COLUMBIA UNIVERSITYGRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE PLANNING AND PRESERVATION

PREFEITURA DA CIDADE DE SÃO PAULO - SECRETARIA DE HABITACÃO

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ContributorsUrban-Think Tank Slum Lifting

SEHAB What are the Slums?

Andreas Rudolph Dopplemayr Ropeways

Zachary Aders 3 Points

Ligia Nobre / Kazuo Nakano On the Slab

Pedro Rivera 4 Steps

Teddy Cruz Returning Duchamp’s Urinal

Denise Hoffman Brandt Landscape Issues

Eric Rothstein Low Impact Development

Ian Pendleton Structuring Slum Lab

Christian Werthmann The Challenge

Marcos Rosa Microplanning

Frederic Levrat Scale

Maria Paola Sutto Report from Rome

Jorge Mario Jáuregi Worldization

Thomas Trebat The Outlook

SLUM Lab SPAE Studio Projects

Conversations with:Paulo Mendes da RochaVisionary Paulista

Milton BragaContemporary Paulista

SPAE Edition Spring 2010São Paulo Architecture Experiment

Sustainable Living Urban Model

10 Eucaliptos Andrew YalcinWater-edge housing can re-orient itself to avoid erosion and develop public walkways. P. 62

Casas as bordas da água podem ser orientadas para evitar erosão e criar caminhos públicos para pedestres P. 62

11 São Domingos Nicole SeekelyA favela-island sited in a middle class neighborhood has the potential to develop itself into a community hub. P. 64

Uma favela-ilha que se encontra em uma vizinhança de classe média, tem o potencial de se transformar em um centro comunitário P. 64

12 Heliópolis Junhee JungThe wealthiest favela in the city can form a new model of housing and commerce in an adjacent strip of land bounded by a water treatment plant. P. 66

A favela mais rica da cidade poderia estabelecer um novo modelo de habitação e comércio em um terreno de uma usina de tratamento de água adjacente à favela. P. 66

Alfredo Brillembourg + Hubert Klumpner SLUM LIFTINGSEHAB What are the Slums?Andreas Rudolph Dopplemayr RopewaysZachary Aders 3 1/3 PointsLigia Nobre / Kazuo Nakano On the SlabPedro Rivera / Nanda Eskes 4 StepsDenise Hoffman Landscape ListEric Rothstein Low Impact DevelopmentIan Pendleton Structuring Slum LabChristian Werthmann The ChallengeMarcos Rosa Micro PlanningFrederic Levrat ScaleMaria Paola Sutto Report from RomeJorge Mario Jáuregi WorldizationTeddy Cruz Returning Duchamp’s UrinalThomas Trebat The Outlook Who Killed Copenhagen? The Visionary Paulista Interview with Paulo Mendes da RochaThe Paulista Contemporary Interview with Milton BragaGSAPP SPAE Studio

Special Thanks

Columbia GSAPP, Mark Wigley & David Hinkle, for sponsoring studio travel to Brasil.

SEHAB, Elisabete França, and Maria Teresa Deniz, for generous support in the studio's travel in São Paulo.

Center for Urbanism & Pedro Rivera for support and hosting the Providencia workshop in Rio de Janiero.

Cover images: Front: Fabio Knoll, Back: George Brugmans

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Contributors:

S.L.U.M. LabColumbia University GSAPP

Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning & PreservationAlfredo Brillembourg & Hubert Klumpner, Directors, Editors

Zachary Aders, Publication Designer, Associate EditorMelissa Ramos & Marja Byekirova, Translation & Assistant Editor

5 Vargem Grande Jun JoungRural housing in a large crater can develop in a more sustainable model, preserving land and opening up parkways. P. 52

Uma habitação rural que se estabeleceu em uma antiga cratera pode se transformar em um modelo de sustentabilidade e preservar areas verdes para o lazer dos moradores. P. 52

