence of the Brazilian media about the award was absolute.

Atthlettes Village e: Ilh ha Purra (P Pure e Island d) Nothing is more revealing of the exclusionary agenda of Rio’s Olympic project than the Athletes Village, a future upper-class neighbourhood ironically baptised Ilha Pura, located near the Olympic Park. Seven gated condominium communities comprising 3,600 two- to four-bedroom apartments (valued between 700,000 and 1.3 million Brazilian reais) are distributed in 31 17-storey towers on a 900,000-squaremetre (9.7-million-square-foot) site. Ilha Pura is the largest project ever undertaken by its developer, who was also responsible for its design. How is it possible that Rio, a city known internationally for its exceptional modern architecture, could permit a project of this calibre to be handed over to a real-estate mogul who emerged in recent decades and is constructing buildings of zero architectural and urbanistic quality throughout the city? Curiously, in recent years, the architectural project that most distinguished itself was one built of scaffolding: the Pavilhão Humanidade (Humanity Pavilion). Conceived for Rio+20 in 2012 by architect Carla Juaçaba and set designer Bia Lessa, it was built over a fortress at the edge of Copacabana beach and drew on genuine architectural experimentation. The lingering memory of Pavilhão Humanidade far surpassed its brief 15-day existence, and it was an ideal local precedent for the temporary structures of the Olympic Games. However, this inspirational approach was ignored by those who commissioned the Olympic venues.

Unfortunately, on the eve of the Games, what is apparent is that most of the new works are not worthy of the architecture and public spaces that Rio already has. If the positive impact of Parque Madureira (the third largest public park in the city located in the impoverished northern zone) inaugurated at Rio+20 in 2012 is undeniable, the question must be asked: What innovation have the Olympic projects offered the city? And what is their contribution to reducing the social and territorial inequalities that are so prevalent, not to mention the perverse logic of gentrification that characterises so many urban renewal processes around the world? No doubt this is a difficult game to change. But this game is not over yet. Nor will it end when the torch goes out. Notes 1. http://www.olympic.org/about-ioc-institution. 2. According to the Instituto do Segurança Pública (Institute of Public Security), the intentional homicide rate in the state of Rio de Janeiro, for example, fell by 65.5 per cent between 2008 and 2014. See http://g1.globo.com/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2015/05/isp-divulgadados-sobre-criminalidade-em-areas-de-upp-do-rio.html. 3. According to the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE – Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) Pesquisa Nacional por Amostras de Domicílios de 2013 (National Survey of Households): www.ibge.gov.br/home/estatistica/populacao/trabalhoerendimento/ pnad2013/. 4. A federal programme created in 2007 with the objective of accelerating economic growth in the country and prioritising investment in infrastructure (including sanitation, housing, transport, energy and water). 5. Both created in 2001, the first in the Complexo do Alemão and the second in Maré, two of the largest favela complexes in the city: www.raizesemmovimento.org.br and www. observatoriodefavelas.org.br. 6. See Lucas Faulhaber and Lena Azevedo, SMH 2016: Remoções no Rio de Janeiro Olímpico, Mórula Editorial (Rio de Janeiro), 2015. 7. The federal government launched this programme in 2009, with an initial goal of building a million units for families with an income up to 10 times the minimum salary.

Carla Juaçaba and Bia Lessa, Pavilhão Humanidade (Humanity Pavilion), Fort Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro, 2012 The Pavilhão Humanidade was a temporary pavilion – 170 metres (560 feet) long by 40 metres (130 feet) wide and 20 metres (65 feet) high, erected over Copacabana Fort at the west end of Copacabana beach during the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. Built entirely of scaffolding, which lent it an ephemeral quality, the pavilion welcomed visitors through a circuit of ramps and fabricenclosed exhibition spaces leading to a rooftop terrace surrounded by flags of all Rio+20 participating countries.

Text © 2016 Ana Luiza Nobre. Images: p 29 © Dilton Lopes; pp 30-1 © Ana Luiza Nobre/Observatório de Projetos/PUCRio; p 32 © Mauro Restiffe; p 33 © Tuca Vieira; p 34 © Lucas Faulhaber. From Lucas Faulhaber and Lena Azevedo, SMH 2016: Remoções no Rio de Janeiro Olímpico, Mórula (Rio de Janeiro), 2015; p 35 © Ricardo Moraes/Reuters/Corbis; p 36(t) © Jacobsen Arquitetura, photo Andres Otero; p 36(b) © Roberto Marinho Foundation, photo Bernard Miranda Lessa; p 37 © Diller Scofidio + Renfro; p 38(t) © Vanderlei Almeida/Getty Images; p 38(b) © AndArchitects and Lopes Santos Ferreira Gomes; p 39 © Josué Tanaka

How Rio de Janeiro’s Mega Sporting Events Derailed the Legacy of Favela-Bairro

Jorge Mario Jáuregui/@telier metropolitano, Favela-Bairro urban renewal scheme, Salgueiro, Rio de Janeiro, 1998

Justin McGuirk

The eviction of thousands of inhabitants from informal settlements has been a regressive feature in the lead up to Rio 2016. Writer and curator Justin McGuirk describes why, on the eve of the Olympic Games, the government reverted to favela removals after the enlightened era of the Favela-Bairro in the 1990s, which saw informal communities upgraded and integrated into the formal city.

Before (opposite) and after (above): a steep pedestrian path is replaced with planted steps and railings.

Jorge Mario Jáuregui/@telier metropolitano, Favela-Bairro urban renewal scheme, Fernão Cardim, Rio de Janeiro, 1997 Before (top) and after (above): part of the urban renewal scheme in Fernão Cardim involved channelling the river and creating a road.

Jorge Mario Jáuregui/@telier metropolitano, Complexo do Alemão housing, Rio de Janeiro, 2009 A landscaped pedestrian path winds through a development with 700 units of new housing.

In early June 2015, a series of ‘lightning evictions’ struck favelas across Rio. With little or no warning, armed police and bulldozers swept into Metro-Manguiera in the zona norte (north zone), Santa Marta in the zona sul (south zone) and even Morro da Providência in the city centre to forcibly remove residents, or simply demolish their homes in their absence. In Vila Autódromo, to the west of the city, where 150 remaining families have become a symbol of resistance to developments at the nearby Olympic park, police attacked residents with rubber bullets and batons. Such scenes represent a loss of patience by Rio authorities with the slow pace of the due process – the messy business of compensation or relocation. Since Eduardo Paes became Mayor of Rio in 2009, approximately 70,000 people have been evicted from their homes.1 The city has not seen a comparable wave of slum clearances since the 1960s and 1970s, when the military dictatorship carried out what has been described as ‘without doubt the largest urban “cleansing” operation that has taken place in the country’.2 In almost half of these cases, the pretext for evictions is that residents live in ‘areas of risk’ – those susceptible to flooding or landslides – a default phrase that is not always substantiated. What is clear, however, is that they have all coincided with the preparations for two global sporting spectacles: the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Paes and others continue to talk of a ‘social legacy’. Rio has deployed favela clearances for nearly 100 years – almost as long as it has had favelas. From the bota abaixo (‘tear down’) policies of the early 20th century to the relocations to tower blocks and camp-like settlements such as City of God in the 1960s, Rio has always been prepared to take a tough line on informal communities. If the tens of thousands of evictions in the last six years feel like a return to the bad old days, it is only because there was a moment in the 1990s and early 2000s when the city set a much more enlightened example.

Fav vela-B Bairro o: In nte egratiing th he Favela In 1994, under Mayor Cesar Maia, Rio launched the largest slum-upgrading programme in Latin America. The FavelaBairro, a name that declared the scheme’s ambition to turn slums into neighbourhoods, was the brainchild of Rio’s secretary of housing Sergio Magalhães and the head of planning Luiz Paulo Conde, and marked a shift in attitude towards the informal city. Instead of the slum clearances that characterised the rest of the century, it represented a more nurturing approach that sought to integrate the favela into the so-called formal city. There had been cases of architects working in the favelas before: the obvious example is Carlos Nelson Ferreira dos Santos, who in the 1970s developed participative design practices in Brás de Pina. And there had been government policies that encouraged self-building, such as the short-lived mutirão programme of the 1980s. There had even been slum upgrading, though mostly it was limited to retrofitting basic sanitation systems or running

water. However, this was the first time that a major public programme sought to address the conditions of the favela on multiple fronts at once – including urban design. In the 1970s and 1980s the idea that urban design might be the solution to informality was out of favour, as the Modernist legacy of tabula rasa development was reappraised. It was as if architecture had become the scapegoat for the inability to control the sprawling favelas. Architects were out, and neoliberal economic policies, which assumed that the benefits of a deregulated market would trickle down to the poorest, were in. It was not until the Favela-Bairro programme that design was reprised as a crucial weapon in the battle to integrate the favelas into the city. It was a major U-turn in urban policy. In 1994 there were 661 favelas in Rio, home to more than a million people, and yet they had never been included on any official maps of the city. They were terra incognita. Yet Favela-Bairro reflected a paradigm shift in the perception of informality. The favelas started to be treated not as outlaw territory, but as useful pieces of the city. Rather than erasure, what they required was enhancement. And that did not just mean introducing electricity, sewerage and other services that they had previously been denied or had to steal; it meant designing in some of the spatial qualities of urbanity. Funded in part by the Inter-American Development Bank, Favela-Bairro was the most ambitious slum-upgrading programme in the world. The goal was to upgrade all of Rio’s medium-sized favelas (around 200) within 10 years. That meant installing basic sanitation systems and other public services, improving the quality of the streetscape and circulation systems and, more controversially, inserting moments of urbanity, such as public plazas. All of these strategies were combined with social policies aimed at improving quality of life. Beyond its scale, it was this multipronged approach that distinguished Favela-Bairro from previous strategies. Absolutely central was the notion that the informal had to be connected to the formal city. In contrast to the mid-century favela erasures, this more sensitive approach left the street pattern and the houses intact, instead operating within and around them. Roads were paved and widened to improve access for vehicles, while staircases, ramps and funiculars improved pedestrian mobility in and out of the favelas. At the same time, public spaces were inserted into the dense streetscape. Plazas and meeting platforms were used to create a sense of breathing space, but also to induce civic pride and encourage ‘urban values’. In fact, these were often deployed around the edges of favelas to break up the physical and psychological barriers between poor and middle-class areas. They were bridges of sorts, transitional zones connecting segregated neighbourhoods and dissolving the boundaries between them. Beyond that, new public spaces and community buildings were supposed to serve as demonstrative symbols of improvement – making the favelas look more like the rest of the city, and thus eroding the stigma attached to them.

Jorge Mario Jáuregui/@telier metropolitano, Cable car, Complexo do Alemão, Rio de Janeiro, 2011 The Complexo do Alemão cable car consists of six stations that serve the area’s 13 favelas, reducing what was previously a more than one-hour journey to just 17 minutes. Critics argue that Rio has opted for showy postcard infrastructure in lieu of essentials such as improved sanitation.

Favela-Bairro became the vehicle through which a number of independent local architects, such as Jorge Mario Jáuregui and Pablo Benetti, both hired through competitions, developed an expertise in working in the favelas. Jáuregui, for instance, has worked on more than 20 favela-upgrading projects. These were often small interventions to dignify the public realm or to improve mobility: turning a dirt track into a covered staircase in Salgueiro or creating a small plaza in Vidigal. However, some of Jáuregui’s other Favela-Bairro schemes were more ambitious. He built a striking housing project in Macacos, and in Fernão Cardim he delivered a complex urban renewal scheme that included channelling the river, creating a public square and adding sports facilities and a nursery school. These projects are very poorly documented. Today, small-scale social architecture in poor communities warrants flying in a professional photographer, but in the 1990s this was still a marginal, low-profile form of practice. The original condition of the projects is preserved mostly in sketches or in fading before-and-after snaps taken by the architects themselves.

The e Legaccy of Fav vela-B Bairro o By 2000, Favela-Bairro had intervened in 150 communities that were home to nearly half a million people.3 But investment in the programme declined when Cesar Maia was re-elected as mayor in 2001. Even though he had launched the scheme in his first term, its key achievements were associated with his successor, Luiz Paulo Conde, and so in the great tradition of Latin American politicians, he pulled the plug. The Favela-Bairro programme achieved great things: it lifted the urban quality of the favelas, provided important amenities and boosted civic pride while requiring very little displacement of residents. But, with 20 years’ hindsight, it was not an unqualified success. It was assumed at the time that improving the public realm would trigger a spontaneous refurbishment of favela housing by the residents themselves, and that did not often occur. Despite high approval ratings among residents, the process in many instances was also not as participative as it should have been, and so counts as a paternalistic achievement rather than a community one. Finally, the biggest failure of all was the naive notion that upgrading would have any impact on the narco-traffickers who dominated the favelas. That particular problem would not be tackled for another decade, and unfortunately through military means with the arrival of the ‘pacification’ units. If the legacy of the programme is a mixed one, this is partly because the emphasis on citizen participation and sensitivity to the spatial qualities of the favela have only grown since the 1990s. For the aim of Favela-Bairro was not just to improve quality of life in the favelas, but to raise the perception of them in the urban imaginary. And here we stumble into the politics of slum upgrading with its vying ideologies and strategies. The question of ‘image’ is

more controversial than the provision of amenities. Some critics felt that the aesthetic approach of inserting symbols of urbanity smacked of authoritarian urban planning and threatened to weaken the identity of the favelas. Indeed, ‘urbanity’ is a loaded concept. The urbanist Saskia Sassen has since coined the term ‘cityness’4 as a more inclusive alternative to describe urban qualities that do not conform to the Western ideal. And favelas certainly have cityness, since they are one of the prevalent conditions of contemporary urbanity. So the very idea of inserting urban images and instituting urban values suggested that the favelas were in some way pre-urban, whereas recent discourse has been more accepting of informality as an essential urban condition. Favela-Bairro was certainly not immune to such nuances; it recognised that the challenge lay in integrating the favelas without diluting their identity. As Pablo Benetti put it: ‘If … the favela is no longer a separate territory – if it comes to offer qualitatively different spaces from those encountered within the city, if it holds treasures and potentials not immediately revealed to the public – then it is possible that the favela may command respect.’5 But the architects behind the programme also argued that challenging the perception of the favelas, visually, was crucial to their acceptance as ordinary neighbourhoods. This was especially true in the ‘gateway’ spaces with which they attempted to dissolve the abrupt borders between poor and middle-class communities. And the concept would later prove influential in, for example, Medellín in Colombia where showpiece buildings were used in part to transform the perception of hilltop comunas. Favela-Bairro was a major milestone in the history of attempts to address extreme urban inequality. However, watching what is going on in Rio today, it seems to have been a strange anomaly. While the city has been using the momentum of the Olympic and Paralympic Games to build much-needed transport infrastructure, these will mainly benefit the more affluent central and western zones. The legacy for favelados is far harder to discern.

The aim of FavelaBairro was not just to improve quality of life in the favelas, but to raise the perception of them in the urban imaginary.

Vigliecca & Associados, Morar Carioca (Carioca Living) proposal for Morro dos Macacos, Morro São João and Parque Vila Isabel, Rio de Janeiro, 2010 top left: The proposal sought to use the new-build housing to define the edge between urbanised favela and areas set aside for environmental protection. top right: The intervention proposed creating public squares within the fabric of the favela linking existing alleys and creating new poles of activity. left: Termed ‘infiltration wedges’ by the architects, blocks of 8- to 12-storey housing were proposed at 600-metre (1,970-foot) intervals to vertically connect different ground levels.

A typical Minha Casa Minha Vida development, 2013 Brazil’s current federal housing programme is based on privately funded housing estates on cheap land on the distant urban periphery, devoid of any urban amenities and with minimal transport connections to the city.

Mora ar Cariocca:: Hig gh Hopess for an n Ollympic Leg gaccy Early in Eduardo Paes’s tenure, there were signs that the spirit of Favela-Bairro was to be revived. In 2010 he unveiled the Morar Carioca (Carioca Living) programme, which was to be a centrepiece of the social legacy of the Olympics. This enormous slum-upgrading programme aimed at integrating 582 favelas housing more than a million people. With a budget of US$2.7 billion, it dwarfed Favela-Bairro. And it was accompanied by some bold claims. Paes announced that every favela in the city would be upgraded by 2020. Morar Carioca was to continue the upgrading process by addressing some of its predecessor’s shortcomings. One of the weaknesses of Favela-Bairro was that it did little to improve the quality of housing in the favelas, and that would be a key focus of the new programme. A major national competition was launched, and 40 architects were chosen to carry out projects in 100 favelas. Some of these were strategies for upgrading the existing housing, but many involved creating a more diverse landscape, for instance by inserting larger housing blocks into the low-rise favelas. Often the aim was to vary the urban grain by adding pockets of density that would allow small public spaces to be inserted nearby. While we do not have the benefit of any results to judge, the launch of the programme was a deeply optimistic moment. Six years later, however, there is no sign of Morar Carioca. Despite appearing in official presentations for years after its unveiling – and even garnering Rio a City Climate Leadership Award – it was never implemented. It simply fell off the agenda. The obvious explanation would be that municipal budgets have been redirected towards meeting the deadline of the 2016 Olympics. If so, then how can one even begin to talk of a ‘social legacy’? But there were also rumours of the programme falling foul of more cynical political machinations, with the state governor’s Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) unwilling to start the programme lest it lose the elections and let another party take the credit for its flagship initiative. In any event, one can only say that the most visible policies aimed at alleviating urban inequality in the last five years have pursued a very different logic to FavelaBairro. Firstly, the policy of ‘pacification’ that has sought to reclaim favelas from the control of drug gangs has seen dozens of favelas turned into conflict zones. Whether or not the use of military tactics is a necessary evil, there have been enough abuses of power and incidents of police brutality in the favelas to suggest that their residents are still not equal citizens. Other policies fall under the category of a favourite Brazilian expression: ‘para Inglês ver’, or, liberally translated, to dupe the English. Such interventions look impressive, but may be less useful. Cable cars, a pillar of slum upgrading programmes in Medellín and Caracas, have been less welcome in Rio.

The city spent US$70 million on the extensive cable-car system in the Complexo do Alemão, but only 17 per cent of the population use it regularly. Indeed, in consultation processes residents had apparently expressed a preference for the money to be spent on sewage systems, which says much about the current state of participative processes. In Morro da Providência, the cable car was also installed to the bemusement of locals. The residents of Rocinha, meanwhile, are trying to prevent theirs being built at all.

Min nha a Cassa Minha Vid da: Non-urrba anissm Meanwhile, the city’s social housing policies are back where they were in the 1960s. Under the Accelerated Growth Programme (PAC), a national investment scheme for infrastructure, billions have been spent on substandard housing. The Minha Casa Minha Vida (MCMV – My House, My Life) programme churns out cheap housing on the western periphery of Rio, two hours from the city centre. These communities are often ghettoes in the making – isolated, lacking any social or economic amenities, and in the early stages of their inevitable decline. Residents removed from Vila Autódromo to the new MCMV housing at Parque Carioca are already complaining that it is uninhabitable. This is housing for meeting targets on a government spreadsheet and as a device for feeding lines of credit to the construction industry. It has nothing to do with the principles of good urbanism or the forming of communities. And it certainly adheres to none of the principles of incremental urban growth established by Favela-Bairro. Having initially set the agenda when it comes to integrating favelas, Rio has effectively turned its back on that history. Far from providing a social legacy, the World Cup and the Olympics have effectively derailed a process that was beginning to address urban inequality in one of the most unequal countries in the world. If there was ever a case study in why we need to rethink the use of mega sporting events as a tool of urban regeneration, this is it. Notes 1. Bruno Porpetta, ‘The Olympics Serve to Legitimize Evictions’, Rioonwatch.org, 18 May 2015: www.rioonwatch.org/?p=22033. 2. Roberto Segre, ‘Formal-Informal Connections in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro: The Favela-Bairro Programme’, in Felipe Hernandez, Peter Kellett and Lea K Allen (eds), Rethinking the Informal City: Critical Perspectives from Latin America, Berghahn Books (New York and Oxford), 2010, p.166 3. Roberto Segre, “Formal-Informal Connections in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro: The Favela-Bairro Programme”, in Felipe Hernandez, Peter Kellett and Lea K. Allen (eds), Rethinking the Informal City: Critical Perspectives from Latin America, Berghahn Books, 2010, p.170 4. Saskia Sassen, ‘Cityness in the Urban Age’, Urban Age Bulletin, 2, Autumn 2005, p.5 5. Pablo Benetti, Transforming Cities: Design in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro, AA Publications (London), 2001.

Text © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 40-42 © @telier metropolitana, photos Gabriel Jáuregui; pp 44, 46(b) © Tuca Vieira; p 46 (tl,tr,cl) © Vigliecca & Associados

Gabriel Duarte

CAMPO New Cartographies: Incompatible segments of Rio’s cartography 2013 Even though different segments of Rio’s cartographic database can be accessed individually, and are correctly georeferenced, not all can be accurately attached to each other to form larger mosaics as they have either been developed by different companies, or in different years.

As a young architect in the 1990s, Gabriel Duarte, now an architecture professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, worked on the Favela-Bairro initiative. Here he describes how that experience of mapping and designing informal settlements proved formative, informing the New Cartographies research project that his practice, CAMPO, has undertaken to informally map Rio’s physical and social transformations in the run up to 2016.

CAMPO New Cartographies: Informal settlements in Rio purposefully left unmapped 2013 The superimposition of the vector maps of Rio’s official cartographic database on top of the orthophotos that were used to generate them reveals marginal urban tissues that have been skipped on purpose. These are mostly informal settlements, seen in the coloured parts of the image.

Any architect educated in Rio in the 1990s by necessity participated in favela upgrade projects. With the success of the city’s US$600million Favela-Bairro programme (1994–2008), these projects represented a key strand of our professional formation and outlook. My first work experiences were not drafting bathroom details, organising someone else's files or making models. Rather I surveyed and documented various Rio favelas to inform the planning and design decisions that were being made by the offices where I worked before starting my own. At the time and to this day, these informal parts of Rio were largely unknown and undocumented by government planning agencies. It was the architect’s responsibility to survey the physical urban fabric, as well as to compile local social and economic data. This work was essential to gather the basic information that was needed to support these projects. It also rendered visible pressing urban conditions that had been previously ignored by public authorities. Since founding my own practice – CAMPO – in 2008, much of our work has focused on Rio’s informal settlements. For several years, we continued to survey and document favelas as we always had. This way of working was by then established as a conventional practice. Force of habit and routine meant that we took this approach for granted.

A Deficiency in Rio’s Mapping It was not until 2012, with the onset of infrastructure construction to prepare the city for the 2014 FIFA World Cup and 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games, that we began to recognise the deficiency of Rio’s mapping, both in professional, and more importantly, in cultural terms. Many upper- and middle-class Brazilians, especially in Rio, are reluctant to accept informal settlements as a legitimate form of urbanisation and do not acknowledge the fundamental citizenship rights of their inhabitants. Despite the efforts of numerous design consultancies working on favelas, the information generated by all these surveys was never fully assimilated by the city or published. Informal settlements are still largely ignored in the city’s official cartography.

This condition became even more apparent with the wave of urban and architectural projects tied both directly and indirectly to the city’s 2014 and 2016 sports mega-events. These transformations drastically – and violently – changed how informal settlements were impacted by planning decisions. The implementation of the proposals was often accompanied by isolated clearance and relocation of low-income communities to give way to socalled ‘legacy projects’ and related public safety and real-estate operations. Initially, these evictions were not articulated at all, but slowly, scatterings of partial information and perverse relationships began to emerge through community-based media sources such as the Observatório de Favelas (Favelas Observatory) and Comitê Popular Rio Copa e Olimpíadas (Rio World Cup and Olympics Popular Committee),1 and a few articles in mainstream periodicals. Prior to 1980, forced evictions and the relocation of entire communities to isolated, low-quality public housing at the urban periphery had been the norm. Reflecting urban planning ideology elsewhere across the globe, informal territories were viewed as a cancer that had to be urgently and thoroughly purged. This modus operandi for city improvement had all but vanished by the turn of the millennium, largely due to the success of the Favela-Bairro programme, which revealed and even championed the intrinsic qualities of informal settlements. However, favela clearance recently appears to be making a veiled comeback. Mostly out of curiosity, but also in an effort to avoid the naive excitement that we (architects) initially felt with Rio’s ostensible success winning the Olympic bid, we decided to test this hypothesis by informally mapping the city’s physical and social transformations. What began as mere curiosity quickly became a serious line of research within our practice. Our familiarity with mapping and cartographic processes, combined with our proximity to the official institutes working with them in Rio, enabled us to quickly fathom how partial social-geographic representation in the city actually was and how many voices were not being heard. Ironically, a generous grant from the Rio municipality through the Centro Carioca de Design (Carioca Design Centre) – a public

CAMPO New Cartographies: Rio 5-kilometre grid map 2013 Because the city has been inconsistently mapped using 5-kilometre (3-mile) segments over the years, some regions have been surveyed in extreme detail while others remain largely obscure, failing to compose a comprehensive and easily accessible cartographic database.

cultural centre devoted to design – in 2010 funded CAMPO to undertake a one-year research project, which we called New Cartographies. This later evolved into exhibitions in Rio and in São Paulo (as part of the 10th Architecture Biennale in 2013),2 and an independent research group.

Maps as Political (or Socio-Cultural?) Constructs The premise of the New Cartographies project is that maps are socio-cultural constructs whose production is embedded in the different agendas of those in power. With this in mind, we invited a multidisciplinary team of designers, programmers and activists to join forces in different experiments in collaborative mapping. It soon became clear that there is a fundamental difference between the act of mapping and the cartographic artefact. Cartography is usually understood as a means of representing the reality and physical structure of a given territory, be it urban or natural. The map, as artefact, involves a dimension of both art and technique. However, mapping as an action must also be understood from a methodological point of view, as a way to see, understand, select and initiate action. Relying on bottom-up participation and specialised knowledge, New Cartographies aimed to reveal to both urban

CAMPO New Cartographies: Large Map of Urban Transformations of Rio 2013 As one of the experiments developed as part of the New Cartographies project, this map used existing segments of Rio’s cartographic database that were carefully updated and stitched to compose a simultaneous visualisation of all of them in a large-scale and highly detailed printed map at 1:10.000 scale (the largest ever made).

The development of the printed base for the Large Map of Urban Transformations of Rio took one full year of work by a team of four full-time architects and designers. Missing information, such as informal settlements and illegal occupations, was added manually through aerophotogrammetry with details reaching up to individual buildings that were extracted from existing databases.

opposite: With most of the layers being projected onto the Large Map of Urban Transformations of Rio linked to online databases that were continuously and automatically updated, visitors to the two exhibitions at which the project was presented could use a Web-based application to combine information according to their interests, enabling different interpretations.

By accessing the City of Rio’s online cartographic database, and different media such as newspapers and commercial websites through their APIs (application programming interfaces), several layers containing information that are updated in real time were extracted and adjusted to be correctly projected onto the printed base of the Large Map of Urban Transformations of Rio. This image shows layers locating communities currently being evicted and key project sites for the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Alongside data acquired from online sources, the Large Map of Urban Transformations of Rio also portrayed a pool of 42 static layers with updated information that could be freely recombined by the audience for the first time. This allowed the concurrent visualisation of the entire urban footprint of Rio in detail with critical information on the implementation of public policies, real estate and safety, among numerous other types of data.

professionals and to the general public a wider narrative about Rio’s transformations by producing maps outside the biased institutional purview of government planning agencies. It is important to point out that bottom-up survey techniques do not necessarily ensure safe routes to represent diverse realities. These can be as misleading and deceptive as maps based on data supplied by the public sector, which are sometimes manipulated for political and financial reasons. A recent example that demonstrates how maps can be manipulated is the mapping of public safety statistics by the state government of Rio de Janeiro. A 2011 study by the Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada (Institute for Applied Economic Research), a federal foundation that undertakes research on governmental policy, compared data on homicides compiled by the state of Rio from 2007 to 2009 with death registries from the Ministry of Health for the same period. While the Rio state government data indicated a decrease in homicides for the two-year period, the Ministry of Health documented an increased number of ‘deaths with unknown cause’ in the same period. As this kind of death is not recorded in urban violence statistics, the maps released by the state government indicated fictitious safety improvements in certain areas. They had a serious knock-on effect, causing realestate speculation and skyrocketing prices in areas with better safety statistics.

Rio’s official cartography is composed of several aerophotogrammetric surveys at 1:2.000 scale that were executed over several years by different companies. The result is a mosaic of incompatible maps, which despite being georeferenced do not allow for a complete and updated view of the city. Some map segments have been continuously updated while others have not. And critically, the surveys purposefully ignored most of Rio’s informal settlements by simply leaving blank spaces alongside formal neighbourhoods where major communities actually exist.

Collaborative Digital Mapping Among our various experiments with Internet-based collaborative mapping, one approach emerged that best represents the goals of the project. It synchronised grassroots and traditional cartography, using digital maps to show and recombine updated information, allowing different types of data to be compared against each other in a given territory. Using a highly visual approach to mapping familiar to architects, the New Cartographies Large Map of Urban Transformations of Rio crafted highly detailed cartographic information with data compiled in real time from different online sources. In order to overcome Rio’s historical inability to visualise the city in its entirety, we set out to adjust all the different cartographic segments of the city in a single base. This required case-by-case resolution of outdated or missing cartographic

information, which was achieved by detailed changes to individual map segments and by manual updates using the same orthophotos that served as background for the original aerophotogrammetric maps. Data from other sources such as Here Maps, Google Maps, and Open Street Maps were incorporated as needed. This map was intended to serve as a base for further layers of information. Its year-long preparation employed a team of four full-time architects and two designers/programmers. The Large Map of Urban Transformations of Rio allows both professionals and the general public to grasp Rio’s complexities all at once in a single display. The trajectory of the work and its public exhibition revealed many hidden agendas of government and private enterprises involved in Rio’s urban development. Our synthesised approach to realtime mapping enabled transparent visualisation of the impact of public policy and planning processes that could not have been perceived otherwise. For example, the map incorporated up-to-date information from real-estate Internet search engines on weekly price variations that, when combined with the location of Olympic projects, evictions and new police stations, revealed complex speculation mechanisms that benefited directly from these operations. Because it was impossible to prove deliberate and direct connections between development and speculation, we accepted the map’s role as a ‘revelatory mechanism’ rather than as an investigative and accusatory tool. It enabled the use of free and open-source information and offered possibilities for the recombination of data and differing interpretations. Unlike conventional cartography, the Large Map of Urban Transformations of Rio promotes no hidden agenda, just malleable data complexity. At CAMPO we believe that design can reinvigorate its agency by assuming an effective role as mediator in the debates that emerge from collaborative digital mapping. The traditional relationship between a mapper who sends a message – often subconscious and even unintentional – to a viewer is dismantled. New Cartographies pioneers alternative ways to represent mapped narratives of Rio that are no longer confined to official frameworks. In the wake of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, transparent collaborative mapping should be an essential tool for planning a more equitable 21st-century future for Rio.

Notes 1. Created in 2001, the Observatório de Favelas (Favelas Observatory) is an independent research and consulting group that works with the development and evaluation of public policy for overcoming urban inequality: www. observatoriodefavelas.org.br/. The Comitê Popular Rio Copa e Olimpíadas (Rio World Cup and Olympics Popular Committee) is a social advocacy group created in 2010 by several smaller slum community associations to fight arbitrary planning decisions related to Rio’s mega-events: https:// comitepopulario.wordpress.com/. 2. The results of the New Cartographies project were shown to the public on two different occasions. The first was the ‘Novas Cartografias Cariocas: Mapeamento Colaborativo no Rio de Janeiro’ (New Cartographies: Collaborative Mapping in Rio de Janeiro) exhibition organised at the end of the research project and held at the Centro Carioca de Design (Carioca Design Centre) from 17 May to 9 June 2013. The second was part of an exhibition devoted to Rio de Janeiro at the 10th International Biennale of Architecture in São Paulo, from 12 October to 1 December 2014.

Text © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images © Gabriel Duarte/CAMPO

The Resurgence of Public Space

Minha Casa Minha Vida (MCMV – My House, My Life) is a federal programme started in 2009 that provides low-interest finance to construction companies in an attempt to plug the housing crisis and roll out millions of homes for lowincome families across Brazil. Architect Nanda Eskes of Atelier 77 and photographerr André Vieira look at the impact that this fast-track, hands-off approach has had on the overall quality of housing provision and the urban environment; they also highlight some innovative initiatives that have been conceived to ameliorate its impact..

Rethinking Minh

Nanda Eskes and André Vieira

In 2009 the Brazilian government launched an ambitious programme to address one of the country’s most serious and urgent social problems: its enormous housing deficit. A study by Fundação Getúlio Vargas, one of the country's most prestigious think tanks, found that Brazil needs 5.2 million new homes in order to properly shelter the estimated 11.5 million Brazilians who currently live in favelas, which are often violent places, neglected by the state and home to endemic poverty.1 The federal programme, called Minha Casa Minha Vida (MCMV – My House, My Life), follows a model already pursued by countries like Venezuela, Mexico and Chile2 when confronted with the challenge of building homes for millions of people in the shortest time possible. In this approach, the government acts primarily as a financier, guaranteeing subsidised credit to low-income families and low-interest financing to construction companies, which then have great freedom to plan and build housing blocks that are sold at market prices. The government sets just a few guidelines regarding size and configuration of the homes, but the construction companies have almost total discretion over where and how to build. To date, 2.3 million homes have been constructed under the MCMV programme and another two million units have already been contracted. In addition to fast-tracking housing delivery, another goal of Minha Casa Minha Vida was to boost the country’s then already-sagging economy.

asa Minha Vida Minha Casa Minha Vida (HR Engenharia), Residencial Vila Nova, Parauapebas, Pará, Brazil, 2014 Utilising prefabricated concrete for its easy replicability, Residencial Vila Nova has only one unit type which is repeated in series.

A Neoliberal Approach to Housing Delivery Brazil has 5,570 municipalities, of which 300 have populations that exceed 50,000.3 Most municipalities depend on federal grants to make ends meet, and fear that if they erect too many barriers they risk losing the rare large boost of investment into their economies that MCMV represents. For mayors and local politicians, MCMV’s substantial promotional budget provides wonderful photo opportunities, with abundant festive inaugurations attended by government ministers, governors and sometimes even the president, particularly precious during campaign time. Few municipalities have any prior urban planning for the areas where the projects are located. They often agree to developments that they have few capabilities to supervise, despite the fact that the MCMV’s charter clearly states that the responsibility to regulate and inspect these projects for quality lies with the municipality. That same charter removes from municipalities, and from the federal government, any active role in the planning and design process. In order to keep prices low and profits high, developers give no attention whatsoever to neighbourhood layouts or to the provision of non-residential amenities. Construction quality is usually low. The designs ignore the need to provide space for small shops, both formal and informal, that are a key aspect of the economic life of favelas and an extra source of cash on which many residents rely. These small shops are also necessary for convenience, since most projects are built in fringe areas several kilometres away from the city's economic heart, where most jobs and shops are located. The sites chosen for MCMV developments also tend to be poorly served by public transportation. Municipalities in general lack the professional expertise and capacity to exercise the limited review role they have. This means they are poorly equipped to do business on an equal footing with some of Brazil’s biggest corporations that are delivering MCMV projects, not to mention their first-rate legal departments. To address these shortcomings, other actors in the housing delivery arena are proactively intervening and searching for alternative approaches that give future residents a louder voice in the planning of their new homes. Aware of the problems with MCMV, Brazil’s federal government is starting to partner with some of these organisations. Additional projects in Rio de Janeiro and Salvador are being developed by the architecture department of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro and are already giving greater consideration to sustainability and energy efficiency in their designs. .

Minha Casa Minha Vida house, Parauapebas, Pará, Brazil, 2012

Minha Casa Minha Vida illegal house extensions, Parauapebas, Pará, Brazil, 2012

A typical MCMV house after occupation by its residents.

Illegal house extensions to accommodate informal businesses are common, particularly due to the project’s remote location on the urban periphery.

An Urban Quality Label for Minha Casa Minha Vida

Instituto CASA (Convergências de Arte Sociedade e Arquitetura and Fundação Vale, Urban Quality Label (UQL), 2014 The UQL is a tool to reward projects that adopt good urban design, architectural and social practices. It involves 15 guidelines that are organised according to the scales of the city.

In Pará, the second largest state in the Amazon where the Brazilian mining giant Vale operates Carajás, the world’s largest iron-ore mine, Rio de Janeiro-based Instituto CASA (Convergências de Arte Sociedade e Arquitetura – Convergence of Art, Society and Architecture) and the ETH Zurich Master of Advanced Studies in Urban Design research and design laboratory made a technical cooperation agreement with Fundação Vale, Vale’s non-profit subsidiary in October 2013. Together they developed an Urban Quality Label (UQL), a set of urban design best-practice guidelines for social housing. Fundação Vale guarantees the funding for the projects and commits to delivering higher profit margins for builders on the condition that they follow the UQL guidelines, which require that projects incorporate community participation within the design process, for example in the layout of the neighbourhoods around public squares. Streets must be connected with the existing grid of adjacent areas to prevent the neighbourhoods from becoming gated communities, and squares must be carefully planned so that their size and location relate to their anticipated use: civic square, small shops or semi-private. To ensure architectural diversity, unit designs may not be repeated more than 40 times within a given area. Streets layouts and housing must be configured to create semi-public spaces inside the blocks. Main pedestrian streets must have active frontages, with buildings opening to the street and wide landscaped pavements (and no cars). Early rounds of MCMV revealed the problems resulting from a fixed set of design guidelines for the entire country, where climates vary from equatorial to temperate, so the priority now is to ensure that projects are adapted to the specific climate of the places in which they are built. Revisions already made to the UQL guidelines have resulted in significant improvements in ventilation and thermal efficiency.

Parauapebas: An Urban Quality Label Prototype To test the implementation of the UQL, in February 2014 Fundação Vale invited the Riobased Fundação Bento Rubião (which has three decades of experience constructing social housing all over Brazil) to collaborate on a pilot project for a new neighbourhood with 500 houses following the UQL guidelines. With construction due to start mid2016, the pilot neighbourhood, which will be named by its future inhabitants, will be built under the umbrella of the MCMV programme. The project is located in the city of Parauapebas in the state of Pará, approximately 720 kilometres (450 miles) south of Belém, in the heart of the Amazon, and will be financed by Caixa, a state bank. Lessons learned at Parauapebas will inform Fundação Vale’s rollout of the UQL at a much larger scale. In July 2014, Fundação Bento Rubião commissioned two architecture studios from Rio – Arche and Atelier 77 – to design the pilot for Parauapebas together with its future residents. Initially divided into groups, the residents were invited to draw or write on sheets of paper the answer to the question: ‘What do you want for your new house?’. With those answers at hand, the architects compared the residents’ desires with the UQL criteria and realised that, among other things, 70 per cent of the responses mentioned a desire for outdoor space. In another exercise called ‘Spoken Map’, residents were asked to indicate their places of work, shopping and leisure on a city map. On a ‘map of utopias’, they were then asked to locate in their own neighbourhood the services and facilities that did not exist near their houses, but that they wished were nearby. Based on these exercises, residents were then asked to plan their public space, locating squares, markets, shops, services and entertainment spaces within the site area. With wooden blocks representing their homes, they modelled their vision of their future neighbourhood. Drilling down one step further, they were asked to place the furniture they currently own in the new spaces they had just designed, which helped to determine the ideal dimensions of their units.

Fundação Bento Rubião, Arche and Atelier 77, Pilot neighbourhood, Parauapebas, Pará, Brazil, due for completion 2018

At the first community meeting, residents were invited to draw or write on sheets of paper the answer to the question: ‘What do you want for your new house?’. The architects could then compare their responses with the UQL criteria.

In one workshop, residents used wooden blocks representing their homes to model their vision of their future neighbourhood.

Residents were invited to locate their existing furniture in the new space they had designed, to clarify their needs and establish the optimal dimensions of their units.

The experiments concluded that residents wanted the areas around bus stops to be hubs for commerce and civic activities, while schools should be hubs for sports grounds and parks. Houses were to share a semi-private patio. The size of the buildings was determined by the number of people that residents thought would be the maximum possible for meetings of all householders in a block to function properly in the future. Residents agreed that this number should be 40. The architects then translated the residents’ aspirations into drawings, trying to be as faithful as possible to the original concept.

The Future of MCMV The economic and political crisis currently gripping Brazil makes the future of MCMV uncertain. To help balance the budget and address runaway inflation, the government cut the MCMV budget in 2015, and a hostile Congress is pushing for even deeper cuts. The current President Dilma Rousseff responded by reaffirming her commitment to MCMV.4 Compared to an average MCMV project, pilot schemes such as that in Parauapebas demand more time and require the involvement of a much larger number of stakeholders in the process. However, the results in terms of social cohesion and sense of belonging in the new neighbourhoods that residents helped design more than justify the extra investment. Drawing on the Parauapebas experience, a potential way forward would be for municipalities to undertake community consultation and adopt policies that reward the construction of more participatory and sustainable projects based on UQL guidelines. Notes 1. IBGE – Censo 2010/PNAD 2013: www.censo2010.ibge.gov.br/sinopse/. 2. Beatriz Mioto, ‘As políticas habitacionais no subdesenvolvimento: os casos do Brasil, Colômbia, México e Venezuela (1980/2013)’, Instituto de Economia: see www.unicamp.br/unicamp/ju/630/tese-compara-politicasde-habitacao-popular-na-al. 3. IBGE, op cit. 4. See ‘Dilma reafirma continuidade do Minha Casa Minha Vida’, Portail Brasil, 11 October 2015: www.brasil.gov.br/infraestrutura/2015/11/dilmareafirma-continuidade-do-minha-casa-minha-vida.

Fundação Bento Rubião, Arche and Atelier 77, Pilot neighbourhood, Parauapebas, Pará, Brazil, due for completion 2018 The three residential typologies developed by the residents with the architects provide an extra area that can be adapted to accommodate a third bedroom, an office or a larger room.

Text © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images © Nanda Eskes

São Paulo, looking southwest, 2013 View of the vertical city of São Paulo with the towers lining Avenida Paulista, one of the city’s principle thoroughfares, in the background.

Francesco Perrotta-Bosch

São Paulo is a city of voracious appetites: insatiable in its desire for development and transformation, having swallowed up a population of some 20 million. Could it, however, be approaching a moment of reflection and repose? Architect and writer Francesco Perrotta-Bosch describes how a new development plan, the Plano Diretor, is enabling the city to take stock.

Minhocão (Elevado Costa e Silva) elevated highway, São João Avenue, São Paulo, 2003 The Minhocão (‘big worm’) Elevado Costa e Silva elevated highway, built in the 1970s, cuts through the city’s traditional Santa Cecilia, Vila Buarque and Barra Funda neighbourhoods.

São Paulo: key map locating major landmarks and projects The city has two important rivers – the Pinheiros and Tietê – both currently under-exploited, and protection of the watershed area south of the city is crucial to mitigating the drought which has plagued the region since 2014. Note the location of the new-build 2014 FIFA World Cup Corinthians Stadium, 20 kilometres (12 miles) east of the city centre.

A voracious spirit characterises the city of São Paulo. This peculiar trait is nothing new. It may have been present among populations inhabiting the area even before the arrival of European colonisers, and was certainly well understood by the Modernist writer Oswald de Andrade in his Manifesto Antropófago (Cannibal Manifesto, 1928) as a typically Brazilian strategy: the act of swallowing a foreign culture in order to – when digesting – emerge as a singular culture. Nowadays, this anthropophagic nature persists, expressed most clearly in São Paulo’s ability to constantly build, demolish and remake Brazil’s largest metropolis. With a population surpassing 20 million people, nothing is static in São Paulo. Continuous swallowings and digestions take place every day, everywhere. Places and buildings come and go at such a pace that we find it difficult to keep up with the changes. During the last decades of the 20th century, São Paulo’s state of permanent transformation worsened the city. This contributed to an overriding desire for personal safety, and the individualistic mindsets of paulistas, as São Paulo residents are known, resulted in a proliferation of expressways and gated residential communities. But the current urban model of explosive growth already shows numerous signs of exhaustion. And with that, different interest groups and organisations have started to externalise their desire for change in certain neighbourhoods across the city. In June 2013, a variety of initiatives across São Paulo converged in a moment of ebullition that has clearly established public space as a new agenda.

COME TO THE STREET Discontent about the dubious overspending of public money for the 2014 FIFA World Cup and 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games without improvements in the daily life of paulistas pervaded the city. Intractable problems such as transportation, education and health provision remained unchanged while £195 million (965 million Brazilian reais) was lavished on São Paulo’s new Corinthians Arena, 19 kilometres (12 miles) east of the city centre, to ensure it met FIFA standards. The situation erupted in June 2013 during the Confederations Cup with more than a million people taking to the streets, not just in São Paulo, but also across the country (and possibly more than twice this number, though accurate estimates are difficult to obtain). The protests achieved a magnitude never seen before in Brazil. The scenario in São Paulo had a particular meaning. It was 6 o’clock on a weekday evening on 13 June 2013. At the historical corner of Maria Antonia and Consolação Streets, hundreds of students from nearby universities and people working in the area were headed home as on any other ordinary day. But this was not an ordinary day. Police indiscriminately used truncheons, tear-gas grenades and rubber baton rounds to retaliate a bus-fare protest. The aggressive and authoritarian police response denied paulistas’ rights to be on the streets. Their freedom was under probation. In response, people filled São Paulo’s principle avenues shouting: ‘Vem pra rua! Vem pro movimento’ (Come to the street! Join the movement!). The city’s traditional public gathering places – such as the historical Praça da Sé or the public plaza under the great span of Lina Bo Bardi’s São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) – weren’t large enough to

Protest banner, Estaiada Bridge, São Paulo, June 2013 Demonstrators hang a banner proclaiming ‘Se a tarifa não baixar, São Paulo vai parar’ (If the bus fare doesn’t drop, São Paulo will stop) on the city’s iconic Ponte Estaiada during a pedestrian invasion of the bridge’s car-only lanes.

accommodate the protests. People poured out into the city’s multiple centres: the historical core, Avenida Paulista, and accompanying the direction of urban growth Faria Lima and Berrini Avenues, culminating in a pedestrian invasion of the car-only lanes of the city’s iconic Ponte Estaiada. The protest culminated with the repeal of São Paulo’s proposed bus fare increase (from 3.00 to 3.20 Brazilian reais). The demonstration was spearheaded by the Movimento Passe Livre (Free [Bus] Pass Movement), one of the few organisations that played a leadership role during that period, which was fighting not only against the 20 cents fare increase, but to eliminate turnstiles and make public transport completely free. What was at stake was urban mobility. After a protracted period of collective catharsis, a feeling emerged that something had profoundly changed in Brazilians’ attitudes to their cities – in São Paulo and elsewhere. The spirit of the moment was captured in the 10th São Paulo Architecture Biennale (12 October–1 December 2013) curated by Guilherme Wisnik. Under the French Marxist philosopher Henri Lefebvre’s motto ‘right to the city’ (first proposed in his 1968 book Le Droit à la ville), the Biennale exhibited a broad range of perspectives on urban activism in contemporary cities, rarely seen in Brazil. The event format reflected its content: the Biennale occupied eight venues close to subway stations, compelling visitors to travel by public transport to visit the exhibition spaces. Two of these venues occupy a special place in the city’s cultural psyche: the Centro Cultural São Paulo (1972–82), designed by Eurico Prado Lopes and Luiz Telles, and SESC Pompeia (1977–82), Lina Bo Bardi’s reactivation of a former industrial factory with sports and leisure facilities. These two ‘Fun Palaces’ exemplify generous and democratic architectures open to all paulistas. Dozens of think tanks and collaborative urban practices gathered at the Biennale venues to hear Brazil’s leading architects and artists debate how their work blurs the boundaries between public and private spheres. Another exhibition focused on new cities in Brazil’s interior that are undergoing explosive economic growth due to mining without any regard to urban quality. Exhibitions about Detroit’s decline and China’s ghost cities, such as Ordos Kangbashi, supported São Paulo’s biggest challenge, showcased in an exposition entitled ‘Carrópolis’ (Carville) about the impact of the automobile and the Brazilian proclivity to carve major highways through the urban fabric.

Street demonstration, Avenida Paulista and Rua da Consolação, São Paulo, June 2013 The intersection of Avenida Paulista and Rua da Consolação has been an important meeting point during São Paulo’s street protests of recent years.

Top-Down and Bottom-Up The urban agenda reached São Paulo’s City Hall, largely due to the appointment of one particular public figure as Secretary of Urban Development: Fernando de Mello Franco, an ex-partner in architectural office MMBB and co-curator of the Rotterdam Architecture Biennale in 2012. Mello Franco’s key strategic platform for his administration is the Arco do Futuro (Arc of the Future), a proposal to restructure the city’s post-industrial areas and their infrastructure (such as roads and rail transportation networks, as well as sanitation systems, water and power supplies) that have been left obsolete for decades. The northern section of the Arco do Futuro, the Arco Tietê, has been taken forward through a series of planning competitions. Under Mello Franco’s leadership, São Paulo adopted a new Plano Diretor, a set of regulations and guidelines for the city’s development. Drafted following an extensive process of public debates and public consultation, the Plano Diretor establishes a 16-year development framework for greater São Paulo. A major focus is to better link labour supply and housing with mass transportation by increasing density near subway stations and bus-only lanes. Incentives to build at transit hubs incorporate a requirement for mixed uses to rebalance the character of these places, combining services, commerce and housing (low and high income) within the same location. This strategy is intended to reduce inequality between different regions of the city. If successful, the approach would reduce the commuting time that a considerable part of the population takes to move between work and home – in extreme cases, more than four hours a day currently. Ranging from regulating mechanisms for the real-estate market to block-by-block rezoning, the Plano Diretor is noteworthy for its focus on reconfiguring the city’s urban geography through the creation of new employment centres in areas with a relatively low number of companies (compared to the resident population), incentives to stimulate new uses in former industrial areas, urbanisation of favelas and the reinforcement of sites with natural resources, such as riverbanks and urban fringes with native vegetation. The Plano Diretor is a long-term instrument, but some initiatives can respond promptly to immediate demands. For example, the expansion of bus-only lanes is already underway to increase the average speed of public transport. This sensitive subject, a clear reverberation of the clamours of the 2013 protests, became a priority matter in the city’s planning for urban mobility. Integrating the network of different transportation modes is a tool for producing urbanity. Cycle paths have also gained a prominent place, generating passionate public discussions. Some argue that they take away space from cars and increase traffic congestion, while others claim that this mode of transport is a healthier and more environmentally friendly alternative. These red-painted lanes are proliferating around São Paulo, creating a new mobility network. Since the early 2000s, the City Hall has been responsible for Centros Educacionais Unificados (Unified Educational Centres), or CEUs: complexes that combine schools, cultural and leisure facilities built in the periferias. These facilities became the flagship buildings for urban transformations

Institute of Urbanism and Studies for the Metropolis (URBEM), Casa Paulista (Paulista House), 2012– bottom: The private institute URBEM is proposing high-density mixed-used projects in several sites in post-industrial neighbourhoods near the city centre.

Cycle lane, Avenida Paulista, São Paulo, 2015 right: Cycle lanes feature prominently in the proposed mobility network of Sao Paulo’s latest Plano Diretor.

in poor suburban neighbourhoods. The governmental programme – Territórios CEUs – transforms educational buildings into urban catalysers to shape the public spaces around them (sidewalks, streets and squares) by establishing connections with nearby public buildings and transport stations. Although the responsibility to regulate the city for the common interest lies primarily with the public sector, São Paulo also has numerous civil and private entities that play an important role in the research and debate about the future of the metropolis. The Institute of Urbanism and Studies for the Metropolis (URBEM), a private institute started by former diplomat and oil entrepreneur Philip Yang, is one key player shaping São Paulo’s future through the direct involvement of Fernando de Mello Franco who served as its design director prior to his City Hall role. By promoting large-scale mixed-use urban development projects in post-industrial neighbourhoods, URBEM’s key objective is to elaborate urban planning and management methods for both the public and private sectors, as well as civil society. Its viability depends on creating public value through private investment. One prominent URBEM project is Casa Paulista (Paulista House), begun in 2012, which aims to densify São Paulo’s city centre with over 14,000 affordable collective housing units. This correlates directly with the new city-centre revitalisation strategy by increasing residents, and not only, as in the past, with the creation of cultural spaces of excellence such as Paulo Mendes da Rocha’s Pinacoteca do Estado (State Art Gallery; 1990s) and Museu da Língua Portuguesa (Museum of the Portuguese Language; 2006), and also, more recently, Brasil Arquitetura’s and Marcos Cartum’s Praça das Artes (2013). The Complexo Cultural Luz by the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron is an equally ambitious proposal that would contribute to regenerating a dilapidated city-centre neighbourhood. Located near the Luz railway station, in an area nicknamed ‘Cracolândia’ (‘Crack Land’ in reference to the drug), the project comprises a performing arts centre with a dance school and auditorium. However, it was shelved in 2014 in the wake of the protests against the World Cup, due to the government’s concern about the project’s elite image and its high cost. ‘Parklets’, a municipal project of turning parking spaces into places for people, is another phenomenon that is popping up on São Paulo streets. Parklets are a clear example of a bottom-up initiative. Established by the Instituto Mobilidade Verde (Green Mobility Institute) nongovernmental organisation in 2012, and subsequently taken over by the city administration, dozens of parking spaces are being transformed into mini-sidewalk expansions. Parklets are small squares deployed in front of a store (and funded by this shop) with benches, tables, plants, bike racks, mobile phone chargers, free Wi-Fi hotspots and more. A space for one car becomes public space for several people. The Associação Parque Minhocão (Minhocão Park Association) is another urban community initiative that has captured the imagination of paulistas. Popularly known as the Minhocão (‘big worm’), the Elevado Costa e Silva is an elevated highway built in the 1970s that cuts through some

of São Paulo’s traditional neighbourhoods (such as Santa Cecilia, Vila Buarque and Barra Funda), passing very close by apartment windows and obliterating the avenues below its structure. However, the Sunday closings of its elevated paved lanes revealed its potential as an enormous recreational space, appropriated by neighbours in undetermined and creative ways. Synthetic grass carpets, a giant plastic pool filled with water and lined with beach chairs and parasols, and popcorn and hot-dog carts punctuate the path of those who are jogging with or without their dogs. The Parque Minhocão currently takes place weekly in an area devoid of parks and public open space. The Association’s goal is to broaden the periods for leisure and ultimately improve the quality of the neighbourhood, which suffers from the noise and pollution of the suspended vehicles. Largo da Batata in the Pinheiros neighbourhood is another arid São Paulo place that is regaining popularity through informal initiatives. The plaza was the subject of a long and expensive reform programme intended to create a vibrant square, but it resulted in an underused esplanade with no planting or environmental quality that nevertheless remains a major pedestrian thoroughfare. Community group A Batata Precisa de Você (The Potato Needs You) mobilises residents with interventions and events, transforming the space into a place of gathering and conviviality. Public vision from the city municipality, private and communitarian initiatives are subtly reinforced by a growing recognition beyond architectural circles of the work of São Paulo’s 20th-century modern masters, indicated by the numerous exhibitions and publications to mark the centenaries of Lina Bo Bardi (December 2014) and João Vilanova Artigas (June 2015). Pritzker Prizewinner Paulo Mendes da Rocha is one of São Paulo’s most revered intellectual voices when the subject is the city. Neighbourhoods such as Higienópolis are getting more attention due to the quality of their Modernist buildings and a lifestyle atypical of São Paulo today – with less gated residences and more sidewalk commerce. Initiatives including the Virada Cultural – a paulista version of Paris’s Nuit Blanche and the various books, guides, tours and websites that showcase the city’s pedestrian-friendly urban core with its colonial churches, eclectic buildings and Modernist towers reflect this same trend.

By promoting large-scale mixed-use urban development projects in post-industrial neighbourhoods, URBEM’s key objective is to elaborate urban planning and management methods for both the public and private sectors, as well as civil society.

Parklet, São Paulo, 2015 left: Close to Avenida Paulista and the Conjunto Nacional (a mixed-use building by the Brazilian Modernist architect David Libeskind), São Paulo’s first permanent parklet – developed through a public–private partnership – replaces several parking spaces with a public area where paulistas gather, eat and rest during office breaks.

Minhocão (Elevado Costa e Silva) elevated highway, São João Avenue, São Paulo, 2004 above: Transformation of the elevated Minhocão (Elevado Costa e Silva) elevated highway, currently used for recreational purposes during weekends, into a public park is the subject of ongoing discussion in São Paulo.

Dry Metropolis

Brasil Arquitetura and Marcos Cartum, Praça das Artes, São Paulo, 2013 above: This performing arts complex is designed around a network of open spaces that link to three surrounding streets.

Text © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 60-1 © Paulo Fridman/ Corbis; pp 62, 68(br) © Tuca Vieira; p 63 © Dilton Lopes; p 64(t) © Juliana Spinola/Demotix/Corbis; p 64(b) © Bloomberg/Getty Images; p 66(t) Marzo . Photography/Getty Images; p 66(b) © URBEM – Institute of Urbanism and Studies for the Metropolis; pp 68-69(t) © Nelson Kon; p 68(bl) © Rafaela Netto

The agenda that has dominated São Paulo’s headlines since late 2014 is the lack of water. In several neighbourhoods, residents spend hours (sometimes even days) without receiving a drop of water. Given the great rivers that cut through the city, it does not make sense for São Paulo to suffer from a water shortage. However, the relationship between paulistas and their rivers is one of disgust, fear and distance. Pedestrians have no access to the banks of the polluted Tietê and Pinheiros rivers because they are lined by expressways of intense flux and channelled in concrete so that any natural biodiversity that existed on their margins has been destroyed. Other minor streams are buried under avenues that are passed over without any evidence of their existence. The city’s drainage basin has suffered repeated incommensurable mistakes over the years. The number of natural river sources and streams that pass through the territory is huge, but instead of preserving them for the supply of millions of people, they have been made part of the sewage system without any treatment. As a result, São Paulo must rely on water that is collected hundreds of kilometres away. A major dry season combined with everincreasing consumption emptied dozens of distant reservoirs, and residents suddenly found themselves in a water crisis. As a result, ways to capture more water are currently being debated: for example by seeking sources further away in the countryside, finding new treatment methods or re-educating the way we consume. The Hidroanel (Water Ring) is an ambitious proposal that seeks to re-establish a positive relationship between paulistas and water. In this plan, developed by the Metrópole Fluvial group (incubated inside the School of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of São Paulo), water becomes the driving element for a rearticulation of the entire metropolis. A network of 170 kilometres (105 miles) of navigable water channels – among them, the Pinheiros and Tietê rivers – is connected through locks and ports and integrated with the city’s road and rail systems. Such a system would enable navigation and water transport, primarily, of cargo and municipal waste. So Hidranel envisions the inclusion of rivers and dams in the urban mobility system of the metropolitan area. As much as the Hidroanel is in tune with other current proposals such as the Arco do Futuro, its implementation depends on the creation of a public partnership that has yet to be established. Other kinds of initiatives, such as the Aliança pela Água (Alliance for Water) and Rios e Ruas (Rivers and Streets), may be more effective in the short term because they create a platform for research and public debate, raising awareness of the urgency of a new operational model for São Paulo’s waters, streams, rivers and dams. From the ‘right to the city’ protests of 2013 to the current drought, many paulistas are dissatisfied with the way São Paulo is. And there is nothing healthier than discontent to spur the reflection and action necessary to direct the city’s anthropophagic spirit to transform São Paulo for the better. The moment is now and it must be seized.

Fernando Serapião

Favela Urbanisation and Social Housing in São Paulo Vigliecca & Associados, Residencial Sílvio Baccarelli, Heliópolis, São Paulo, 2013 New housing blocks were sited in relation to existing towers built in the 1980s.

São Paulo is Brazil’s largest city with over 20 million inhabitants, 14 per cent of which live in informal settlements. Here author, critic and editor Fernando Serapião describes various housing initiatives led by Elisabete França during her two stints at the city’s Secretaria de Habitação (SEHAB – Housing Secretariat), which employed design as a tool to upgrade and more fully integrate the city’s favelas in the formal city.

The architect and anthropologist Carlos Nelson Ferreira dos Santos (1943–89) planted the initial seed of Brazil’s favela urbanisation movement nearly 50 years ago with his pioneering work in Brás de Pina, a remote northern area of Rio de Janeiro. Together with favela residents, Ferreira dos Santos’s team developed an alternative to the mayor’s plans, which relied on evictions and clearance. Residents were to be relocated to faraway housing estates, like Cidade de Deus, the cruel reality of which is described by the Brazilian author Paulo Lins in his book City of God (1997)1 and became familiar to audiences around the world due to Fernando Meirelles’s film adaptation of the book in 2002. ‘It became a habit – a normality – to rely on housing typologies that, even though they involved systematic extermination campaigns, remained convenient. They served as decompression valves and resolved contradictions way beyond the realm of urban issues,’ Ferreira dos Santos observed, referring to the prevailing ideology of the 1960s.2 In contrast, his approach relied primarily on the legalisation of property and implementation of public infrastructure. Mixing anthropology and architecture, he sought to understand built space – combining popular knowledge with academic expertise. Ferreira dos Santos formulated a vision of the favela that stood in stark contrast to the pragmatism of the modern movement. He considered that both government and society treated these informal communities with indifference. Up until then, favelas had gone unrecognised by municipal authorities and did not even appear on most city maps. They were regarded by everyone, perhaps even by their own residents, as a temporary evil. Despite the pioneering work of Ferreira dos Santos, it is only in the last 25 years that favela urbanisation has gained traction in Brazil. Two government programmes – one in Rio de Janeiro and one in São Paulo – were instrumental in advancing this process. In both cities, the legalisation of property rights and the introduction of public infrastructure were fundamental principles. The first programme, known as Favela-Bairro, was implemented in Rio de Janeiro between 1994 and 2008, led by architects Luiz Paulo Conde and Sérgio Magalhães. The objective was to link the formal and the informal city. More or less simultaneously, a similar though less far-reaching programme took place in São Paulo, spearheaded by architect Elisabete França (known as Bete), during her first tenure (1994–2001) at the city’s Secretaria de Habitação (SEHAB – Housing Secretariat) where she led the Guarapiranga programme. The initiative took its name from the Guarapiranga Reservoir because of its focus on informal settlements near one of the city’s major water sources, and it was funded by international lending institutions such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB). At this time, the World Bank and IADB also began to develop guidelines for upgrading slums. This was a world first.

São Paulo – a Disenfranchised Urban Periphery Data from 2011, the most recent available from the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE – Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), reveals that 11 million Brazilians reside in favelas, but this number is miniscule considering the billions of people on the planet in the same situation. Specialists, concentrated mostly in countries where favelas are less prevalent, claim that the problem will become more dramatic in coming years. According to United Nations (UN) data cited by the American author Mike Davis in his book Planet of Slums (2006),3 the number of global

Elisabete França, Director of the São Paulo Companhia de Desenvolvimento Habitacional e Urbano (CDHU – Department of Housing and Urban Development of the State of São Paulo) Elisabete França was appointed Director of the Companhia de Desenvolvimento Habitacional e Urbano (CONU – Department of Housing and Urban Development of the State of São Paulo) in 2015. She previously led the city’s Secretaria de Habitação (SEHAB – Housing Secretariat) for eight years.

favela dwellers was growing by 25 million annually in 2003.4 While pessimists such as Davis say there is no light at the end of the tunnel and condemn the urbanisation of informal settlements, São Paulo appeared on the international radar around 2005 as a place primed for this discussion. São Paulo is Brazil’s largest city and has roughly 380,000 families living in favelas – approximately 14 per cent of its population. Whereas the number of urban dwellings increased five times in 50 years, the number of favelas in the city grew by 10 in that same period and the population increased thirty-fold, jumping from 50,000 to 1.6 million inhabitants. This number doubles if we include illegal subdivisions, or plots lacking infrastructure and documentation. Unlike Rio de Janeiro, where renowned favelas occupy the hills of the city’s wealthiest neighbourhoods and appear on postcards, in São Paulo the zones occupied by informal communities are practically invisible to the city’s affluent residents and to tourists because they occupy remote lowlands at the city’s perimeter. Even the most experienced urbanists would be astonished flying over the city by helicopter: its enormous periphery stretches dozens of kilometres, and is characterised by a homogeneous zone of makeshift unfinished dwellings made up of flat slabs and concrete blocks that nestle themselves between valleys and hills. Although the city’s extensive periphery conveys an aura of relentless poverty – particularly when viewed by the more affluent classes in the city centre – statistics reflect that the majority of São Paulo’s suburbs consists of legal subdivisions serviced by infrastructure. Yet what are in fact recognised as favelas – as defined by the UN (precarious housing, lack of legal property tenure and infrastructure) – are an astonishing 1,643 communities of diverse sizes, according to São Paulo’s planners.5

A Multi-Pronged Approach in São Paulo When appointed in 2005 to commandeer SEHAB, Bete drew from her experience with the Guarapiranga programme. First, she implemented a digital mapping system to assess the scope of the problem. A weighting system was established (sanitation, for example, was more pressing than asphalt) to determine priority action areas. High-risk areas (prone to landslides and flooding) were cross-checked with data on social vulnerability, health and infrastructure. Families in the most difficult circumstances were given precedence for new apartments that were constructed when possible in the area in which they already lived. During the period between the demolition of their dwellings and the provision of new units, rent subsidies were provided. And when the new apartment was ready, residents would begin to pay off part of the unit’s value, acquiring an equity share (subsidised by the government up to 85 per cent). Two- and three-bedroom units had a floor area of approximately 50 square metres (540 square feet). Residents also participated in fundamental project decisions, often choosing their own architects (as happened with both Ruy Ohtake and Piratininga Arquitetos Associados in Heliópolis, São Paulo’s largest favela near the city centre. Other favela residents received property titles and basic infrastructure such as sanitation systems, street and alley pavements, and public spaces. Another platform of SEHAB’s methodology was to locate new developments in relation to the area’s watershed. As half of the secretariat’s budget was designated for floodplain zones, designing with surface water flow in mind rather than relying on arbitrary geometric divisions was an intelligent approach. Another critical aspect of the programme’s success was extensive door-to-door social services outreach undertaken jointly with community leaders. In addition to data and management, two other factors were critical to the SEHAB programme: money and technical expertise. In 2005, when Bete took over, the secretariat’s annual allocations were around 150 million Brazilian reais per year; seven years later, in 2012, they reached 1.8 billion, a greater than twelve-fold increase, while the city budget multiplied by merely 2.5 times in the same period. This was achieved by accessing state and federal funding from the Companhia de Desenvolvimento Habitacional e Urbano (CDHU – Department of Housing and Urban Development of the state of São Paulo), the Caixa Econômica Federal (Federal Savings Bank) and the federal Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento (PAC – Programme of Accelerated Growth). Overall, during Bete’s tenure, 60 per cent of the funding came from municipal coffers, 20 per cent from the state and another 20 per cent from federal contributions. Investment was roughly distributed as follows: 10 per cent in illegal subdivisions, 40 per cent in favela upgrades, and 50 per cent in watershed areas. São Paulo benefited significantly from the depth of housing expertise among Brazilian architects. Unlike Russia, China, India, South Africa or Turkey, Brazil claims a long lineage of skilled professionals who have been discussing, developing and building social housing projects, for better or worse, for almost a century. If the celebrated Pedregulho housing development (1947) in Rio de Janeiro designed by Affonso Eduardo Reidy with its layers of apartments, sports clubs, schools and other facilities (see page 22) was the pearl of modern thought, recent studies – and specifically those published by Nabil Bonduki6 – illuminate dozens of such initiatives during the Modernist period. However, Pedregulho was not planned for favela dwellers: its apartments were destined for

low-level government employees. In Brazil, the majority of housing estates constructed between the 1930s and the 1960s were financed by the pension funds of different professional categories. That is to say, no one at the time associated favelas with pubic housing finance, and as a result these programmes did not address the needs of those on the margin of society.

Bete’s Management Style With an eye for design quality, Bete insisted on commissioning some of Brazil’s best architects, including Andrade Morettin, Brasil Arquitetura and Marcos Acayaba, but most of them had minimal experience with this type of project. Héctor Vigliecca is an exception, having worked with social housing since the 1970s. Trained in Uruguay, he emerged from the postmodern debate that re-evaluated the virtues of the traditional city. His housing blocks therefore follow the street pattern to help define the morphology of the city, creating what he calls a ‘third territory’7 – public space for convivial encounters between new and existing communities; in other words, between the new project and the adjacent favela. Though his design vocabulary subtly alludes to Modernism, from Franz Heep to Reidy, Vigliecca’s approach is anchored first and foremost in context, yet he avoids aestheticising poverty. Among the projects completed during Bete’s term, four stand out: Parque Novo Santo Amaro V at the extreme south of the city; two in Heliópolis, southeast of the city centre; and a fourth, Jardim Edite, in a prominent location near the Estaiada Bridge. Constructed using funds set aside for the clean-up of the watershed area, the first of these projects is Viglietta’s Parque Novo Santo Amaro V (2012), which comprises 201 one- and two-storey units with two and three bedrooms. The project reclaimed a stream that had been covered over by illegal housing, and relocated residents were offered accommodation in the area afterwards. Vigliecca positioned the new housing parallel to the streets and dedicated the bottom of the valley to public space with areas for sports and recreation. The project also provided an important pedestrian bridge that connects the opposite sides of the valley, reducing travelling distance for residents and schoolchildren by more than a kilometre. In short, Santo Amaro addressed the area’s deficiencies in urban infrastructure. By contrast, Heliópolis, the location of Residencial Sílvio Baccarelli (2013), another Vigliecca project, is a favela of approximately 60,000 people located just 10 kilometres (6 miles) southeast of the city centre. This chaotic area of urban sprawl is characterised by nondescript residential tower blocks built in the 1970s with municipal approval. Soon after it was built, the structural skeleton of one of the unfinished blocks was invaded and completely surrounded by informal favela occupation, making it one of the area’s most dangerous hotspots. After extensive community consultation, the city developed a proposal to restructure the entire block. Vigliecca integrated new housing between the existing buildings, introducing mixed uses and a public path through the middle of the block. Just a few months after opening, residents had already fenced off these semi-public paths. It is not uncommon that once a project is delivered, regardless of prior community agreements, residents close off the common areas that had been envisioned

as community infrastructure. In other words, in the absence of public intervention, low-income residents of the urban periphery entrench themselves, just like the elite. Among the dozen or so projects that were completed in Heliópolis during Bete’s term, one of the more remarkable is Gleba G (2014) by architects Biselli Katchborian, disciples of Vigliecca. The site consisted of two rectangular blocks at the edge of the favela. The architects’ design solution of courtyard blocks with central patios is more European than Brazilian. At the lower floors, large voids allow permanent access to the interior courtyards. Similar to Vigliecca’s approach in Santo Amaro, the design is sensitive to topography, an attitude well established in Brazil since Reidy. By law, social housing in Brazil cannot exceed four floors to elimate the need for lifts and reduce maintenance costs. By locating entrances at different levels and introducing metal walkways across the central courtyard, Biselli Katchborian’s Gleba G project attains up to eight floors in places, significantly increasing overall density on the site. Aside from being one of the most remarkable designs of this batch of Bete’s projects, Gleba G helped change the face of one of the favela’s entrances.

More than Housing In another project that required a high-density solution to rehouse residents from an existing favela, Bete permitted the use of elevators, allowing an exception to the four-storey legislation and channelling government subsidies to cover maintenance costs. Designed by MMBB and Hereñú & Ferroni (H+F), Jardim Edite (2013) is a high-visibility project located in a prominent southwestern area of São Paulo near many important corporate headquarters. A well-established favela, numbering up to 900 families, had occupied the site for over half a century before the area became an important business centre and mounting real-estate values created pressure to simply eliminate it. Jardim Edite provides 252 housing units in different typologies. Fifteen-storey towers are occupied by families who can afford a slightly higher rent (including lift maintenance), while duplex blocks without lifts are occupied by the lowest-income families. Jardim Edite is also noteworthy because it includes a nursery, health centre and ground-floor restaurant. The first two cater to residents and others who live or work nearby, while the aim of the restaurant is to attract a wider clientele to integrate the project into the fabric of the area. Its ambition was to operate as a restaurantacademy, led by a famous chef, so while residents learn a trade, the district’s tie-wearing corporates could lunch there, furthering social integration. Unfortunately this idea has yet to be implemented.

In short, Santo Amaro addressed the area’s deficiencies in urban infrastructure.

Vigliecca & Associados, Parque Novo Santo Amaro V, São Paulo, 2012

above: The new housing follows a valley in one of São Paulo’s watershed areas.

below: A new metal walkway provides a pedestrian path across the valley.

Biselli Katchborian, Gleba G, Heliópolis, São Paulo, 2014 The housing blocks enclose an open court.

A metal pedestrian bridge takes advantage of the sloped topography to avoid lifts and increase density on the site.

MMBB Arquitetos and Hereñú & Ferroni (H+F) Arquitetos, Jardim Edite, São Paulo, 2013 above: The Jardim Edite housing complex contrasts with the corporate towers of the surrounding area. right: Jardim Edite’s high towers are occupied by families who can afford the maintenance of the elevators, while on the lower floors, with only stairs, are the families with the lowest income. left: The articulation of the facade does not express individual units or the common circulation on each floor, which is wider than a conventional corridor to approximate the width of favela alleyways.

Boldarini Arquitetos Associados, Cantinho do Céu, São Paulo, 2012

above: A linear park around Cantinho do Céu (Little Piece of Heaven) protects the banks of the Billings reservoir from illegal housing occupation.

below: The linear park at Cantinho do Céu incorporates wooden decks, sports courts and a circuit of paths.

Green Infrastructure Cantinho do Céu (Little Piece of Heaven), designed by Marcos Boldarini (2012), is located at the extreme southern limit of the city in an illegal development built in the 1980s at the edge of Billings dam, site of São Paulo’s largest reservoir that is responsible for 10 per cent of the city’s water supply. Much of the region has similar settlements that lack public infrastructure, even including sewerage, and this affects the water quality of the entire city. The Cantinho do Céu project legalised the area’s modest existing houses and provided the much-needed infrastructure: water and sewage systems, pluvial drainage and trash collection. A 7-kilometre (4-mile) long linear park was designed along the water to dissuade future illegal settlements and also to provide a recreation area for residents. However, only a 3-kilometre (2-mile) stretch of the park was actually built. Like so many other projects of this period in São Paulo, Cantinho do Céu ground to a halt after Bete left office. Nevertheless, it remains an exemplar for a reservoir site.

The Market Prevails Bete’s team was demobilised in early 2013 following a change in mayoral administration. Ever since, projects that were in the pipeline have floundered, vying for support from the current federal housing programme, Minha Casa Minha Vida (MCMV – My House, My Life). If 30 years ago associations and charities demanding housing for the homeless (sem-tetos) from the government were an essential part of the Workers’ Party (PT) platform, after Lula’s presidency they no longer set the tone for federal housing policy. Housing stalwarts in the party ranks had criticised Bete’s management approach, but even they had been thrown out of government because they were too radical for Lula’s neoliberalism. The PT abandoned its radical left approach and adopted neoliberal policies for social housing. Lula transferred housing policy to the Ministério das Cidades (Ministry of Cities) of the centre right Partido Progressista (PP). As part of this overhaul, he removed any architects and urban planners linked to the PT and put in place a housing delivery programme tied to the country’s largest construction firms. As a result, today’s federal programme for social housing is based on lines of credit, transferring responsibility and execution to the private sector.

Lula’s ongoing Minha Casa Minha Vida is a policy of spreadsheets. It targets a specific number of new units, generally in the urban periphery, and not the transformation of favelas themselves. Instead of a federal social housing policy, this governmental programme has created a new real-estate product (small houses and apartments) for a rapidly growing market – the so-called emerging ‘C’ class. These are the families that rose to the middle classes during Lula’s new consumer era, buying cars, refrigerators and so on. Without any standards for location of sites, construction techniques, or urban and architectural quality, MCMV finances and promotes mediocre projects that increase density on the urban periphery without any accompanying jobs or services, exacerbating São Paulo’s already challenging transport network. This interruption and change of policy has just postponed the problem of addressing the city’s burgeoning favelas, eliminating the opportunity for using housing policy to integrate the formal and informal city by linking the most precarious areas with consolidated urbanisation. While Bete’s tenure in São Paulo suggests that social housing projects of high design quality can help construct a new reality, the current MCMV programme is proof that the financial and realestate markets resolve one problem only to create another – urban ghettos. Beyond the many other disciplines involved – from social workers to sociologists – the SEHAB experience demonstrates that Brazil’s deep architectural expertise, accumulated over decades, must be deployed at all levels of government to address the country’s pressing housing issues. Government must assume leadership rather than outsourcing critical decisions about what, where and how to build to the private sector. One positive note is that Bete now has a new challenge. In 2015 she was appointed director of the CDHU. Her impressive municipal track record sets high expectations for the future. Notes 1. Paulo Lins, City of God, Bloomsbury (London), 2006. First published in Brazil as Cidade de Deus in 1997. 2. Carlos Nelson Ferreira dos Santos, Está na hora de ver as cidades como eles são de verdade, Ibam (Rio de Janeiro), 1986, p 59. 3. Mike Davis, Planet of Slums, Verso (New York), 2006. 4. Information based on data from the Prefeitura de São Paulo, Mayor’s Office: www.habisp.inf.br. 5. Ibid. 6. Nabil Bonduki, Pioneiros da habitação social (Social Housing Pioneers), Editora Unesp/SescSP (São Paulo), 2014. 7. Héctor Vigliecca, The Third Territory: Collective Housing and City, Vigliecca & Associados (São Paulo), 2014.

A 7-kilometre (4-mile) long linear park was designed along the water to dissuade future illegal settlements and also to provide a recreation area for residents. Text © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 70-71, 75, 77(t) © Leonardo Finotti – [email protected]; p 73 © Ana Ottoni Photography; pp 76, 77(bl&br) © Nelson Kon; p 78(t) © Fabio Knoll; p 78(b) © Daniel Ducci

Alternative Visions of the Herzog & de Meuron, Arena do Morro, Natal, Brazil, 2014 The gymnasium’s distinctive white roof creates a new landmark for Mãe Luíza alongside the existing lighthouse (right).

Hattie Hartman

Brazilian City

In conversation with Herzog & de Meuron Senior Partner Ascan Mergenthaler

What does it take to design sensitively and inclusively in Brazil? In the lead up to Rio 2016, Herzog & de Meuron have designed two projects: the Cultural Complex Luz in São Paulo (2012) and the Arena do Morro in Natal (2014). The former being unrealised and the second built and in use. To find out more about the approach that the premier Swiss practice took to these buildings, Guest-Editor Hattie Hartman interviewed Herzog & de Meuron’s Senior Partner Ascan Mergenthaler.

Level 2 plan (raised ground floor).

Herzog & de Meuron, Cultural Complex Luz, São Paulo, 2012 (unbuilt)

The Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron have recently undertaken two projects in Brazil – a performing arts centre in the dilapidated Luz neighbourhood of São Paulo, which remains unbuilt, and a gymnasium in the northeastern city of Natal, completed in 2014. The two projects differ across almost every parameter: one is a cultural complex located in a central district of São Paulo, and the other is a gymnasium located in a favela in Brazil’s remote northeast; the first was a public commission, while the second was privately funded by the philanthropic foundation of a Swiss agricultural company; one was secured through a conventional international bidding process, while the other was the Swiss practice’s first pro bono project, undertaken for a repeat client; the arts centre remains unrealised, while the gymnasium is complete and in active use. Yet what both projects share is a sensitivity to their context, an understanding of the demanding constraints imposed by the need for security and an intelligent approach to bioclimatic design.

The Essence of Lina Bo Bardi’s SESC Pompeia in Cracolândia Commissioned by São Paulo state’s Ministry of Culture in 2008 during Brazil’s economic boom and put on hold five years later in the wake of the street demonstrations that erupted during the Confederations Cup, the 85,000-squaremetre (915,000-square-foot) Cultural Complex Luz is an ambitious proposal for a performing arts centre and music school that would consolidate the city’s cultural district linked to the nearby Campos Elíseos neighbourhood. Situated southwest of the 19th-century Luz railway station in a run-down area known as Cracolândia because it is a nucleus of São Paulo’s crack trade, the Cultural Complex Luz also has a strong regeneration agenda. ‘The most inspiring place in São Paulo is Lina Bo Bardi’s SESC Pompeia. It’s a masterpiece with so many interesting details and different qualities from an architectural, spatial and urban point of view,’ observes Ascan Mergenthaler, a Senior Partner at Herzog & de Meuron. In charge of projects in Europe, Asia and the Americas, Mergenthaler was responsible for the realisation of the de Young Museum in San Francisco and is currently working on commissions such as the Tate Modern Project in London, the Blavatnik School of Government in Oxford and the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. He proceeds to observe of the SESC ‘What is most inspiring is how people engage with it and use it. You can sense that people are proud when they are there. They all have something in common and they behave so well. This idea of creating a

building that is alive day and night and attracts a real cross-section of society – poor people and rich people looking around and enjoying activities – is the role model of what we wanted to achieve with this project,’ he continues. Initially, Herzog & de Meuron considered surrounding the Luz site with a wall but then concluded that ‘this was not the correct response’. The architects’ ambition was for the building to interlock with the urban fabric, and their solution was to elevate the ground-floor plane with a single entrance accessed by a generous ramp, and to densely landscape the street level. The complex, proposed to house a 1,750-seat dance theatre and two smaller halls as well as a music school for 2,000 students, consists of six split levels with intersecting internal courtyards so that every space has direct contact with daylight and greenery. ‘This building would not be possible in Europe. What was so nice for us is that in the São Paulo climate you can work very differently on architecture,’ Mergenthaler explains. The building incorporates several open-air environments. The

Herzog & de Meuron, Cultural Complex Luz, São Paulo, 2012 (unbuilt) above: The scheme is focused around an internal public plaza with links to the performance halls and the dance school.

below: Visualisation looking southeast. Accessed by a wide central ramp, the proposed complex would link Julio Prestes Plaza and Sala São Paulo to Princess Isabel Place, forming part of a network of public open spaces. The porous design of the scheme with extensively landscaped internal courtyards is intended to link and reinforce other nearby open spaces including Princess Isabel Place to the west, the Luz Park east of the railway station, and the gardens of the Museum of Sacred Art to the northeast.

main internal plaza and the lobby of the dance theatre are protected from rain and sun, but have no physical external wall. In each instance, the extent of mechanical systems was tailored to the programme. Other spaces have walls for acoustic or privacy reasons, but are made comfortable through simple cross-ventilation. Dance studios and rehearsal spaces require mechanical natural ventilation, but no air conditioning. Only the actual performance halls are fully sealed airconditioned spaces. Together with extensive planting designed by Isabel Duprat Arquitetura e Paisagísmo throughout the complex, this approach is a 21st-century reinterpretation of Brazilian Modernism’s handling of bioclimatic design half a century ago. In the long term, if the Cultural Complex Luz were to be built and the neighbourhood improved, street-level planting would have to be partially removed to open up ground-level spaces to the street without compromising the security of the complex.

Herzog & de Meuron, Cultural Complex Luz, São Paulo, 2012 (unbuilt) A raised ground-floor plane creates a public plaza with densely landscaped courtyards and open-air performance spaces within.

Despite Brazil’s difficult economic climate and public scepticism about high-profile projects in the wake of the vast quantities of public money lavished on the 2014 FIFA World Cup stadia and related infrastructure, Mergenthaler remains a forceful advocate of the Luz scheme: ‘The Luz Cultural Complex is the right thing to do from an urban and cultural point of view for this neighbourhood and the area. The strength of the project is that it is a very open and permeable structure, open to all 24/7. This is not just a dance theatre for the rich; it is also a music school for the kids of the neighbourhood. The Sala São Paulo is just across the street and is a very closed building. Wealthy people go there by night by car, attend the concert and leave again. They don’t mingle with the neighbourhood. Our building is a very different proposal. It would be good for the community and for all of São Paulo.’

Urban Acupuncture in Mãe Luíza Herzog & de Meuron used a similar approach at a more modest scale for the Arena do Morro in Natal to create a secure gymnasium on a site that served previously as an improvised football pitch for the adjacent Mãe Luíza favela. Commissioned by the Ameropa Foundation, the philanthropic arm of a Swiss agricultural feed company active for several decades in the region, the new gymnasium addresses the public realm of the street with a robust curvilinear facade made from bespoke semitransparent concrete blocks adapted from a common local building material. The result is a building envelope that is permeable both to curious onlookers of all ages and to the prevailing winds, as well as a luminous gymnasium interior that doubles as a multipurpose community meeting place. The architects accepted the pro bono commission from Ameropa, for whom they had designed an office building near Basel some

Natal: Key map locating major landmarks and the Mãe Luíza favela, location of Herzog & de Meuron’s Arena do Morro right: Natal is unusual among Brazilian coastal cities because a state park created in 1977 protects a linear dune along the coast and has limited development along the beachfront.

Herzog & de Meuron, Arena do Morro, Natal, Brazil, 2014 below: The generous roof canopy and undulating wall along the street create an inviting entrance facing the dunes.

NATAL

10 years earlier, on the condition that the team could spend six months familiarising themselves with the area to prepare a masterplan for Mãe Luíza first. The well-established favela of approximately 70,000 people – small by Rio or São Paulo standards – occupies a dramatic site between sand dunes along the beach and the commercial beachfront. Herzog & de Meuron’s 200-page ‘Vision for Mãe Luíza’ identifies missing and underdeveloped activities in the community, documents underexploited areas within the favela’s dense urban fabric, and proposes potential new activities. Some of the masterplan proposals, such as strengthening the main shopping street and creating a pedestrian precinct with a playground and improved sidewalks, have been taken forward by the municipal government. Eighteen months into operation, the Arena do Morro hosts almost 30 different sports sessions that meet from one to three times weekly, with activities on some days running from 7 am to 10 pm. In March 2015, a city-wide workshop held at the gymnasium attracted more than 25 community organisations to discuss local development issues, the right to the city and

Herzog & de Meuron, Vision for Mãe Luíza, Natal, Brazil, 2009 opposite top: Developed in collaboration with the local university, the architects’ masterplan for Mãe Luíza proposed giving priority to pedestrians in the favela’s main shopping street and creating a strong link to the beach.

Herzog & de Meuron, Arena do Morro, Natal, Brazil, 2014 below left: The Arena’s light-filled interior serves as a multipurpose community room. below: Ground-floor plan.

opportunities for participatory budgeting where local communities can influence expenditure. Most telling of all, Ion de Andrade, deputy director of Centro Sócio Pastoral, a churchbased community organisation that was partclient for the Arena do Morro, reports that the rate of decline in the number of homicides in Mãe Luiza was four times that in other parts of Natal during the first year of the gymnasium’s operation. Some local observers attribute this improvement to the presence of the Arena. Even a hint that quality architecture could have such a large impact on social behaviour is remarkable. But the fundamental question remains: Is this approach replicable? It is difficult to extrapolate from this oneoff exemplar of Swiss patronage to the interventions required in countless favelas across Brazil’s many cities. Nevertheless, the Arena do Morro is a beacon, the repercussions of which are guiding the way. This article draws on a telephone interview in August 2015 by Guest-Editor Hattie Hartman with Ascan Mergenthaler, a Senior Partner at Herzog & de Meuron.

Text © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 80–81, 85(b), 86–7(b) © Iwan Baan; pp 82–4, 86(t), 87 © Herzog & de Meuron; p 85(t) © Dilton Lopes

Thomas Deckker

Brasília is renowned the world over for its realisation of a visionary Modernist plan, designed by Brazilian architect and planner Lúcio Costa (1902–98). The reality of the city’s design and its development, as explained by architect, author and academic researcher Thomas Deckker, is, however, much more complex. Contrary to public perception, Brasília falls a long way short of being ‘a unified city’, though it is one that has prospered with a growing population and stronger economy than other Brazilian cities.

Águas Claras, Distrito Federal, Brasília, 2015

The administrative area around Brasília, the Distrito Federal, has grown into a metropolitan region that displays the characteristics of other Brazilian cities: uncontrolled growth and inadequate transport. Águas Claras is a recent, planned middle-class satellite city 16 kilometres (10 miles) from Brasília that remained unfinished until the opening of the metro in 2001.

Brasília today lies at the heart of a thriving metropolitan region, the Distrito Federal (Federal District): a region of 5,800 square kilometres (2,240 square miles) in the central plateau of Brazil, 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) inland from the former capital, Rio de Janeiro. Since its origin in the 1950s, it has proved to be a pragmatic and successful response to the challenges of urban development. Brasília was not, in fact, planned in any meaningful way. The Brazilian architect and planner Lúcio Costa’s entry for the design competition for the new city in 1956 was a series of sketches of ideal urban forms of communal apartment blocks loosely based on Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse of 1935, and ‘superblocks’ of single-family houses based on the North American Radburn layout (1929). He subsequently elaborated these into the Plano Piloto (Pilot Plan), and added the satellite city of Taguatinga. The lack of a comprehensive masterplan meant that the expansion of the city was not controlled by a development framework, and Brasília today faces many of the urban challenges common to other Brazilian cities: a burgeoning periphery, shortage of both low-income and middle-class housing, and serious traffic congestion. In any case, it is unlikely that any masterplan conceived when Brazil was a mainly rural economy with a population of 62 million would continue to serve an urban consumer society of 207 million 60 years later. The success of Costa’s architectural vision was such, however, that despite being the fastest growing metropolitan region in Brazil, the Distrito Federal has the highest standard of living in the country, equal to that of major European countries.1

The Founding of Brasília: the Kubitschek Years Brasília is the motor city par excellence. There is little doubt that Costa was entranced by the futuristic visions of the American city 20 years into the future (1959) proposed by Norman Bel Geddes in General Motors’s Futurama exhibit and by Henry Dreyfuss in the Democracity exhibit at the New York World’s Fair in 1939, where he and Oscar Niemeyer built the Brazilian Pavilion. He was inspired again by the Parkways, the scenic express routes promoted by the autocratic Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, wrapping around the shoreline in New York City, which Costa visited again in 1956. This vision aligned perfectly with the then President Juscelino Kubitschek’s ambition to develop a car industry in Brazil.2 The creation of Brasília was also a direct response to the perceived chaos of Rio; in fact, the British planner William Holford, the most senior competition judge, acknowledged that congestion in Rio was the main reason for the construction of a new capital.3 Despite its public image, Brasília is not a unified city. Costa envisaged three radically different architectural and social forms of habitation: superquadras (superblocks), lagos (lakeside) and cidades satélites (satellite cities), which were, in effect, incompatible. He separated them spatially: the winged form of the residential superquadras and the Eixo Monumental (Monumental Axis), which comprise the familiar Plano Piloto, are located on a triangular peninsula in the artificial (dammed) Lake Paranoá; the singlefamily housing areas of the lagos wrap around the other side of the lake; with Taguatinga, the first of the cidades satélites, situated 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Brasília.4 The superquadras were designed in four parallel strips, flanked by zones dedicated to schools, medical and other communal facilities, and organised around a series of parallel avenues: the L2, W3 and two eixinhos (little axes). Due to the communal nature of

Superquadras, Brasília, Distrito Federal, 2015 left: Lúcio Costa’s original superquadras, communal apartment blocks loosely based on Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse of 1935, seen from the southwestern end of the Plano Piloto. From the beginning, Brasília was dominated by its road layout, in keeping with contemporary ideals of the private car. The resemblance to the Norman Bel Geddesdesigned Futurama exhibit that presented a possible model of the American city 20 years into the future, which Lúcio Costa saw at the New York World’s Fair in 1939, is clear.

Original superquadra, Brasília, 1999 top right: Lúcio Costa’s model for the original superquadras embodies his utopian ideas of a balance between buildings and landscape, here designd by Roberto Burle Marx.

Contemporary superquadra, Brasília, 1999 right: The new superquadras, built after the return to prosperity following the end of the military dictatorship in 1985, were restricted in theory by their listing as a UN World Heritage site to the same overall shape and layout as the original ‘model’ superquadras by Lúcio Costa, but display in practice the same banality of design and vestigial public space as contemporary developments in other parts of the Distrito Federal.

Map of Brasília, 1967 right: By 1967, shortly after the military coup of 1964 that ended the original plan for Brasília, the city envisaged by Lúcio Costa had been planned in detail, although little had, in fact, been built. From Norma Evenson, Two Brazilian Capitals (Yale University Press, 1973).

Illegal invasion, Vila Rabelo, Distrito Federal, Brasília, 2015

top: Such is the demand for low-income housing that illegal invasions are common. This landform of steep hills and valleys, common on the borders of the Distrito Federal, is not suitable for agriculture so is open for occupation.

Águas Claras, Distrito Federal, Brasília, 2015

bottom: Águas Claras is now well served by the metro system so is a popular place for middleclass apartments. The original balance between buildings and landscape has been totally lost.

Itapoã, Distrito Federal, Brasília, 2015

top: Vast areas of low-income loteamentos (building plots) have sprung up in the Distrito Federal, without employment, transport or services. Itapoã is an irregular settlement 22 kilometres (14 miles) from Brasília in the rural northeastern sector.

Gated enclave, Shopping, Distrito Federal, Brasília, 2015

bottom: The condomínio fechado, or secure gated enclave, is now the most common form of middle-class residential development in the Distrito Federal, in contrast to the open and communitarian city envisaged by Lúcio Costa. This example is located on unregulated land close to ParkShopping, the suburban shopping mall built in 1983 that led to the decline of central shopping areas in Brasília but which has since formed the nucleus of the suburban Shopping district.

this form of inhabitation, the public realm in the superquadras was intended to have equal importance to the buildings. Roberto Burle Marx designed the landscape in the original ‘model’ superquadras, while most of the blocos (apartment buildings) and the ‘model’ church and cinema were designed by Niemeyer. All public facilities were within easy walking distance of the superquadras, although there was no adequate public transport for residents to get anywhere else. While the superquadras were based specifically on prewar Congrès internationaux d'architecture moderne (CIAM) urban doctrines, the lagos were based on postwar North American models, specifically Ludwig Hilberseimer’s linear suburb, intended to rationalise the chaotic form of developer towns like Levittown and introduce a rational form of scenic express routes and 'superblocks' of Radburn layouts, with factories, schools and public buildings between.5 This form implied a sharp distinction between a private realm of individual houses and a public realm of landscaped highways: in fact, an intermediate zone of ‘green fingers’ of public space separating the houses was quickly absorbed into private gardens. The lagos were originally intended for ministers or the ‘upper middle class’; as there is no mortgage facility in Brazil, only the wealthy could afford private houses, and indeed the first area to be built was the Península dos Ministros (Peninsula of the Ministers). The cidades satélites did not appear in Costa’s competition entry, yet due to the demand for housing while the Plano Piloto was under construction, substantial areas of Taguatinga had been built by 1958. The competition judges recognised that these areas of workers’ housing and industry should be separate and subservient to the Plano Piloto, linked to Brasília by highways. Costa planned Taguatinga in a highly pragmatic design as loteamentos (building plots) on a grid, reminiscent of rural towns in Brazil. Costa initially proposed terraced casas populares (low-income housing) on the

Density survey, Brasília, 2012 A recent survey shows the massive development of satellite cities principally to the southwest of Brasília. While the metro has facilitated increased densities, it does not serve large parts of the Distrito Federal.

High Medium Low Very low Areas of environmental interest

loteamentos, based on the design of New Deal housing such as the Aluminum City Terrace at New Kensington, Pennsylvania (1944) by Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer.6 He also used this design for an area of low-income housing – the Setor de Habitações Individuais Germinadas (Sector of Terraced Houses) in a strip parallel to the superquadras in the Plano Piloto, so that low-income residents could be accommodated here.

Brasília After Kubitschek: The Ditadura and Abertura Brasília was an extraordinary act of political hubris by President Kubitschek, although it was based on rational motives for the modernisation and development of the country as a whole. Political support for Brasília vanished after the military coup in 1964. The architects, along with other intellectuals, were regarded as dangerously leftwing and exiled. In fact, very little of Brasília had been built by 1964: the president’s residence (the Alvorada Palace), Praça dos Três Poderes (Three Powers Square), the Ministérios (Ministries) and the Hospital de Base (Central Hospital), but only 10 of the planned 160 superquadras, a few private houses for ministers, and some casas populares in the cidades satelites. Under the subsequent military ditadura (dictatorship), planning was virtually abandoned in Brazil, leading to enormous problems during a period of rapid urbanisation. Political pressure and financial support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), part of the anti-communist Alliance for Progress, led to the founding of the Banco Nacional da Habitação in 1964, which brought a new model for low-income housing: individual and isolated houses. Under pressure for expansion in the Distrito Federal, the cidades satélites expanded and multiplied, with little concern for public space or transport. As in other Brazilian cities, after the abertura (return to democracy) in 1985, the situation was beyond recall.

The original design of the superquadras, of blocks in harmony with the landscape, was abandoned, and alterations (to increase density and thus profit, at the expense of the public realm) began to be implemented.7 These destroyed the relationship between interior and public space that is so apparent in the original superquadras, and a managed and communal public realm effectively ceased to exist.

transport to connect commuters from the cidades satélites to the employment centres in the Plano Piloto and, conversely, to make viable employment in the cidades satélites. To combat the problems of congestion, an ambitious metro system has been started, linking Taguatinga, Ceilândia, Samambaia, Águas Claras and Guará to central Brasília, although this does not adequately cover the spatial area of the Distrito Federal.

Brasília Today

Life Beyond Utopia

Brasília is now incredibly popular. The Distrito Federal was originally planned for a population of about 500,000; in 2010 it had surpassed 2.5 million inhabitants, and in 2015 it was estimated at about 2.9 million inhabitants, with a further 500,000 inhabitants in adjacent municipalities in the state of Goiás where planning is even less controlled.8 After the abertura, Brazil became integrated into the ‘neoliberal’ global economy, and economically stable under President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. The combination of prosperity and deregulation led to uncontrolled low-income and middle-class expansion throughout the Distrito Federal, and even attempts to build standard blocos (apartment buildings) in the superquadras, a situation that worsened until the Plano Piloto was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1988.9 The buildings and landscapes in the original superquadras have been renovated and these are now the most expensive in the Plano Piloto. Pedestrian crossings were added in 1998, which made walking to the local shops much easier. The lagos remain very desirable as a middleclass residential area. Taguatinga (population: 361,000) has now exceeded the Plano Piloto (281,000) in size; it contains substantial middleclass districts and cannot be thought of in any way a low-income cidade satélite. Substantial private houses have replaced the casas populares on the loteamentos. The later cidades satélites were p dispersed in the hinterland to the southeast of the Plano Piloto, further worsening the isolation and congestion on the highway system. Ceilândia and Samambaia, both 24 kilometres (15 miles) from Brasília, and Gama, 32 kilometres (20 miles) from the city, contain loteamentos on gridded streets. Later cidades satélites began to infill the empty spaces around Brasília: Recanto das Emas, 21 kilometres (13 miles) and Guará, 12 kilometres (7 miles) from Brasília. None of these had any form of public transport to Brasília except the very congested bus system, which could lead to journey times of an hour or longer. The most recent cidades satélites, such as Águas Claras and Setor Sudoeste (South-West Zone), are driven by developers’ plans with isolated apartment buildings without any public realm. There are now very substantial middle-class invasions of land previously empty, such as São Sebastião and Colônia Agrícola Vicente Pires – vast anonymous areas of urban sprawl both 16 kilometres (10 miles) from Brasília. The original zone of lowincome terrace housing adjacent in the Plano Piloto, the Setor de Habitações Individuais Germinadas, has now been transformed into middle-class casas do interior (houses from the interior), which makes a bizarre contrast with the still-intact superquadras on the other side of the W3 avenue. A high proportion of employment in the Distrito Federal, as a political centre, is in the civil service and administration, followed by service industries in the Plano Piloto. There is no heavy industry, but plenty of agriculture in the surrounding regions. The main problems of urban development are the need for adequate

Is the Distrito Federal successful? Brasília is commonly portrayed as sterile and inhumane, but according to UN statistics the Distrito Federal had a Human Development Index (HDI) – an idealistic composite of health, education and standard of living, rather than the brutal and misleading index of economic growth – of 0.874 in 2010, close to the UK (0.9) and France (0.88), and well above the Brazilian average of 0.74.10 Is Brasília sustainable in the sense of the diverse and productive cities – high-density and mixed-use – that we understand form the foundations of regions with the highest HDIs? The answer must be a qualified ‘not really’. Costa conceived Brasília during a period when private cars were seen as the future, and when employment and social life were highly regulated into static and predictable channels, and it embodies these ideals. Costa’s vision, however, incorporated the most utopian assumptions about urban life in the 1950s: transport, the balance of public and private life, and accommodation for various degrees of financial and social status. The utopian nature of his original vision contrasts markedly with the current developers’ city of anonymous blocks devoid of public realm, and laid the foundations for the thriving metropolitan region today. Notes 1. Programa das Nações Unidas para o Desenvolvimento (PNUD): www. pnud.org.br/atlas/ranking/Ranking-IDHM-UF-2010.aspx. 2. Costa mentioned the Parkways in his essay ‘”Ingredientes” da concepção urbanística de Brasília’ (‘“Ingredients” of the urban concept for Brasília’), possibly written for the publication of his own œuvre complète: Lúcio Costa: registro de uma vivência, Empressa das Artes (São Paulo), 1995. He was apparently in New York City for the 60th anniversary celebrations of the Parsons School of Design in 1956. 3. This reason formed the first sentence of William Holford’s article ‘Brasília: A New Capital City for Brazil’ in the Architectural Review (December 1957) p 395, as well as being cited by JO de Meira Penna in an article entitled ‘Brazil Builds a New Capital’ in the catalogue Brasília, published by the Divisão Cultural, Ministério de Relações Exteriores (Rio de Janeiro) for an exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London, 11–28 June 1958. 4. The first official mention of Taguatinga was in the official magazine brasília, 10 July 1958. 5. Ludwig Hilberseimer, Nature of Cities, Paul Theobald & Co (Chicago, IL), 1955. 6. These were illustrated in Elizabeth Mock, Built in the USA: 1932–1944, Museum of Modern Art (New York), 1944, published shortly after Philip L Goodwin, Brazil Builds: Architecture New and Old, 1652–1942, Museum of Modern Art (New York), January 1943. 7. Frederico de Holanda, Brasília: Cidade Moderna, Cidade Eterna, University of Brasília (Brasília), 2010. 8. Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics): www.ibge.gov.br/estadosat/perfil. php?lang=&sigla=df. 9. Report of the UN World Heritage Committee Eleventh Session (1987): whc.unesco.org/en/sessions/11COM/. 10. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Reports: http://hdr.undp.org/en/data.

Text © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 88-89, 90-91, 92(t), 93 © Joana França; p 91(tr&cr) © Thomas Deckker; p 91(br) © From Norma Evenson, Two Brazilian Capitals: Architecture and Urbanism in Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1973; p 92(b) © Eduardo Rossetti; p 94 © Governo do Distrito Federal

Circe Monteiro and Luiz Carvalho

An island city: Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil, 2014 Central Recife occupies a series of islands.

The Popular Struggle

Sometimes dubbed Brazil’s Venice, Recife is situated on a series of islands, articulated by waterways, on the country’s northeast coast. The nation’s ninth largest city, it has a historical core, but also shares many urban challenges common to other Brazilian metropolises: a beachfront blighted by speculative development, a semi-derelict port area and extensive zones of poor neighbourhoods. Architects and academics Circe Monteiro and Luiz Carvalho from the multidisciplinary research group INCITI (Research and Innovation for Cities) at the Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife, describe here why, despite a history of inconsistent development, this could now be Recife’s moment to transform itself as the urban agenda comes to the fore.

for a Better City

Recife, Brazil’s ninth largest city with a metropolitan area population exceeding 3.8 million, currently faces an unprecedented opportunity to shape its future as a green and sustainable metropolis. This is not just 21st-century planning jargon. A conjunction of particular circumstances has challenged the way the city has been planned, has countered prevailing economic and property interests and established the basis for a new approach to urban design. Located on Brazil’s northeast coast, Recife is characterised by many of the same urban phenomena that one finds in other large coastal cities: a burgeoning beachfront of hotels and speculative residential towers of negligible architectural quality, a port area of abandoned warehouses and an endless periphery of low-income neighbourhoods and favelas with minimal transport, poor-quality health and education facilities, and non-existent urban amenities. What differentiates Recife from Brazil’s other coastal cities is its geographical setting on a series of islands defined by a network of waterways. It is no coincidence that the term ‘Brazilian Venice’ is often used to promote the city. In addition, unusually progressive planning in the 1980s preserved several blocks of 17th-, 18th- and 19th-century buildings in the districts of the historical core, including the lively São José market of 1875. In the 1990s, the island of Bairro do Recife – the oldest part of the historical centre now marketed as ‘Recife Antigo’ (Old Recife) – established itself as the heart of the city for public festivities and witnessed a further transformation due to the arrival of new uses such as a technology hub. Throughout its history, Recife has been shaped by conflicting forces. Four of these competing influences – the city’s struggle to conquer nature, the impact of new developments, the struggle for representation by various social movements, and the search for a new quality of life and sustainable development proposed by the Capibaribe Park plan – highlight key aspects of the city’s past development, its current situation and a possible future.

Recife: key map locating major landmarks and projects Recife’s historic city centre is set on an island. An ambitious proposed reclamation and upgrading of the Capibaribe River would provide a muchneeded green lung through many city neighbourhoods. Note the location of the 2014 FIFA World Cup stadium, 23 kilometres (14 miles) northwest of the city centre.

CITY VERSUS NATURE The first long-lasting (and ongoing) conflict is between the city and nature, notably the fight to control water. Recife’s identification with the waters of the Capibaribe River, the main watercourse that traverses it, is one of the city’s most striking features. The city’s initial urban nucleus was built on an isthmus between the Atlantic Ocean and the Capibaribe River basin. When the Dutch occupied the territory in the 17th century they built their city on flooded land where there was already a small village next to the port. ‘By the reefs’ gives Recife its name. Even after the expulsion of the Dutch in 1654, this settlement became the region’s main economic centre, and then its provincial capital, and remained one of Brazil’s three largest cities until the mid-19th century. Explosive population growth during the 20th century and the substitution of river by vehicular transport diminished the role of the Capibaribe as a structural element of urban space. Market demand for a modern lifestyle in high-rise buildings created a disconnect with the river and nature in most of the city’s central districts, with the exception of the beachfront. Recife thus entered the 21st century with an urban structure that barely acknowledges the river. Market demand favoured new neighbourhoods along the beachfront, with high-rise buildings substituting the existing low-density typologies. Recife’s historical centre (a group of four out of its 94 districts) is the only place where some traces of its connection to water can still be found. Along with the new growth, the already precarious mobility was exacerbated by President Lula’s policy to help consumers from lower-income groups by reducing car tax. As a result, passenger cars and motorcycles congest roads throughout the city, reflecting the country's rising rate of car ownership, which increased by an average of 7 per cent a year from 1992 to 2009.1 In the last decade, a series of plans for improved public transport were initiated, largely driven by Recife’s role as the 2014 FIFA World Cup host city. Today, however, the effect of

Capibaribe River, Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil, 2014 On the left bank lie a wealthy neighbourhood and the Santana Park, while the right bank is occupied by poor communities – two different worlds divided by the river with few connecting bridges.

Marco Zero Square, Recife Antigo (Old Recife), Pernambuco, Brazil, 2015 below: The historical city centre with its renovated warehouses is enlivened by weekend fairs and musical performances that attract residents, visitors and, increasingly, cyclists.

these plans is scarcely noticeable due to lack of connection of the proposed systems with the existing network, and the fact that most of the works have been only partially implemented.

HISTORICAL VERSUS MODERN Recife is fortunate because a series of programmes coordinated by industry, national and local government and academia initiated at the end of the last decade have contributed to the regeneration of part of the city’s historical centre at Bairro do Recife. Focused on local economic development, the initiative provided incentives to attract technology-based information and communication businesses to the area. Porto Digital, the flagship of these interventions, currently accommodates 250 companies with 7,100 people working in 50,000 square metres (540,000 square feet) of refurbished 19th-century buildings. Parallel to this, Recife City Council and the Pernambuco state government also introduced initiatives to support culture and leisure in the city centre, including previously dispersed carnival festivities, and the refurbishment of riverside warehouses that now include a major museum dedicated to the history and culture of northeast Brazil’s semiarid Sertão region. Temporary cycle lanes, a street market and closure to cars on Sundays have all contributed to the district’s transformation. The city centre has been occupied in new ways by teaching institutions, young residents, offices, bars, restaurants and museums, reinforcing its role as a meeting place and point of convergence for different social groups. This vitality attracted new users (primarily the middle classes) and stimulated new habits such as family weekend cycling, strolls along the promenade, or just meeting friends at city-centre bars. Although they do not reach the entire city, these small yet important changes are a first step towards bridging spatial and social segregation.

THE STRUGGLE OF THE CITY, FOR THE CITY, BY THE CITY With the exception of Recife Antigo, the city’s skyline of Baroque church towers, its magnificent river views and exuberant vegetation have been gradually destroyed due to several decades without long-term planning. Regulations are continually written and modified to meet the objectives of developers. The speed of transformation is such that these losses are only recognised by city authorities when it is too late. Until recently, these repeated demolitions took place without any community reaction. In response to Recife’s startling growth at the end of the last century, and the problems of verticalisation and limited mobility, neighbourhood residents’ associations have played an increasingly important role in pressing for new city legislation. An important example is the implementation of a regulation that is still in use limiting the building height to six floors in areas close to the river, and a maximum of 20 floors across the rest of the urban fabric in 12 of the city’s districts. These are predominantly middle-class groups fighting to protect their own interests and tend to be dismissed by local authorities as bourgeois movements without popular legitimacy, however they exert strong influence in the political sphere and local press. Another vector of discontent with the business-as-usual property market was a group of activists who created the Direitos Urbanos (Urban Rights) discussion forum in 2012, along with a blog that aired citizens’ views against development projects that were detrimental to the city’s landscape or involved the demolition of historical buildings.2 This was a first in Recife. In June 2013, a wave of popular demonstrations erupted across Brazil during the FIFA Confederations Cup with an urgent agenda of demands (from better public transport,

Urban mangrove, Boa Viagem, Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil, 2014 opposite: This conservation area in the middle of the city connects two important water systems: the Capibaribe River basin and the sea.

Occupy protestors, Cais José Estelita, Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil, 7 May 2015 below: ‘The City is Ours, Occupy It.’ The struggle against the construction of a high-rise scheme on the Estelita quay was sparked by social media and grew into a forceful voice campaigning for urban rights.

Recife’s ‘urban rights’ movement emerged, questioning the city’s current development model. It reached its peak during the World Cup.

education and hospitals to rights for minority groups, but principally against the public works proposed for the 2014 World Cup). Although Recife already had a specific governmental programme in place to respond to FIFA’s requirements regarding its infrastructure, it was clear to the general public that the World Cup would be an exercise in exclusion, and that the promised improvements would not be implemented in time. A proposal for a mixed-use project adjacent to Recife’s new stadium almost 20 kilometres (12 miles) west of the city was abandoned. The bus rapid transit (BRT) system was only partially completed and does not even reach the World Cup stadium – a white elephant that was built despite the fact that the city already had large stadiums, which are currently facing maintenance problems. Within this context, Recife’s ‘urban rights’ movement emerged, questioning the city’s current development model. It reached its peak during the World Cup, precipitated by opposition to a proposed waterfront development of 40-storey residential towers at Cais José Estelita. The project is planned to occupy a prime city-centre site that previously served as a railway yard connected to the port. The development of gated tower blocks ignores its urban context and would turn the waterfront into an exclusive destination for residents only. This approach is all too common in Brazil, and the result is a city of enclaves. Although the project has been reformulated to address some of the issues that concern the urban rights movements, if implemented it would undermine the relation between city and waterfront. In the current economic scenario it is still not clear whether the project will be realised. Although Recife’s Occupy Estelita (Ocupe Estelita) movement was sparked by a local development issue, it relates to broader struggles for participation and democracy

elsewhere in Brazil and globally. The use of online social networks enabled a new awareness and broader debate of local urban problems, as well as accountability in the face of crisis and threats from the developer and city government. Occupy Estelita typifies what David Harvey (who lectured at the site and is one of the most ardent supporters of this movement) terms ‘virtual agora’: debating the city. According to Harvey: ‘The right to the city is … far more than a right of individual or group access to the resources that the city embodies: it is a right to change and reinvent the city more after our hearts' desire.’3 On the night of 21 May, right before the World Cup in June 2014, when Recife hosted four matches and the city was host to more than 40,000 tourists, Occupy Estelita came to a head when the developer sent bulldozers to demolish the waterfront warehouses. The immediate posting of photos on social networks enabled a crowd to gather on the site within minutes, and it was then occupied around the clock for 28 days, with speeches by university professors and young activists alternating with impromptu nightly concerts.

A common purpose crystallised among a diverse group of protesters. The great shared lesson of Occupy Estelita was that Recife’s future can no longer be the result of a top-down development process alone. Citizens want to play a part in shaping the city’s future, and they will fight for a better quality of life for all. This is no longer just a virtual movement, and its presence cannot be ignored.

CAPIBARIBE PARK AND THE REINVENTION OF RECIFE When the current mayor, Geraldo Júlio, began his term in office in 2013 he committed to a different vision for Recife’s future by engaging the transdisciplinary research group INCITI (Research and Innovation for Cities) at the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE) to study options for the urban and environmental recovery of the Capibaribe River. A confluence of particular circumstances and its synergy with other ongoing projects made the Capibaribe Park project a timely proposal. A public river transport

The large number of cyclists using these dedicated routes at weekends represents a subtle but significant change in the habits and everyday life of Recife’s middle class. INCITI/UFPE (Research and Innovation for Cities/Universidade Federal de Pernambuco), Capibaribe Park, Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil, 2014 Green infrastructure at Antonio Maria Square. Landscaped riverside promenades are proposed to link the planned river transport terminals with bicycle lanes and bus stops at nearby avenues.

network with five stations on the riverbanks was already under construction, coordinated by the state government. A public/private partnership recently took over responsibility for Recife’s sanitation and will treat 90 per cent of the city’s sewage. Together with the completion of a large study of the city’s urban drainage being implemented by the local government, this should dramatically reduce river pollution. Another intangible phenomenon to support the proposal of a park is the recent explosion of interest in cycling, supported by the creation of almost 30 kilometres (19 miles) of disconnected cycle paths in Recife since 2003. The large number of cyclists using these dedicated routes at weekends represents a subtle but significant change in the habits and everyday life of Recife’s middle class, who are not only looking for public leisure areas in the city, but are also keen to participate in shaping its future. The Capibaribe Park project is based on a simple plan that is phased to expand over time. Some strategic areas are already being implemented, such as the Baobá Square and at the margins of the Graças neighbourhood. The project

INCITI/UFPE (Research and Innovation for Cities/Universidade Federal de Pernambuco), Capibaribe Park, Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil, 2014

Network of open spaces along the river margins from Santana Park to the Derby neighbourhood. As part of the proposed Capibaribe Park project, cycle and pedestrian paths along the river would link fragmented green and open spaces and squares in an integrated network.

TO FOLLOW A network of 45 kilometres (30 miles) of cycle lanes and pedestrian sidewalks would link natural and urban spaces, providing windows, decks and piers along the riverside.

TO CROSS Twelve new pedestrian and bicycle bridges are proposed to link the two banks of the river, making urban services and equipment accessible for populations that currently are spatially and socially segregated.

TO LINK A network of 53 kilometres (33 miles) of pedestrianised streets would increase urban vitality and encourage new uses.

TO EMBRACE The park will provide a diversity of open places to meet, rest, play and enjoy natural landscapes.

proposes paths ‘to follow’ the river, pedestrian bridges ‘to cross’ it (often connecting districts with radically different socioeconomic profiles), green streets ‘to link’ to nearby squares, and parks to infiltrate the city with places ‘to embrace’ nature and the river. The objective is to provide permanent public areas and to create a vibrant public realm that enhances the river and the city. Recife is an intriguing case when it comes to public places. In a city where public space accounts for less than 0.5 per cent of the city’s area, why are existing parks so underused? Beyond creating new public spaces, the agenda of Capibaribe Park is to reconnect existing areas and to foster a sense of ownership of the public domain among Recife’s citizens. Through strategic actions, the park would provide a backbone that articulates spaces for people that are socially, ecologically and spatially embedded in local areas. The positive impacts of an integrated system of parks along the Capibaribe would be manifold. It would reduce the average temperature in the 42 districts the project would directly impact, increase public access to open space, and provide a new means of transport in the city. Equally important, it could help change the mentality and behaviour of Recife’s residents, encouraging them to take possession of the city, feel it, experience it and build it.

The proposed next steps for the Capibaribe Park project include a series of international competitions for urban design, public furniture and art installations. To garner support, a marketing campaign is needed to raise awareness about the importance of the public realm among a wide range of inhabitants and stakeholders. The spatial transformations proposed do not necessarily rely exclusively on the public sector. Broad involvement is crucial to secure funding and to overcome the fear of discontinuity due to the political changes that always accompany structural urban infrastructure projects of this scale. The debate sparked by the Occupy Estelita movement has paved the way for change by setting an urban agenda for Recife. Now is the ideal moment to translate expectations into strategies, to demonstrate that the Capibaribe Park has the potential to ignite the transformation of the city and to reduce segregation by creating shared public spaces for its citizens regardless of social or economic barriers.

above: Proposed stands will link a major existing park in the upscale neighbourhood of Jaqueira directly to the river. left: Riverside promenades would be planted with native trees and climbers to provide shade and reduce the urban heat island effect.

Notes 1. Rafael Pereira and Tim Schwanen, ‘Tempo de deslocamento casa-trabalho no Brasil (1992–2009): diferenças entre regiões metropolitanas, níveis de renda e sexo’, discussion paper, Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada (IPEA) (Rio de Janeiro), 2013: http://repositorio.ipea.gov.br/ bitstream/11058/958/1/TD_1813.pdf 2. https://direitosurbanos.wordpress.com/. 3. David Harvey, Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution, Verso (London), 2014, p 4.

Text © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 96-7, 100 © Gustavo Penteado; p 98 © Dilton Lopes; p 99(t) © André Moraes; p 99(b) © Andréa Rêgo Barros/PCR; p 101 © Rafaella Ribeiro; pp 102-5 © INCITI

Sergio Ekerman

The Struggle for Dialogue

Witthin a He erittage Citty

Founded on Brazil’s northeast coast in 1549 by the Portuguese as the country’s first colonial capital, Salvador da Bahia occupies a spectacular site on a peninsula that separates the Atlantic Ocean from the enormous Bahia de Todos os Santos (All Saints’ Bay). Surrounded by water on two sides and divided into an upper and lower city, Salvador’s urban set piece is Pelourinho, a 20-hectare (50-acre) area of 17thand 18th-century colonial architecture declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1985. As an active sugar- and slave-trading centre, Salvador experienced steady growth during its first 400 years. But it was not until the second half of the 20th century that the city underwent the massive changes that shaped it as we know it today: explosive horizontal and vertical expansion, fierce real-estate development, gradual abandonment of the city centre, and domination of the automobile as the principal means of transport. As Brazil’s third largest city with a population of 2.6 million,1 Salvador faces a serious housing deficit, which in the last five decades has led to a proliferation of informal occupation areas. The seminal and visionary modern plan of the Escritório do Plano de Urbanismo da Cidade de Salvador (EPUCS) developed by urban planner Mario Leal Ferreira and modern architect Diógenes Rebouças, among others, in the 1940s, could only partially anticipate and influence this degree of change, and sadly it was never appropriately followed up. This resulted in an 80-kilometre (50-mile) long waterfront that is

not valued as it should be, and a core area largely characterised by dense favelas that house roughly 50 per cent of the city’s population.

Lelé and Lina Spearheaded by mayor Mario Kertesz (1979–81 and 1986–9), one of the first attempts to restructure Salvador by addressing issues such as governance, heritage and city centre regeneration, the public transport system and the upgrading of the city’s favelas took place in 1986. Kertesz invited architect João Filgueiras Lima, known as Lelé, to build on his previous work in both Rio and Salvador by creating a factory for prefabricated components that could provide much-needed infrastructure in the city. Lelé developed industrialised drainage canals and intelligent urban stairways for poor areas, as well as schools and daycare centres that could be put together in less than a month.2 This work left important and positive marks on the city, like the implementation of Salvador's trademark crosswalks – still used and renewed today – which enable pedestrians to cross busy avenues and connect different city levels to bus stations and neighbouring communities. Lelé also designed Salvador’s City Hall (1985), which although intended as a temporary building, is still used to this day and is a strong visual expression of municipal administrative power in the city centre. Completed in 1988, the renewal and extension of several dilapidated colonial buildings into housing and bars on the Ladeira da Misericórdia in

Founded by the Portuguese in the mid-16th century as the colonial capital of Brazil, Salvador da Bahia on the northeast coast retains to this day a unique historical centre. Now a burgeoning metropolis, Salvador is also the country’s third largest city with all the social, political and infrastructure problems and inequalities that accompany explosive urban growth. Sergio Ekerman, an architect and professor at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) in Salvador, describes how a lack of political will and consensus between private and public stakeholders is failing to produce the dialogue necessary for coherent urban development.

Aerial view of Salvador, Brazil, 2012 above: The city’s Barra lighthouse is a landmark where the Atlantic Ocean (right) meets the Bahia de Todos os Santos (All Saints’ Bay) (left). Salvador: key map locating major landmarks and projects left: Salvador occupies a peninsula surrounded by the Bahia de Todos os Santos (All Saints’ Bay) and the Atlantic Ocean. Divided into an upper and lower city, much of its 80-kilometre (50-mile) long waterfront is undervalued, and favelas, which house approximately 50 per cent of the city's residents, occupy much of the centre city.

Lina Bo Bardi and João Filgueiras Lima (Lelé), Coati restaurant and new housing, Ladeira da Misericórdia, Salvador, Brazil, 1986 above left: The restaurant (left) and other interventions in the renewal and extension of the dilapidated colonial buildings along this street incorporate bespoke prefabricated ferro-cement panels.

Rooftops, Pelourinho, Salvador, Brazil, 1996 above right: The Portuguese layout of narrow streets with buildings facing the public urban realm lost balance after the creation of new squares within the original blocks during a 1990s intervention.

Pelourinho was the result of a fruitful collaboration between Lelé and architect Lina Bo Bardi. The use of low-cost prefabricated ferro-cement components in some of their projects was to pioneer an approach that remains one of Salvador’s most interesting experiments in preserving historical buildings. Two further Bo Bardi projects, the Casa do Benin African-Brazilian study centre (1987) and Casa Do Olodum community centre (1988) followed the same approach. Although humble in scale, these projects are a good example of quality design combined with urban use adapted to the needs of the local communities. They continue to be an inspirational reference for young architects, but unfortunately they had little impact on any major decisions afterwards when it came to heritage conservation policies.

Pelourinho: An Empty Tourist Neighbourhood In the ensuing 25 years, dozens of plans and projects have been proposed to tackle urban development in Salvador, at different scales and in different areas of the city. In the historical centre, a particularly unsuccessful plan for Pelourinho was implemented in the 1990s by the Bahia state government. With a first phase inaugurated in 1993, private gardens within the existing blocks were appropriated by the city and transformed into three public squares with stages and bars to create a night-time entertainment district mainly aimed at tourists. The programme was characterised by low-quality restoration, and also transferred ‘abandoned’ property to the Bahia

state Instituto do Patrimônio Artístico e Cultural (Institute of Artistic and Cultural Heritage), one of many instances in which state and municipal powers overlap in a confusing manner: although the municipality is solely responsible for all urban areas, the state took charge in this case, creating an institutional discharge. Although hundreds of Pelourinho’s dilapidated colonial houses were saved from falling apart and restored, the long-term results had a negative effect on the city as a whole and on many of its inhabitants. Existing low-income residents were expelled to create a tourist-based entertainment borough, which still requires financial subsidies today. Other potential residents refused to move in to Pelourinho because of the nuisance from latenight shows and bars, among other problems such as lack of connection to the rest of the city and safety. The lack of residents also led to a high vacancy rate in the area. A 2012 design competition held by the state government and the Bahia chapter of the Instituto de Arquitetos do Brasil (Institute of Architects of Brazil) sought a new design for the squares that had been created as part of the above-mentioned plan in 1993. The winning scheme, by São Paulo-based Studio Arthur Casas, proposed the conversion of one of the three squares, the Largo Quincas Berro D'Água, into a small park, reshaping the public space with a residential character to discourage ongoing entertainment-based urbanism. To date, nothing has

Studio Arthur Casas, Largo Quincas Berro D'Água, Salvador, Brazil, 2012 above left: The proposed new square design incorporates a small park and is intended to reinforce the residential character of the area.

Salvador Metro, Salvador, Brazil, 2015 above right: Inaugurated in 2015, the Salvador Metro runs on an elevated line, creating a new landscape element that is out of scale with its context, difficult to access for pedestrians and not properly connected to adjacent neighbourhoods.

happened and no news regarding the status of the competition has been released. Salvador’s historical core still contains many badly deteriorated and under-utilised areas, including the city’s important facade facing the bay, where several houses collapsed during heavy rains in May 2015 and were demolished by the municipality, to major community protest. The IPHAN (Institute of Artistic and Cultural Heritage) is responsible for several recent high-profile projects such as the restoration of the Catedral da Sé and Palácio Arquepiscopal, but a lack of urban vision or public policy means that currently there are no plans to address these issues in a holistic way. In July 2015, several organisations including the Conselho de Arquitetura e Urbanismo (Council of Architecture and Urbanism), Sindicato dos Arquitetos e Urbanistas (Union of Architects and Town Planners) of the state of Bahia, and the Bahia chapter of the Institute of Architects of Brazil issued a report to UNESCO, calling for a re-evaluation of Pelourinho’s title as a World Heritage site, due to the severity of its ongoing problems.3

Mobility Similarly, when it comes to public transport, Salvador is struggling to put a coherent system in place. After 14 years of tumultuous construction and political discord, a short 6-kilometre (4-mile) metro line was inaugurated in 2015. Now under the ownership of a private concession, plans to extend the first line and build a second face heated public criticism. And

proposals to replace existing train lines that serve the city’s poor suburbs along the bay with a light tram system are stalled due to lack of funding. In parallel, nonsense proposals for a privately financed US$2 billion bridge that would link Salvador to Itaparica Island and then to the south of Brazil, and a new connection to the north of the city called ‘Linha Viva Road’, are still on the table. This toll road incorporates no public transport and requires the partial removal of the Saramandaia favela, which would impact the lives of approximately 3,000 people. At the same time, the state government is building two new east–west roads – 15 kilometres (9 miles) each – to link the bay and Atlantic seafronts. Unfortunately there is no overall vision for the city that links these different projects.

Favela Upgrade Little has been done regarding the upgrading of Salvador’s favelas for the last 20 years. One exception, however, is Brasil Arquitetura’s 360-unit São Bartolomeu community, a state project funded by the World Bank and partially completed in 2010. Located where the Cobre River enters the bay at São Bartolomeu Park, the project addressed serious flooding in the area and incorporates a children’s nursery and new equipment for the park. Another

Brasil Arquitetura, Social housing and park community centre, São Bartolomeu Park, Salvador, Brazil, 2014 The São Bartolomeu Park project was the result of a participatory process and addressed major flooding in the area. A community centre serves both residents and park users.

initiative, a 2014 competition held jointly by the state and the Bahia chapter of the Institute of Architects of Brazil for the Baixinha do Santo Antônio neighbourhood and won by Rio-based architects RVBA, proposes the area’s transformation through the implementation of new uses and housing. But to date there is no sign that the project will be built. One hopeful development is a pioneer postgraduate course at the Federal University of Bahia’s Architecture School entitled ‘Technical Assistance for Housing and The Right to The City’. which will focus on the specific challenge of favelas. A first cohort graduated in 2015.

Regaining the Waterfront Since the turn of the millennium, Salvador’s waterfront has been the focal point of urban redevelopment initiatives in the city. On the Atlantic seafront the debate focuses on whether to impose vertical height restrictions, while the issue along the bay centres on public access and connections to the existing harbour in the 'Comércio' area. Waterfront regeneration is a flagship proposal by mayor Antônio Carlos Magalhães Neto, who took office in 2012 for a four-year term. Completed in 2014, his first significant urban intervention was a major restructuring of the Barra neighbourhood located at the tip of the peninsula where the bay meets the Atlantic. The scheme, designed by architects Lourenço Valladares and Sidney Quintela, created a large 3-hectare (7.5-acre) car-free area, which has

proven very popular at weekends. However, local residents and shops have suffered due to lack of vehicular access during the week, and more than 100 commercial establishments have closed in less than a year, showing the need for a refinement of the policy to stabilise conditions in the area. In Plataforma, a poor neighbourhood fronting the bay in the Suburbio Ferroviário (Railway Suburbs) near the old railway and an abandoned 19th-century textile factory, I have been working with colleagues Alexandre Prisco and Nivaldo Andrade (A&P Arquitetura e Urbanismo), Chango Cordiviola and Naia Alban on a proposal for the transformation of derelict public space at Almeida Brandão Street to incorporate a large skate park and seawater public pool, among other community buildings and green areas. Supported by the municipality through the Mario Leal Ferreira Foundation, the PlataformaItacaranha seafront project involved a participatory process with strong community engagement that has worked hard to preserve people’s homes even in areas next to the beach that are subject to both economic pressure and federal control. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2016.

Consensus and Political Will Salvador’s greatest challenge remains finding common ground between different levels of government, the private sector and local communities regarding the highly charged political debate about the city’s future. Actions by state government are not always consistent

Lourenço Valladares and Sidney Quintela, Barra seafront urban renewal, Salvador, Brazil, 2014 above left: Big interventions but with little planning did bring some positive results regarding the creation of new public leisure areas, but also great challenges and problems for the neighbourhood.

A&P Arquitetura e Urbanismo, Plataforma– Itacaranha seafront urban renewal, Suburbio Ferroviário, Salvador, Brazil, due for completion in 2017 above right: A public tidal swimming pool is just one of the interventions designed to upgrade the public spaces of this derelict area.

with municipal initiatives and vice-versa, resulting in a confused planning process that often lacks transparency. Private developers invariably have more influence than desired, resulting in fragmented thinking and undermining the long-term planning the city desperately needs. Polemical projects such as the Itaparica Bridge are often undertaken without adequate planning and consultation. A series of public discussions led by Mayor Neto are underway to establish the new masterplan for the city and objectives for 2049, when Salvador will celebrate its 500-year anniversary. But this attempt at greater community involvement faces bitter criticism by architects and urban designers who believe no meaningful public consultation will really be incorporated. Simultaneously, bottom-up community initiatives have emerged across the city during the last five years, sparked in part by the disastrous administration of mayor João Henrique (2003– 11). Through public demonstrations and social networks, these new voices are playing a role in writing a new agenda and movements such as A Cidade Também É Nossa (The City is Also Ours) are a solid reality. Nonetheless, the most important question still remains: will these movements and the current mayoral administration be able to establish the much-needed dialogue?

Notes 1. According to the 2010 Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE) census: www. ibge.gov.br/home/estatistica/ populacao/censo2010/default. shtm. 2. João Filgueiras Lima, O que é ser arquiteto, Grupo Editorial Record (Rio De Janeiro), 2004; João Filgueiras Lima, Arquitetura: uma experiência na área de saúde, Romano Guerra Editora (São Paulo), 2012, p 336; Max Risselada and Giancarlo Latorraca (eds), A Arquitetura de Lelé: fábrica e invenção, Imprensa Oficial do Estado de São Paulo and the Museu da Casa Brasileira (São Paulo), 2010. 3. In 1979, photographer Miguel Rio Branco depicted with great power the physical abandonment of Salvador’s historical centre, revealing to a broader public scenes of a decadent architectural heritage that had not been seen to that point. Later, Lina Bo Bardi would call this situation a ‘voluntary earthquake’, still visible in Salvador’s city centre.

Text © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: p 107(t) © Walter Nilton de Souza – NiltonSouza. com.br; p 107(b) © Dilton Lopes; p 108(l) © Nelson Kon; p 108(r) © Jeremy Horner/Corbis; p 109(l) © Studio Arthur Casas; pp 109(r), 111(l) © Sergio Ekerman; p 110 © Brasil Arquitetura, photo Ives Padilha; p 111(r) © A&P Arquitetura e Urbanismo

Cu tiba Re sit KEY

STRUCTURED CORRIDORS

POPULATION DENSITY

Fewer than 5 inhabitants/hectare

Between 5.1 and 25 inhabitants/hectare

Between 25.1 and 50 inhabitants/hectare

Between 50.1 and 100 inhabitants/hectare

Between 100.1 and 150 inhabitants/hectare More than 150.1 inhabitants/hectare

SOURCE: 2010 CENSUS, IBGE

metres

Maria do Rocio Rosário

Integrated transportation network, Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil, 2010 An approach that has been emulated around the world, Curitiba's bus rapid transit (BRT) system consists of seven transportation corridors with more than 70 kilometres (43 miles) of dedicated BRT lanes.

Five Decades of Transformation Heralded worldwide as an exemplar of sustainable development, Curitiba now has a history of over half a century of enlightened urban planning. Curitibaborn Maria do Rocio Rosário, who is the Head of the São Paulo-based Urban Development Strategies (UDS), reflects on whether Curitiba has actually delivered on its ambitious ideals and where the future challenges might lie for metropolitan integration.

Fifty years ago, a ‘quiet revolution’ in Curitiba, capital of the state of Paraná in southern Brazil, transformed the city irrevocably. At the time, Brazilian cities were experiencing extraordinary growth due to rural urban migration. In Curitiba, the earlier Agache Plan (1942) envisioned a radial city structured by concentric wide avenues and urban zones defined by their function, reflecting the era’s love affair with the automobile and modern architecture. But implementation of the plan faltered due to unprecedented growth in the early 1960s that pushed the city’s population to over 400,000 people. Local professionals realised that a new approach was needed to cope with this dramatic growth, and the city put out an open bid for a new masterplan that would provide a framework for its rapid expansion. The winning team, Jorge Wilheim from São Paulo in association with young professionals from Curitiba, which included architect Jaime Lerner, proposed the establishment of a local planning office as an advisory institution to the mayor’s office. The Instituto de Pesquisa e Planejamento Urbano de Curitiba (IPPUC – Institute of Research and Urban Planning of Curitiba) was thus created in 1965 to develop the preliminary plan into a formal masterplan, which was adopted a year later. Curitiba today numbers almost 1.8 million people (with around 3.2 million in the metropolitan area), making it Brazil’s eighth largest city. The city has been widely recognised for its innovative approach to steering urban growth, combining land-use policies and public transportation to simultaneously promote urban regeneration and the preservation of the natural environment. Old quarries were transformed into public parks, recycling was taught at public schools and became a way of life, and historic buildings were preserved – highly unusual in Brazil at the time. But after five decades of planning, to what extent has Curitiba actually delivered on its ambitious ideals?

City centre Curitiba Paraná Brazil 2012 To revitalise its deteriorated city centre in the early 1970s, Curitiba instituted a pedestrian-only zone and pioneered the use of transfer development rights as incentives to retain its 19th-century buildings.

A Thriving City Centre: ‘A Setting for Encounters’ Born and raised in Curitiba, and having served on IPPUC's board of directors in the early 2000s, I have been an eyewitness and active participant in this transformative process as it spread beyond the city's boundaries and gained currency as a global exemplar of sustainable development in planning circles around the world. As I have not lived in Curitiba for more than 10 years now, each time I visit I try to look at it from an outsider's perspective. The vision of the city as a ‘setting for encounters’ promoted by the young mayor Jaime Lerner and his team at the outset of the process in the 1970s still holds true. The preservation of Curitiba's cultural heritage remains as important today as it was then. Clean, pedestrianised streets lined with historic buildings are lively, walkable and welcoming despite occasional graffiti and visual pollution from too many signs in places. Instead of suffering from a lack of business caused by closure to cars, the shops and cafes that line these streets benefit from thousands of people passing by on foot every day. The success of Curitiba’s historic centre is the result of two main factors: an extensive public transit network combined with land-use policies that channels development along linear corridors; and the Transfêrencia de Potencial Construtivo (Transfer of Construction Potential), an innovative instrument initiated in the early 1980s that allows owners of historic buildings to sell their building rights elsewhere as long as they restore and maintain the property. This approach was so effective in Curitiba that it was incorporated in the federal Estatuto das Cidades (Statute of Cities) of 2001, a set of mandatory laws for all Brazilian cities. The same instrument applies to the preservation of natural green areas. Today Curitiba is one of the greenest cities in Brazil, boasting 58 square metres (625 square feet) of public green area per inhabitant.1 Public parks that were initially created primarily for flood control are now active gathering points and recreational spaces throughout the city.

Integrated Transport as a Cornerstone

The Challenge of Metropolitan Integration

Curitiba’s most impressive achievement is its public transport network, implemented incrementally as the city grew, with new lines added every year. The bus rapid transit (BRT) system relies on more than 70 kilometres (43 miles) of dedicated corridors for long articulated buses and includes more than 350 stations with raised platforms and buses with multiple doors that are designed to minimise boarding time. It is reinforced by zoning legislation in order to consolidate five transportation corridors integrated by circular bus lines in transfer terminals along the system. Each corridor has specific characteristics, but all share one similarity: mixed-use, high-rise developments to promote the density needed to support the transit system. In the mid-2000s, two additional corridors were added: the linhão do emprego (employment belt) to foster economic growth and social improvement in the poorest parts of the city, and the linha verde (green line) which transformed a stretch of highway at the edge of the city into a future growth corridor. Aimed at integrating Curitiba with its metropolitan region, after almost 10 years of implementation these two newest corridors remain low density, but at the same time they offer large quantities of underdeveloped land with excellent infrastructure for the city's future expansion. Even though Curitiba’s BRT network offers exceptional service, particularly in comparison with most Brazilian cities, parts of the system are showing signs of stress. In some corridors, double-articulated buses run at full capacity at peak hours. Studies are underway to assess the feasibility of replacing some BRT lines with underground rail to reduce ground-level crossing between automobiles and public transit. This would allow for other improvements such as cycle paths and linear parks in the bus corridors. An extensive 372-million Brazilian reais sidewalk improvement and cycle plan is currently underway.

As one of 12 Brazilian cities that hosted the FIFA World Cup in 2014, Curitiba benefited from fast-track financing from the federal government to expedite construction because the majority of the improvements, excluding the stadium upgrade, were already part of the city’s plan. Mobility improvements included better airport and bus terminal transfers, widening of avenues and up-to-date traffic control systems. Although controversial at the time, Curitiba is perhaps one of the few cities that was not adversely impacted by the extremely high cost of the event precisely because these infrastructure improvements were already part of the city’s strategic plan. This investment was much needed as automobile ownership has skyrocketed in the past decade all over the country due to national incentives and the new profile of the Brazilian population, especially the so-called ‘C Class’, the country’s emerging middle class. A primarily middle-class city, Curitiba surpasses all Brazilian capitals in car ownership with a rate of 0.63 cars per inhabitant.

Curitiba Paraná Brazil 2005 With a population of approximately 1.8 million, Curitiba, the state capital of Paraná, lies at the centre of a metropolitan region with around 3.2 million inhabitants.

Each corridor has specific characteristics, but all share one similarity: mixed-use, high-rise developments to promote the density needed to support the transit system.

These social changes have triggered a decline in bus ridership in recent years, posing serious threats to the sustainability of the Rede Integrada de Transporte (RIT – Integrated Public Transportation Network). Moreover, as most of the population growth happened outside Curitiba's boundary, the system’s hallmark – the tarifa social (social fare), where shorter rides subsidise the longer ones – has been particularly affected. Today the percentage of people using the system for longer rides has tripled; consequently, for the first time in its 40-year history, the system is no longer supported only by its fares but by taxpayers as well. The current challenge is to find creative political and financial ways to maintain metropolitan integration without jeopardising the overall quality of service. Along with its metropolitan counterpart, the Coordenação da Região Metropolitana de Curitiba (COMEC – Regional Coordination of the Curitiba Metropolitan Region), IPPUC continues to search for effective measures to promote regional growth while adhering to the successful principles that have shaped the city's development in the past.

Today the percentage of people using the system for longer rides has tripled; consequently, for the first time in its 40-year history, the system is no longer supported only by its fares but by taxpayers as well. BRT station Curitiba Paraná Brazil 2005 The network has more than 350 stations that are designed to minimise boarding time for its long articulated buses.

The Critical Role of Stable Municipal Governance Curitiba’s 50 years of uninterrupted city planning have been possible largely due to the creation of IPPUC in 1965. Linked directly to the mayor’s office and City Hall, the institute constantly monitors the city’s planning process, adjusting policies to changing political and economic circumstances. It has remained the guiding operational arm of municipal government, surviving many different administrations. It acts as technical advisor to the mayor's office and sometimes leads the planning process with some autonomy. IPPUC's original legacy of operating in closed circles has evolved over the decades to be more inclusive. The current revision of Curitiba's Plano Diretor is being led by IPPUC and Concitiba, a council formed by representatives of the city's private sector and educational institutions along with extensive public hearings. Although the main focus of the current masterplan revisions is mobility, many of the urban challenges that face Curitiba today lie beyond the city's boundary and control. Critics such as Clara Irazábal, Latin Lab director and Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at Columbia University in New York, have suggested that Curitiba’s handling of FIFA investments during the World Cup are a sign that the city has succumbed to the global trend of neoliberal urbanism.2 This approach treats the city as a commodity to attract capital, often at the expense of poorer residents. Irazábal’s critique highlights the necessity for constant monitoring and revision of planning processes, a task at the very core of IPPUC's mission.

The Verdict: Has Curitiba Delivered on its Ideals? Contrary to most large Brazilian cities, Curitiba's urban environment has actually improved over the last 50 years. In 2010, the city won the Swedish Globe Sustainable City Award and topped the Siemens/Economist Intelligence Unit’s Latin American Green City Index.3 In September 2015 a rigorous study prepared by ratings agency Austin Ratings for ISTOÉ, one of the country’s leading news magazines, analysed 500 indicators across 5,565 Brazilian municipalities, and Curitiba was awarded Best City in Brazil.4 In short, integrated planning is a formidable tool. But a city that offers good quality of life also means higher living costs, sometimes forcing low-income people to live on the periphery or in nearby cities. Urban policies and projects that require metropolitan integration such as public transport, energy generation and consumption, sewage treatment and water distribution, are essential elements of the new equation and must be solved between all levels of government. Curitiba’s current generation of planners and citizens have a strong legacy to build on as they tackle issues such as social equity and resource scarcity. Only time will tell whether Paraná’s capital will continue to yield cutting-edge solutions that will be emulated around the world.

Notes 1. http://curitibaemdados.ippuc.org.br/ Curitiba_em_dados_Pesquisa.htm. 2. Flavie Halais, ‘Has South America’s Most Sustainable City Lost Its Edge?’, The Atlantic CityLab, 6 June 2012: www.citylab.com/commute/2012/06/ has-south-americas-most-sustainablecity-lost-its-edge/2195/. 3. Economist Intelligence Unit, Latin American Green City Index, Siemens AG (Munich), 2010: www.siemens. com/entry/cc/features/greencityindex_ international/all/en/pdf/report_latam_ en.pdf. 4. http://melhorescidadesdobrasil.com. br/ranking-geral-melhores-cidadesbrasil-2015/.

Only time will tell whether Paraná’s capital will continue to yield cutting-edge solutions.

São Lourenço Park Curitiba Density along public transportation corridors

Paraná Brazil

Curitiba 2001 Paraná Brazil 2012

Curitiba has developed parks as flood control devices and to preserve native forests, resulting in quality leisure spaces throughout the city.

High-density development channelled along public transportation corridors supports transit and has guided the city's growth from around 400,000 people in the early 1960s to the thriving metropolis of today.

Text © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 112-16 © IPPUC – Institute for Research and Urban Planning of Curitiba; p 117 © Instituto Jaime Lerner, photos Lina Faria

Affonso Eduardo Reidy and Roberto Burle Marx Aterro do Flamengo Rio de Janeiro 1965 Fifty years after it was created from landfill, the Aterro do Flamengo (Flamengo Embankment), one of Burle Marx's signature projects, remains one of Rio’s most frequented recreational open spaces and is the athletics venue for the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The Legacy of Roberto Burle Marx

Alexandre Hepner and Silvio Soares Macedo

The Modernist landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx (1909–94) was a game changer, revolutionising the treatment of green space in Brazil. Here, architect Alexandre Hepner, co-founder of Estúdio ARKIZ, and Silvio Soares Macedo, a professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo, reflect on Burle Marx’s enduring legacy.

José Eduardo de Assis Lefèvre Praça da Sé São Paulo 1978 This redesign of Praça da Sé took place in tandem with the construction of a nearby metro station. The fragmented space, separated by visual and physical barriers, undermines its former civic character and is symbolic of the authoritarian political regime of the time.

Thus, among the many negatives of Brazil’s rapid urbanisation, we must include the severing of the relationship between the country’s growing urban population and their native landscape. A central challenge today is how to reconnect Brazil’s captive urban population to the landscape, which is such an important element of the country’s imaginary and collective consciousness. Brazil is a country of continental proportions, encompassing several latitudes and geographic zones with diverse climates and natural landscapes. This diversity, which ranges from the overwhelming 5,500 million square-kilometre Amazon rainforest in the north, to temperate mountain forests in the south, also includes the semi-arid Sertão region in the northeast, high plateaus and low flood marshes in the interior, and rolling meadows in the southeast. This variety is an important element of Brazilian identity and is reflected by very different regional cultures and customs. Until the mid-1960s, the vast majority of Brazilians inhabited the countryside. Historically Brazilian cities had developed with an antagonistic relationship with the natural environment. Nature was viewed as anathema to civilised urban living. Until the first half of the 20th century, green spaces in Brazilian cities were few, comprised almost exclusively of parks and gardens located in wealthy neighbourhoods.

Jorge Wilheim and Rosa Grena Kliass Vale do Anhangabaú São Paulo 1991 The competition-winning Vale do Anhangabaú, which took 10 years to complete, stitched together two halves of São Paulo's downtown that had been separated by a highway for decades.

The Modern Movement: Roberto Burle Marx This agenda was first embraced in the late 1930s by the Brazilian Modern Movement, whose foremost figure in landscape architecture was Roberto Burle Marx. Renowned not only as an inventive landscape architect, but also as a painter, designer and botanist, Burle Marx synthesised the free-flowing forms of Brazil’s Modernist architecture with the country’s exuberant tropical nature. His projects, based on thorough research of native flora, played with the light, colours and textures of the tropical landscape, also dialoguing with vernacular artistic expressions such as graphic design, tapestry and folk art.

Walled residential developments Barra da Tijuca Rio de Janeiro early 2000s Most 'landscaped' territories in Brazil are confined to private gated communities, like these in Rio’s Barra da Tijuca.

The influence of Corbusian ideas on Brazilian cities proved disastrous in the long run. Brasília counts among its many problems, with vast expanses of generic open space that cannot be traversed on foot, a landscape conceived as scenery for cars rather than as spaces for people. The dominance of the automobile as the main mode of urban transportation is a fact in most Brazilian cities, whose very structure is based on a growing network of avenues, highways and overpasses necessary for their circulation. Open spaces for people are an afterthought or entirely overlooked.

Rosa Grena Kliass Mangal das Garças Belém

Burle Marx’s work helped shape Brazil’s artistic and cultural identity (both at home and abroad) as a young and emergent country, mainly through prominent public projects. One of his first works was the landscaping of the Ministério da Educação e Cultura (1937–43) in Rio de Janeiro, for which he designed a dramatic organic pattern for the plaza and rooftop gardens. In this project, he collaborated with Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, starting a fruitful partnership that would span decades. Le Corbusier travelled to Brazil to participate in the early stages of this project, forging a deep connection between his thinking and the nascent Brazilian Modern Movement.

The Military Years: São Paulo’s Praça da Sé This car-dominated approach to urban development remained the norm throughout the country’s military dictatorship (1964–84). Lack of mobility is perhaps still the most pressing urban issue today. Landscape projects undertaken during the military years tended towards large-scale infrastructure projects that reflected the hegemonic technocratic discourse of the time.

Pará Brazil 2005 Mangal das Garças (Heron Mangrove) highlights the role of native plants and ecology in the design of public parks to raise awareness about the importance and beauty of Belém’s mangrove ecosystem.

From 1937 onwards, a series of high-profile projects were commissioned by the federal government as part of a national modernisation programme initiated under the then president Getúlio Vargas’s Estado Novo (New State) regime, and included important urban spaces such as the Pampulha complex (1943) in Belo Horizonte, designed with Oscar Niemeyer, Rio’s Aterro do Flamengo (Flamengo Embankment) (1965), with Affonso Eduardo Reidy, and the famous sinuous pattern of Copacabana’s beachfront mosaic pavement (calçadão). Inaugurated in 1961, Brasília represents the apogee of this process.

Burrle e Marxx’ss work help ped shape Brazil’ss arttisttic and d cultturall id dentiityy as a young and emergentt cou untry, main nly th hro ough promin nent publicc proje ectts.

The refurbishment of São Paulo’s Praça da Sé, where the city’s ‘zero mark’ lies, is a noteworthy example from the 1970s. To accommodate the construction of the city’s main metro station, the square was more than doubled in size by demolishing adjoining buildings. The landscape design was inspired by the work of the American landscape architects Lawrence Halprin and Garrett Eckbo, and is characterised by a complex system of elevated flowerbeds and pools. Despite the merits of the inventive solution, its underlying agenda – to support the oppressive political regime by discouraging public gatherings in the square – is clear.

Resurgence of Civic Landscape: Rosa Kliass Only after the return of democratic government in the late 1980s did landscape architecture begin to regain its civic significance, epitomised in the refurbishment of São Paulo’s Vale do Anhangabaú (1991), the result of a competition won by urban planner Jorge Wilheim and landscape architect Rosa Grena Kliass. Wilheim and Kliass proposed reconnecting two ‘halves’ of São Paulo’s downtown that had been separated by the construction of a large avenue in the 1950s. This was achieved by creating a new, large-scale pedestrian urban space above the avenue, which as a result became a tunnel. The new Anhangabaú Valley, characterised by Kliass’s geometric landscape design, has since become one of São Paulo’s foremost civic spaces, replacing the role lost by the Praça da Sé.

Luiz Carlos Orsini Centro de Arte Contemporânea Inhotim Brumadinho Brazil 2004 The Inhotim contemporary art museum is a remarkable project in which art, architecture and landscape design converge in a single continuum.

Kliass is one of the most significant landscape architects working in the public sector today. Her competition-winning proposal for São Paulo’s Parque da Juventude (construction of which was completed in 2007) is located on the site of the city’s former Carandiru prison and evokes the tragic history of the place by retaining parts of the existing prison walls.

Ecological Landscapes Kliass’s later works highlight the role of nature and ecosystems, for example in her 2005 project for Mangal das Garças (Heron Mangrove) in Belém, Pará. This project showcases a variety of ecosystems to promote a better understanding of the region’s environmental patrimony. The Mangal das Garças exemplifies the convergence between traditional landscape design and a growing ecological agenda, a movement that has steadily gained traction since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. An early project in this vein is Praça do Relógio (1997), designed by Silvio Soares Macedo and Paulo Renato Pellegrino for the University of São Paulo campus, which incorporates six different regional ecosystems.

Isabel Duprat BankBoston headquarters São Paulo 2002 Duprat's creative work builds on Roberto Burle Marx’s legacy in its respect for Brazil's exuberant tropical nature as well as its bold use of colour, texture and light.

Levisky Arquitetos and Anna Julia Dietzsch Praça Victor Civita São Paulo 2008 Utilising timber decks over contaminated soil, Praça Victor Civita represents a surprisingly smart and creative landscape architecture solution for the otherwise improbable recovery of a waste incineration facility, and has become a national reference in sustainability.

In Rio, the work of Fernando Magalhães Chacel exemplifies this ecological approach, most apparent in his Parque de Educação Ambiental Professor Mello Barreto (1995) and the landscape design of the Península neighbourhood (1988), both located in Barra da Tijuca near the Olympic Park. Chacel promoted the ecological restoration of natural landscapes affected by human intervention, a process he called ‘ecogenesis’. His projects in Barra sought to restore the sensitive restinga (sandbank) coastal ecosystem that was endangered by the area’s explosive urbanisation of gated condominium communities.

Private Spaces for the Public Good The vast majority of contemporary landscape architecture projects in Brazil are designed and built by the private sector for residential and office developments. Landscape architects such as Benedito Abbud, Sergio Santana and Gilberto Elkis lead successful commercial practices and stand out for having designed important privately owned public spaces for office developments in the business districts of São Paulo, Rio and other large cities. Despite their corporate nature, such projects challenge the dominant culture of walled, securitycentred urban developments and offer quality open spaces in crowded urban areas that often lack public alternatives. Other landscape architects, such as Isabel Duprat, stand out for their singular and sophisticated smallscale projects. Duprat’s landscaping of the former BankBoston headquarters in São Paulo (2002), now occupied by Nestlé, demonstrates how the forceful tropical character of Burle Marx’s work can be reinterpreted.

The vast majority of contemporary landscape e archittecture projects in Brazil are desig gned and builtt by the private e secto or. Perhaps the best example of a landscape project that builds upon Burle Marx’s legacy is the Centro de Arte Contemporânea Inhotim (2004), a private parkmuseum and botanic garden in Brumadinho, near Belo Horizonte. Created by wealthy businessman Bernardo Paz on his own farm in order to house his extensive art collection, the open-air art gallery is set on over 96 hectares (237 acres) of botanical gardens that harbour more than 4,000 plant species. Burle Marx visited the farm and advised Paz in the1980s, but Inhotim as we see it today was designed by Luiz Carlos Orsini following many of Burle Marx’s principles. In a completely different vein, Praça Victor Civita (2008) by Levisky Arquitetos and Anna Julia Dietzsch occupies the site of a former waste incineration plant in São Paulo. Privately funded by publishing conglomerate Editora Abril, whose offices are located in an adjacent tower, the park occupies a severely contaminated site. With a thoughtful design that cleverly retains the mature trees on the site, the park is elevated over a timber deck and the popular destination has become a symbol of environmental recovery and sustainability.

São Paulo: Rediscovery of the Public Realm

Public Greening: From State Wetlands to Municipal Parks The early 21st century has witnessed the advent of ambitious programmes by both state and municipal governments, as well as joint actions to promote and improve public open space in urban areas across Brazil. The Programa Social e Ambiental dos Igarapés de Manaus (PROSAMIM), and São Paulo’s ‘100 Parks’ programme, are among the first to tackle the pressing lack of open spaces in poor neighbourhoods on the urban periphery, while other recent landscape initiatives are targeting the renewal of prominent city-centre locations, such as Porto Maravilha in Rio and Salvador’s historic Pelourinho quarter.

The reclaiming of São Paulo’s public realm is a recent phenomenon that is gaining momentum through both governmental and civil society initiatives. In 2007, former mayor Gilberto Kassab passed the Lei Cidade Limpa (Clean City Law) regulating visual communication in the city. Publicity outdoors (which sometimes covered entire facades of buildings) was banned, and signage of private establishments was severely restricted. This legislation has dramatically improved the city’s visual landscape and created opportunities for the creative use of São Paulo’s numerous ‘blind’ facades, including vertical gardens and artistic murals. The most recent Plano Diretor (2014) introduced a regulation that limits the percentage of wall on urban plots, and incentives for active frontages to promote more vibrant street life.

Initiated in 2003 by the Amazonas state government, the PROSAMIM social and environmental programme targets improving the quality of life for the poor population that inhabits the wetlands that surround Manaus, known as ‘igarapés’. It combines the creation of housing projects in areas with better infrastructure with environmental improvements to the wetlands to create public open space. The ‘100 Parks’ programme was launched by São Paulo’s Secretaria Municipal do Verde e do Meio Ambiente (Department of Parks and Environment) in 2005, when the city had only 34 municipal parks, roughly the equivalent of one park for every half a million people. It aimed to triple that number within four years and succeeded in increasing the amount of urban green space from 1,500 hectares (3,700 acres) to 5,000 hectares (12,350 acres) in just a few years. Unfortunately, the design quality of these parks is uneven. Boldarini Arquitetos Associados’s Cantinho do Céu (Little Piece of Heaven), completed in 2012, stands out for its exceptional design in a socially and environmentally sensitive context along the banks of one of the city’s reservoirs.

These many modest inittiaatives are starting to gain n a criitic cal mass and suggest that a new paradigm may be e takkin ng shape in a citty [S São o Paulo o] lo ong dominated by cars and wallss.

Boldarini Arquitetos Associados Cantinho do Céu São Paulo 2012 Cantinho do Céu (Little Piece of Heaven) is noteworthy not only for its quality of design and implementation, but also for being one of the first public projects in São Paulo to provide adequate public spaces for the irregular settlements around the city's water reservoir.

Frentes Arquitetura Winning proposal for the Minhocão (Elevado Costa e Silva) elevated highway refurbishment competition São João Avenue São Paulo 2006 Frentes Arquitetura’s winning proposal for the refurbishment of the Minhocão (Elevado Costa e Silva) elevated highway addresses the overpowering presence of the viaduct by enclosing car traffic in a steel tunnel, above which a new public park would be created.

The city’s recent introduction of cycle paths challenges São Paulo’s car culture and promotes an alternative attitude to the public realm. Sponsored by the Itaú bank (which provided a bicycle-sharing system) and the Bradesco Seguros insurance company (which took care of the closing-off operation and temporary signage), the cycling phenomenon began in 2012 with the closing of car lanes in several avenues during weekends. The temporary cycle lanes became immensely popular and cycling was embraced by the current Mayor of São Paulo, Fernando Haddad. An ambitious city-wide network is being implemented by simply sacrificing parking spaces and painting red lanes on the asphalt. But the cycle lanes have precipitated heated controversy with many arguing that the network is not well planned, that the loss of car space will worsen the city’s already chaotic traffic, and that São Paulo’s hilly landscape is not appropriate for long-distance bike commuting. Registered use of the cycle paths during weekdays is still low. Commuting by bike in São Paulo will require a change in people’s lifestyles that will not happen overnight. However, the systematic creation of cycle paths is also catching on in smaller towns like Rio Branco. Forbidden until 2014, food trucks are São Paulo’s latest novelty. Their presence activates underused open spaces and draws people out of the fortresslike shopping malls that have long been São Paulo’s trademark.

Finally, the infamous Minhocão (‘big worm’) Elevado Costa e Silva elevated highway that was created in the 1970s and crosses half of São Paulo’s downtown is closed on weekends and has become a very popular destination for jogging, bike riding and sightseeing. Discussions have been ongoing for more than two decades about its necessity and pertinence for the city. An architectural competition in 2006 won by Frentes Arquitetura proposed the construction of an upper deck with a park above the existing highway. These many modest initiatives are starting to gain a critical mass and suggest that a new paradigm may be taking shape in a city long dominated by cars and walls. Although not on the scale of the great civic works of the Burle Marx era or the achievements of the 1980s with Rosa Kliass’s Vale do Anhangabaú, they hint at an emerging understanding of the importance of the public realm for improving the livability of Brazilian cities.

Text © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 118, 121-2 © Silvio Soares Macedo/Projeto Quapá; pp 119-20 © Fábio Mariz/Projeto Quapá; p 123 © Nelson Kon; p 124(t) © Daniel Ducci; pp 124-5(b) © Frentes Arquitetura

Joana Carla Soares Gonçalves

Isay Weinfeld 360° (Trezentos e Sessanta Graus São Paulo 2013 A residential building in the Alto de Pinheiros neighbourhood, where rooms take the shape of individual blocks. The exposed concrete fabric coupled with recessed spaces form shaded semi-open areas that help keep the building cool in summer.

Looking beyond the tickbox approach of green-rating systems that apply North American climatic criteria to a Brazilian context, Joana Carla Soares Gonçalves, a professor of environmental design at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo, advocates a more far-reaching way forward for sustainability in Brazil.

The sustainability debate in Brazil is today dominated by the profitable business of green building certification – primarily the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system, which was created by the US Green Building Council in 1990. In the last decade, Brazil ranked sixth globally in number of LEED-certified buildings. But what does this say about the environmental quality and operational energy performance of its buildings – and the broader urban sustainability debate? Not much, is the answer.

The Dominance of Green Certification The Green Building Council Brazil (GBC-Brazil) was created in 2007. Among its early objectives was the creation of LEED-Brazil, a version of the North American system adapted to Brazilian reality. However, this adaptation never took place, and Brazil still uses a LEED certification system developed for a different climate and market. This means adopting environmental and energy criteria and targets based on North American building standards for thermal comfort, energy consumption, lighting and cooling. Almost simultaneously, in 2009 the Brazilian Ministry of Energy, through its Programa Nacional de Conservação de Energia Elétrica (PROCEL – National Programme of Conservation of Electricity), created the Brazilian Energy Performance Certification – PROCEL Edifica – for two building types: offices and residential. PROCEL Edifica’s exclusive focus on energy performance makes it a more transparent system for understanding exactly what is being certified because it addresses only energy indicators rather

Nitsche Arquitetos Associados João Moura 1144 São Paulo 2008 This office building envelope with brightly coloured cladding panels and operable windows demonstrates an alternative to a fully glazed tower.

Lúcio Costa Ministério da Educação e Cultura (MEC) Rio de Janeiro 1936 The MEC building incorporates a landscaped terrace above street level. bottom: The use of pilotis creates a shaded public area at ground level and allows airflow between buildings.

than also evaluating other environmental issues such as materials and construction processes, as is the case with most certification systems. Yet PROCEL’s assessment criteria must also be questioned because, like its North American counterpart, it focuses on the efficiency of building systems rather than looking holistically at the architectural design of a project. For example, it assesses the impact of glazing ratios and types on energy consumption, but ignores passive design measures. A further complicating factor is that the practice of green building certification in Brazil preceded the definition of regional energy codes in building regulations. In the absence of local benchmarks and specific climate-related energy targets for buildings, reliable certification is difficult. At the end of the day, the Brazilian approach to certification, like LEED and other international systems, rewards and promotes a building typology that has proliferated around the world in the last 50 years: sealed glass towers without shading devices that are artificially lit and cooled for the duration of occupation.

A Lost Legacy of Bioclimatic Modernism If one looks back to the glory years of Brazilian bioclimatic Modernism between 1930 and 1964, this architectural heritage reveals a different approach that is still highly relevant today. Building design back then paid heed to solar orientation and the consequent need for solar protection. Narrow plans, up to 12 to 15 metres (40 to 50 feet) deep, allowed for daylight and natural ventilation, with rooms opening onto outdoor spaces planted with exuberant vegetation typical of tropical equatorial climates. Consideration of the urban context lay at the heart of building design, resulting in shaded public passages, commercial activities at ground and mezzanine levels, and open spaces on higher floors offering views of the city. Two notable São Paulo projects that exemplify the best of Brazil’s bioclimatic Modernism are David Libeskind’s mixed-use Conjunto Nacional (1963) and the office building in Avenida Paulista by Rino Levi, originally the headquarters of Banco Sulamericano (1966).

These early examples prove that even in dense urban settings, buildings can be opened to the outside without compromising internal climatic conditions, an approach that can also contribute to climate protection at the urban level. From the urban environmental perspective, in warm humid cities like Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, buildings that project over outdoor public space offer protection from both the sun and rain. Pilotis, present in many masterpieces of Brazilian Modernist architecture starting in 1936 with Lúcio Costa’s Ministério da Educação e Cultura (MEC) in Rio de Janeiro, enabled the creation of shaded spaces at ground level for communal use and allowed airflow between buildings. This holistic approach meant that environmental principles were part of the prevailing architectural thinking of the day. These early examples prove that even in dense urban settings, buildings can be opened to the outside without compromising internal climatic conditions, an approach that can also contribute to climate protection at the urban level.

Unfortunately, in the 1970s, with the massive dissemination of international commercial architecture in Brazilian cities, not just the environmental but also the urban qualities of office, residential and mixed-use buildings were lost, replaced by the model of the sealed glass tower. In the intervening decades, economic pressures and the evolution of building systems and glass technology meant that buildings became taller with ever-larger floor plates. The great majority of office buildings constructed in Brazilian cities today perpetuate the concept of the sealed building. One exception is the work of developer Idea!Zarvos in São Paulo. In high-end commercial and residential buildings, located primarily in the elite bohemian neighbourhood of Vila Madalena, Idea!Zarvos has worked with architects such as Triptyque Architecture, Nitsche Arquitetos Associados, Forte, Gimenes & Marcondes Ferraz (FGMF) Arquitetos and others to recover the narrow plan of the 1930s to the 1960s in the form of linear blocks carved by open spaces that allow for transitional zones. The facades utilise a sensible palette of materials combined with smaller glazed areas and incorporate horizontal and vertical shading devices. The commercial success of these buildings in an up-and-coming neighbourhood suggests a growing demand for a different approach. Another example of the rebirth of Brazilian bioclimatic architecture can be seen in the Vitacon Itaim building (2014), a residential tower in São Paulo’s Characa Itaim neighbourhood, designed by Studio MK27 (Marcio Kogan and Carolina Castroviejo), where perforated timber shutters positioned in front of sliding windows on the north facade filter the sun while allowing air to flow through.

Looking to the Future: a National Energy Plan In Brazil, carbon dioxide emissions are not as critical an indicator of building energy performance as in many other countries because currently approximately 70 per cent of the country’s installed electricity capacity comes from hydroelectric power, while the remaining 30 per cent is generated by thermal power stations. However, what is critical in the Brazilian context is provision of potable water. The draught that has afflicted Brazil’s affluent southeast region since 2014 raises serious concerns about the poor energy performance of buildings, since the provision of electricity is inextricably linked to hydropower capacity. In other words, the hydro crisis becomes also an energy crisis. Here, the reduction of energy demand from the building sector, coupled with high levels of energy efficiency of building systems are fundamental steps to secure operation and occupation of buildings. As a result, a major challenge for Brazil’s economic and urban development in the coming decades will be to achieve significant energy efficiency in the building sector. The Plano Nacional de Energia – PNE 2030 (National Energy Plan for 2030) projects an energy-saving potential of approximately 20 per cent in commercial buildings, 35 per cent in the residential sector, and 45 per cent in industrial buildings. After minimisation of energy demand is addressed by means of passive strategies, residual demand must be met by efficient systems, conceived as part of an integrated design process that considers the environmental performance of architectural design before jumping to predetermined technical solutions. At present, the achievement of true examples of environmental quality and building performance in Brazilian cities remains a difficult challenge, because in the rush to build quickly and cheaply, little value is placed on design expertise and integrated processes.

Studio MK27 (Marcio Kogan and Carolina Castroviejo)

David Libeskind Conjunto Nacional

Vitacon Itaim Building São Paulo São Paulo 1963 2014 This residential tower in the Chacara Itaim neighbourhood uses sliding timber screens to enable occupant control of solar gain, glare and ventilation.

The first multi-use building in Avenida Paulista in which the ground floor is totally integrated with the urban public realm.

A major challenge for Brazil’s economic and urban development in the coming decades will be to achieve significant energy efficiency in the building sector.

The Minhocão: Reinvention of an Existing Asset Looking more broadly at urban sustainability and the relationship between major infrastructure and public benefit, the ongoing polemical discussion in São Paulo about the future of the Elevado Costa e Silva elevated highway – known as the Minhocão (‘big worm’) – offers an insight into how 21st-century needs can precipitate the reinterpretation of monumental urban structures built at the apogee of Modernism. The 2.73 kilometre (1.6-mile) long concrete highway was built under the military dictatorship in 1971 to create an east–west link across São Paulo, cutting through the city centre and over some of its most traditional squares and streets. Raised 5.5 metres (18 feet) above the ground, the motorway varies in width from 15.5 to 23 metres (approximately 50 to 75 feet), getting as close as 5 metres (16 feet) to the windows of adjacent residential buildings. The derelict state and devaluation of buildings facing the Minhocão is notorious. In addition to air and noise pollution, the impact of the elevated highway’s large concrete structure on the surrounding built environment in terms of access to daylight, direct solar radiation and views, is significant. From as early as 1976, the Minhocão was closed at night (from 9.30 pm to 6.30 am) while Sunday closures began in the 1980s. To obtain data on the Minhocão’s impact on health, the Laboratório de Poluição Atmosférica Experimental (Experimental Air Pollution Laboratory) of the University of São Paulo (USP) Medical School measured air quality and noise within an apartment located at the second floor of a building placed in the closest proximity to the motorway. The measurements taken during one week in October 2014 showed that during traffic hours, noise levels within the apartment far exceed national standards, reaching 67 decibels, while the Brazilian standard NBR-10.151 sets the limit for residential spaces at 55 decibels during daytime hours. In terms of air quality, a measurement of fine particles in the air (the most hazardous to human health) registered more than 100 micrograms per cubic metre at peak hours – four times the maximum permitted by the World Health Organization. The USP study revealed the critical impact of Minhocão traffic on the health of nearby residents. Traffic engineering specialists and local authorities have admitted that the Minhocão is not vital for traffic mobility in the city. A termination of its use as a highway now has the backing of the majority of the public, yet an impasse divides those calling for complete demolition and those advocating its transformation into a public leisure corridor – São Paulo’s answer to New York’s High Line. The primary argument of those favouring demolition is the investment required to secure the structure for decades to come. Those advocating retaining the

Minhocão (Elevado Costa e Silva) elevated highway São João Avenue São Paulo 2014 The elevated highway, constructed in the 1970s, is transformed into a successful public space at weekends.

concrete structure cite the popularity of Parque Minhocão on weekday evenings and Sundays when the highway is closed to vehicles. Weekend closure was extended to Saturdays in June 2015. The lack of parks and open space in São Paulo is a factor in the Minhocão’s enormous social success among joggers, cyclists, skaters, children and the elderly from surrounding neighbourhoods – whoever wants to enjoy time outdoors. In 2013, the non-governmental organisation Associação Parque Minhocão (Minhocão Park Association) was established to promote the project and sponsored a design competition to solicit proposals for the proposed park. In São Paulo, where the car has dominated urban and infrastructure planning for almost a century, the reclaiming of asphalt lanes for public recreation is a positive step towards a more sustainable city. Demolition of the Minhocão would eradicate the opportunity for a recreational lung in the heart of the city where open space is scarce, not to mention the enormous amount of concrete waste it would generate.

A New Approach to Sustainable Urbanism If democratic and inviting urban places and environmentally performative buildings are to be created, Brazil is in urgent need of new models and ideas at both building and urban scales. The vast budgets currently invested in certified buildings do not foster the innovation required to achieve a meaningful step change. Given the current culture of too much dependency on building systems and technology, movement towards a more environmentally responsive built environment goes beyond design and engineering. It requires a radical change in understanding of environmental quality. Truly environmentally responsive buildings result from a design process that promotes architectural quality and enables occupants’ adaptation to changing environmental conditions. This leads to energy savings and will also increase the value of buildings in a future of tougher energy codes, resource scarcity and climate change. From the urban perspective, alternative approaches, such as ‘recycling’ the 20th-century white elephant of the Minhocão into a 21st-century park, suggest new ways forward for the city of São Paulo in which environmental and social benefits come together. Text © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 126–7, 129 © Idea!Zarvos; p 130(t) © Nelson Kon; p 130(b) © Joana Carla Soares Gonçalves; p 132 © Studio MK27 – Marcio Kogan and Carolina Castroviejo, photo Pedro Vannucchi; p 133 © Daniel Ducci; pp 134–5 © Tuca Vieira

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Designing Inequality? NT

Ricky Burdett

How much is the design profession to blame for the stark inequality of Brazilian cities and other global metropolises? Ricky Burdett, Professor of Urban Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and Director of its Cities and the Urban Age Programme, questions the ability of designers to often fully ‘grasp the social and environmental implications of the spatial decisions they take’.

Trump Towers Rio, Porto Maravilha, Rio de Janeiro, 2015 Five vast office blocks form a visual and physical barrier between Rio’s former port area and the city’s hinterland. The scale, shape and urban arrangement of the development is likely to magnify the separation between existing and new communities in the city that is hosting the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2016.

Jaime Lerner ends his Foreword in this issue of by restating that he is an optimist for cities. He reminds us that cities are the solution, not the problem: not only in Brazil or Latin America, but across the world. As a passionate urbanist, it is hard to disagree with the views of this inspirational city leader. Yet, the more I study cities and how they are being transformed, the more I question the ability of the design professions to grasp the social and environmental implications of the spatial decisions they take. In this regard, Brazil is no exception. From Rio de Janeiro’s Porto Maravilha to Porto Madero in Buenos Aires, from New York’s Hudson Yards to Hamburg’s HafenCity, from Barcelona 1992 to London 2012, urban policymakers, designers and investors are engaged in an ongoing struggle to reconcile the spatial and social dimensions of contemporary urban form. In City of Quartz, Mike Davis’s canonical 1990 study of social exclusion in the Los Angeles metropolitan area,1 the author pinpoints the connection between social exclusion and design with a powerful blackand-white photograph of a bench next to a bus stop in what was then a dilapidated downtown LA. The seat of the bench has been expertly designed with a series of timber slats that create a curved, faceted surface – easy to perch on, but impossible to lie on. The client for the bench was the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), which wanted to make sure that undesirable, homeless people – many of them black young males – did not sleep on the benches and ‘pollute’ the street. The designers were able to use their imagination and skills to create a socially exclusionary object that satisfied the brief. They achieved this with 100 per cent efficiency. A scan of many urban projects of the last decades – especially those in geographical areas marked by increasing social exclusion and inequality – belong to the ‘LAPD bench’ category. Gated communities and enclaves proliferate. They cast differences in stone or concrete. Not for a few undesirable outcasts, but for generations of new urban dwellers who continue to flock to the city in search of jobs and opportunities. The key question for urban designers and policymakers alike is what role, if any, does the design of the physical environment play in exacerbating or alleviating inequality? Should we, as Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found (2004), has recently asked, design cities that are fully inclusive? Or should we settle for urban neighbourhoods that at least don’t exclude anybody?2 In Brazilian cities, inequality is indeed a stark reality. Despite recent improvements, Rio and São Paulo still top the Gini index charts, which measure the differences between the more affluent and more deprived members of society. Inequality in Rio and São Paulo is nearly twice that of London or Berlin, even though it remains less extreme than some African cities like Johannesburg or other Brazilian cities like Fortaleza, Belo Horizonte and the highly planned capital Brasília.3

All cities display some level of inequality. Some are more pronounced than others, depending on their national and regional contexts, and the level of economic development. What we are observing today, especially in cities of the developing world, is that social inequality is becoming increasingly spatialised. In her observations about inequality in São Paulo, the anthropologist Teresa Caldeira, who is Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, has described a dual process of confrontation and separation of social extremes. The former is captured by the overexposed but powerful photograph of the water-deprived favela of Paraisópolis in São Paulo (featured in Hattie Hartman’s Introduction to this issue on pp 10–19) overlooked by the expensive residential towers of Morumbi with swimming pools on each balcony. The latter Caldeira defines as a form of urbanisation that contrasts a rich and well-equipped centre with a poor and precarious periphery … the city is made not only of opposed social and spatial worlds but also of clear distances between them. Since these imaginaries are contradictory – one pointing to the obscene neighbouring of poverty and wealth and another to a great distance between them – can both represent the city?4 These imaginaries translate into distinct urban realities. Designers, developers, investors and policymakers are faced with increasingly tough choices as to how to intervene within changing urban physical and social landscapes. How do you maintain the DNA of the city when it undergoes profound transformations? Who is the city for? How do you reconcile public and private interests? Who pays and who gains? The city planners of London, Paris, Barcelona, Hamburg and New York are grappling with the same questions as the urban leaders of most Brazilian cities, even though the levels of deprivation and requirements for social infrastructure are of a different order of magnitude. London, for example, has average income levels four times higher than Rio de Janeiro. Yet, it has a marked intra-urban distribution of inequality. The most deprived neighbourhoods are concentrated in the east and south, with more affluent residents concentrated in West London and the periphery of the city (the suburbs on the edge of the Green Belt). In Paris, by contrast, social deprivation is concentrated on the edges of the city, with poorly serviced, predominantly migrant communities living in 1970s block typologies in the banlieues beyond the Périphérique.

Porto Maravilha, Rio de Janeiro, 2015

This image can be viewed in the print edition of the issue

above: The disused warehouses and wharves of Rio’s former port area possess a functional simplicity and clear spatial ordering, closely connected to some of the city’s more deprived districts. The ambitious, property-led proposals to create a Central Business District in the area have triggered the demolition of an elevated freeway and the creation of a foreign urban typology that fails to exploit the full urban potential of this valuable urban site to create an integrated piece of city.

Chris Gale/Administrative Data Research Centre for England (ADRC-E), Income Index of Deprivation for London, 2015 left: The diagram shows how the most deprived areas of London are concentrated in the east and south, while many central and western areas and the suburbs around the edges of the city are more affluent.

While few European cities display the stark racial and spatial segregation of so many US cities – like Chicago, St Louis and Los Angeles – they are equally exposed to what the sociologist William Julius Wilson has characterised as physical islands which breed an inward-looking mentality where fantasy about others takes the place of fact bred of actual contact.5 Despite a deepset recognition of the ‘right to city’ enshrined in the Brazilian constitution, the trend towards greater physical separation of distinct socioeconomic groups is being implemented across the urban landscape of many of the country’s cities. In this respect, architecture and urban design play an important role in laying the ground for potential integration rather than creating environments that are intentionally exclusive.

Porto Maravilha: An Exemplary Redevelopment? Porto Maravilha on Rio’s waterfront stands out as an emblematic project in this regard.6 Not only because of the immediacy and scale of its transformation in the run-up to the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games, but also because of its

typological resonance with other large-scale transformations of redundant port areas in cities across the world – like Buenos Aires, Hamburg, London and New York. The real-estate-led upgrading of the exceptional stretch of waterfront makes much of its social and economic ambitions and the innovation of its delivery vehicle, the Porto Maravilha Urban Operation. Yet the spatial and formal discontinuity of its proposed architectural solutions – emphatically displayed by Trump Towers Rio7 – underscores the physical barriers that the project will undoubtedly introduce to an area that hitherto had a basic urban structure based on connectivity and continuity. The critique is not about the nature of the architectural gymnastics of the proposals, but about the simplification, homogenisation and severance of the public spaces of the new urban terrain, which runs contrary to the language of integration and improvement, especially for the nearby residents of the Morro da Providência. Whatever we think of the architecture of the project, as an urban intervention it is being designed to keep (some) people out.

Balancing the Imbalance Porto Maravilha is not alone in confronting such deep socio-spatial questions. But it also illustrates the complex interrelationships between different levels of government, the private sector and the community in establishing a common vision on the most equitable way of managing urban change. In Brazil, the competing interests of federal, state and municipal government are often as equally divided as the conflicting aspirations of landowners, investors and developers, and existing residential communities. Political expediency and the need to implement urban projects within electoral cycles work against the slow and complex process of democracy, resulting in at times brutal compromises that fail to contribute to the quality of life and the environment. This is why London’s planners have for decades invested in East London, in various attempts to redress this visceral imbalance by bringing jobs, education, health services and new homes to this historically deprived area. Since the London 2012 Games and the establishment of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park by the London Legacy Development Corporation, the main focus has been around Stratford. Luckily perhaps for London, there have been positive and negative examples to follow. While the urban regeneration of the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona provided a source of inspiration for its ‘acupuncture’ approach to urban retrofitting (especially in the highly deprived Raval neighbourhood) and insistence on urban grain and continuity along its waterfront, London did not have to look far to know what not to do.

This image can be viewed in the print edition of the issue Allies and Morrison, Legacy Masterplan for the site of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games circa 2024, 2012 left: The urban design strategy has been conceived to weave the new development around Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park with its surrounding neighbourhoods. Over 30 new bridges, routes, paths and connections link the houses, workplaces and sports facilities to existing communities in adjacent boroughs.

KPF, Hudson Yards, New York, 2012 top: One of the largest remaining brownfield sites in New York, along the Hudson river, is being redeveloped by Related Companies with a large-scale block typology that fails to create the intimacy, connectivity and complexity of the city’s unique urban DNA.

With all its strengths and economic benefits, Canary Wharf in London’s Docklands represents an extreme model of intentional seclusion. While the district has succeeded in creating 100,000 high-end jobs in an area of profound deprivation, it still stands apart from its mixed surroundings even though new housing and other services are being constructed as public transport is improved. In Teresa Caldeira’s words, this is a case of ‘worlds set apart’ where physical disconnection exacerbates the fragmented social and economic fabric of existing communities. Hudson Yards on the Far West Side of Manhattan along the Hudson River is one of New York City’s few remaining urban ‘gaps’. It encompasses a large tract of underdeveloped land that is isolated from the subway system and has few public amenities and little open space. The current transformation, however, provides a slick reinterpretation of a similar spatial model, where building footprints are magnified and the porosity of the urban grid is frustrated. It is not by chance that KCAP Architects & Planners, the original masterplanners of the London 2012 Games project slowly taking shape as a ‘piece of city’ in East London, designed the urban diagram of the former docks of the mercantile city of Hamburg. HafenCity’s dense urban structure simply extends and intensifies the grain of the older city, with buildings and landscapes of a confident contemporary nature. Created by the municipal authorities, HafenCity’s delivery agency has succeeded in attracting investment from private investors to construct housing, offices and cultural buildings that constitute the building blocks of a normal, fine-grained urban extension to a city that has to cope with high levels of migration and associated integration. At best, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park will succeed in creating a similarly seamless urban quarter that warps and weaves with the dynamics of its surroundings. The fact that a sizeable proportion of the £7 billion budget was dedicated to building more than 30 bridges, links, paths and routes has, to my mind, created the potential of an ‘open’ urban system rather than one that turns it back to the surrounding city.

Towards Porous Urbanism Ultimately, the urban question revolves around issues of inclusion and exclusion. As we have heard, for Suketu Mehta what matters is ‘not that everyone is included. It’s that no-one is excluded. It’s not that you’ll get invited to every party on the beach. It’s that somewhere on the beach, there’s a party you can go to.’8 The spatial dimension in this equation is critical. It is the loss of porosity and complexity that Richard Sennett has identified as the critical characteristic of contemporary urban malaise. In his words: ‘I don’t believe in design determinism, but I do believe that the physical environment should nurture the complexity of identity. That’s an abstract way to say that we know how to make the Porous City; the time has come to make it.’9

KCAP Architects & Planners, Masterplan for HafenCity, Hamburg, 2000 above: The redevelopment of the former port area in Hamburg along the River Elbe creates a continuous and porous urban grain that links the old city to the waterfront.

The reality of the urban condition reveals that in many parts of the world urbanisation has become more spatially fragmented, less environmentally responsive and more socially divisive.10 With their unique political, social and spatial DNA, Brazilian cities have the ability to make more of their urban potential. Adaptable and porous urban design, coupled with social mix and density will not solve social inequality on their own. But they will go a long way in mitigating the negative impacts of LAPD bench urbanism. By developing a more open form of urbanism that recognises how the spatial and the social are inextricably linked, perhaps Jaime Lerner will – in the end – be proved right that cities can provide solutions and not just create problems.

Text © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: p 136 © Ricky Burdett, image by Catarina Heeckt; p 137 © Landmark Properties Participações S.A. represented by its President Stefan Ivanov; p 138 © Department for Communities and Local Government and Ordnance Survey. Produced by Chris Gale from the Administrative Data Research Centre for England (ADRC-E), © Crown copyright 2016 OS licence number 4011023; p 139 © Prefeitura do Rio, www.PortoMaravilha.com.br; p 140(bl) © LLDC. © Crown copyright 2016 OS licence number 40110234; p 140-41(t) © Related-Oxford; pp 140-41(c) © Michael Korol. Courtesy of HafenCity Hamburg GmbH.

Notes 1. Mike Davis, City of Quartz, Vintage Books (New York), 1990. 2. Suketu Mehta, ‘Beyond the Maximum: Cities May be Booming, but Who's Invited to the Party?’, The Guardian, 30 November 2015: www.theguardian. com/cities/2015/nov/30/ beyond-maximum-citiesbooming-party-ny-riomumbai. 3. ‘2.2 The Economic Divide: Urban Income Inequalities’, State of the World’s Cities 2010/11, UN-Habitat: www. unhabitat.org.jo/en/ inp/Upload/2233036_ pages%20from%20 Report-Englishrd-2.pdf 4. Teresa Caldeira, ‘Worlds Set Apart’, LSE Cities, December 2008: https:// lsecities.net/media/ objects/articles/worldsset-apart/en-gb/. 5. William Julius Wilson, ‘More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City’, Poverty & Race, 18 (3), May/June 2009. 6. For more on the Porto Maravilha Urban Operation managed by the Rio de Janeiro Port Region Urban Development Company, see: www. portomaravilha.com.br/. 7. See www. trumptowersrio.com/ about/. 8. Suketu Mehta, op cit. 9. Richard Sennett, ‘The World Wants More ‘Porous’ Cities – So Why Don't we Build Them?’, The Guardian, 27 November 2015: www.theguardian. com/cities/2015/nov/27/ delhi-electronic-marketurbanist-dream. 10. Ricky Burdett and Deyan Sudjic, Living in the Endless City, Phaidon (London), 2011, p 8.

CONTRIBUTORS ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

Ricky Burdett is Professor of Urban Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and director of LSE Cities and the Urban Age Programme. He is a member of Council of the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London. Burdett was Visiting Professor in Urban Planning and Design at Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) in 2014 and Global Distinguished Professor at New York University from 2010 to 2014. He was also a member of the UK government’s Independent Airports Commission. Luiz Carvalho is an architect urban designer at INCITI (Research and Innovation for Cities), a multidisciplinary research group focused on urban innovation at the Federal University of Pernambuco in Recife. He is a project leader on the Capibaribe Park project. He holds a Master’s degree in urbanism (cum laude) from the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) and the Università IUAV di Venezia.

Thomas Deckker is an architect in practice in London and Brasília. His work in Brasília has been published in and exhibited at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), London. He is currently a Geddes Fellow at the University of Dundee and a Visiting Researcher at the Brazil Institute, King’s College London. His published works on Brasília include The Modern City Revisited (Routledge, 2000). Gabriel Duarte is a founder of CAMPO and Professor at the Department of Architecture of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. He co-created the New Cartographies group, which researches new methods for collaborative mapping, and the Laboratory for Architecture, Infrastructure and Territory within the university’s graduate programme. He has been a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University among others, and was the 2014–15 Lemann Scholar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard. He was educated as an architect and urban designer at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and TU Delft. Joana Carla Soares Gonçalves is a professor of environmental design and head of the technology department at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo. Between 2009 and 2013 she taught the Sustainable Environmental Design postgraduate programme at the Architectural Association (AA) in London, where she is currently a visiting lecturer. She is the author of The Environmental Performance of Tall Buildings (Earthscan, 2010); was a coordinator of the ‘Buildings’ chapter of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Green Economy Report (2011); and was a contributing author and organiser of Edificio Ambiental (Oficina de Textos, 2015). She was educated as an architect and urban designer at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, earned a Master’s in Environment and Energy from the AA, and a PhD from the University of São Paulo.

Sergio Ekerman is an architect, professor and PhD student at the School of Architecture of the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) in Salvador, where he teaches both undergraduate and postgraduate students. His work includes both architectural and urban design projects in Salvador, including the Holocaust Memorial (2007), the New Synagogue (2014) and the Plataforma-Itacaranha seafront (due for completion in 2017). He also collaborates with studios such as Brasil Arquitetura and Studio MK27 (Marcio Kogan). Nanda Eskes is an architect with Rio-based practice Atelier 77, which undertakes urban planning and cultural and community buildings. She is also a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and a founding member of Instituto CASA (Convergence of Art, Society and Architecture) where she has coordinated the development of the Urban Quality Label, a new guideline for social housing delivery. She is a co-curator of the Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR) exhibition ‘A Beleza Possível’ (Possible Beauty), which examines architecture’s relation to art, culture and socioeconomic development with the goal of improving the quality of social housing in Brazil. Alexandre Hepner is a co-founder of Estúdio ARKIZ and a lecturer at Mackenzie University in São Paulo. ARKIZ has received several national and international awards, including the New Practices São Paulo Award (2011) as one of the top seven emerging young practices in Brazil. He was educated at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo, received his MArch degree in Landscape and Environment from the same institution, and an MSc in Sustainable Environmental Design from the AA in London. Justin McGuirk is a writer and curator based in London. He is the chief curator at the Design Museum and the head of Design Curating & Writing at Design Academy Eindhoven. He has been the director of Strelka Press, the design critic of The Guardian, and the editor of Icon magazine. In 2012 he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Architecture Biennale for an exhibition he curated with Urban-Think Tank. He is also the author of the book Radical Cities: Across Latin America in Search of a New Architecture (Verso, 2014).

Silvio Soares Macedo has been a professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo since 1976, where he has served in numerous functions, including Head of the Design Department. In 1994 he created Projeto Quapá – Quadro do Paisagismo no Brasil, a research group that has studied landscape architecture and urban open space in more than 50 Brazilian cities. He is the author of several books about Brazilian landscape architecture, and editor of the journal Paisagem & Ambiente. He received his architecture degree, MArch and PhD from the University of São Paulo. Circe Monteiro is an architect and urban planner, and a professor at the Federal University of Pernambuco in Recife where she coordinates the INCITI (Research and Innovation for Cities) multidisciplinary research group. She is a co-director of the Capibaribe Park project. She holds a doctoral degree in urban sociology from the University of Oxford, and has been a visiting professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UCL) and at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Sydney. Ana Luiza Nobre is Associate Professor of Architectural History at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and Head of Research and Education at the Instituto Moreira Salles. She obtained her architecture degree from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, a specialist degree in Technology, Architecture and City from the Polytechnic University of Turin, and a PhD in History from the Pontifical Catholic University. She was adjunct curator of the 10th São Paulo Architecture Biennale and director of Casa de Lúcio Costa. She is author, coauthor or editor of numerous articles and books including Um Modo de Ser Moderno: Lúcio Costa e a crítica contemporânea (Cosac Naify, 2004) and Carmen Portinho: O Moderno em Construção (Relume Dumará, 1999).

Francesco Perrotta-Bosch is an architect and writer based in São Paulo. In 2013 he was awarded the Instituto Moreira Salles’s Serrote prize for his essay ‘The Architecture of Intervals’, which looks at the indeterminacy of Lina Bo Bardi’s Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) and the work of John Cage. He is also co-author of Entre: Entrevistas com Arquitetos (Viana & Mosley, 2012). He was educated as an architect at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio and is currently undertaking a Master’s at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of São Paulo. His work has been published in magazines including the Architectural Review, Plot, Monolito, AU and Bamboo. Maria do Rocio Rosário is the head of São Paulo-based Urban Development Strategies (UDS). As a LEED-accredited professional with over 30 years of worldwide experience, she focuses on projects that integrate land use and transportation planning with the preservation of natural resources. Her portfolio includes large-scale complex masterplanning and community development projects in Brazil and the US where she worked for 17 years. She was previously a deputy director at Alphaville Urbanismo SA, led the sustainable community development practice area within PBPlaceMaking (a division of Parsons Brinckerhoff) in Washington DC, and was a director at AECOM. Between 1999 and 2003 she was Director of Information for the Curitiba Research and Urban Planning Institute.

Fernando Serapião is the founding editor of the journal Monolito published in São Paulo since 2011. As an author and critic, he has written over a dozen books, including A arquitetura de Croce, Aflalo & Gasperini (Paralaxe, 2011), which won Brazil’s prestigious Prêmio Jabuti (Jabuti Award) in 2012. He earned both his architecture and doctoral degrees from Mackenzie University in São Paulo. André Vieira is a photographer based in Rio de Janeiro. His work focuses on urban and economic development and he is currently documenting Rio’s transformation as it prepares for the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games. He is a regular contributor to publications including the New York Times, Monocle, Telegraph Magazine, D La Repubblica, Stern, Geo and National Geographic Brasil. One of his photographs was awarded third prize at the prestigious World Press Photo competition (2009). His work has been exhibited in 14 countries. Guilherme Wisnik is a professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo, and the author of a number of books including Lúcio Costa (Cosac Naify, 2001) and Estado crítico: à deriva nas cidades (Publifolha, 2009). He edited volume 54 of 2G magazine (2010) on the work of Vilanova Artigas (Gustavo Gili), and his essays have been published in books including Brazil’s Modern Architecture (Phaidon, 2004), Álvaro Siza modern redux (Hatje Cantz, 2008) and O desejo da forma (Berlin Akademie der Künste, 2010). An art and architecture critic, he was the chief curator of the 10th São Paulo Architecture Biennale (2013).

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