6 Pirajussara Wendy TsaiHousing along the edges of the river, which divides the Municipality and State, can develop a transport network with healthcare stations P. 54

Casas às bordas do rio, separando a capital da periferia, pode desenvolver uma rede de transporte com acesso à postos de saúde P. 54

7 Boulevard da Paz Saranga NakhoodaThis topographically precarious settlement, once the most violent area of the city, can develop terraced farming to resist land slides. P. 56

Esta área de topografia bem precária, que costumava ser a mais violenta da cidade, pode desenvolver uma agricultura urbana para previnir a erosão do solo P. 56

8 Moinho Devin LafoThis railway-bound favela in the city center could publicly connect to the surrounding areas and condense housing. P. 58

Esta Favela delineada por vias férreas, pode ser conectada as áreas vizinhas e densificar sua área de habitação. P. 58

9 Glicério Fausto NunesIn the city center is an aggregation of cortiço housing. A new development plan can centralize commerce and housing to openup park space. P. 60

No centro da cidade se encontra um aglomerado de cortiços. Um novo plano urbano pode centralizar o comércio, a habitação e abrir novos espaços para parques. P. 60

Portuguese translations can be found in the back of the newspaper.

WWW.SLUMLAB.ORG 25

Micro-PlanningExperimentation is vital to grasping the ever-

increasing complexity of cities. It is a way to explore alternative types of planning that are capable of ab-sorbing what is simultaneously evolving and being generated. Providing space and a place for encounter demands an appreciation for the discovery of spatial qualities and the reinterpretation of them. This bias

in reading establishes the city as a laboratory and field for experimentation. New connections and strategic networks guide local processes open to bottom up tactics, localized experiences that are transformative when coupled with new architectural operations. Ur-ban creative practices search for new tools capable of dealing with these emerging urban realities. ‘The real city’ - interpreted as a field for experimentation - is a built space to be recognized and in which to act on the ground.

¨URBAN CREATIVE PRACTICES¨ is a project of public interest that aims to reveal, document and share

knowledge. It organizes a network revealing innovative modes of spatial organization and disseminates this information so that it may be used in thinking about and building the city. Micro-planning is the combina-tion of documentation of micro-practices in São Paulo with a series of essays. It situates the action of the mi-cro-scale in terms of its social practices and collective appropriations, calling attention to the importance of ‘bottom-up’ initiatives in the configuration of the ur-ban landscape. A publication creates a platform for different projects that explore the urban micro-scale. The inexistence of any significant documentation for this type of project in São Paulo highlights the fact that these interventions remain unknown. We point to the enormous potential of these projects to describe the local scale and its urban tactics [1] as another way to think about the city.

Community gardens provide an area of green in an otherwise dry, red landscape in the far eastern pe-riphery of the city; a playground and art center occupy

the core of a dense slum; a boxing school and gym installed under a viaduct provide athletic facilities on a busy commuting route; a young artist stimulates the collective use of common space through his resi-dency in different slums; an open air cinema in an empty site brings cultural activities to a neighbourhood lacking in other cultural facilities; sailing and art initiatives draw atten-tion to a polluted river; a recycling program brings a community together in an unattended neighborhood; an overturned crate under a tree provides a space for encounter along a creek in a densely-built area.

SamplingDuring the year of 2008, based on projects that

made application to the Deutsche Bank Urban Age Award (DBUAA [2]), I investigated initiatives in São Paulo that manipulate urban space at the local scale as a way to achieve improved urban environments. This research enabled me to compile a range of case studies – projects of varying scale and type – which demon-strated diverse, feasible ways of addressing their speci-ficities. The situations that I encountered are spaces of experiment: articulated spaces in which there is a cul-tural claim for an exerted life.[3]

Common Denomina-tor | Urban Creative Prac-tices

From the projects con-sidered in 2008, we chose to analyze those that happen in open space and define fields of action in the city. This criteria points to the search of spaces that demonstrate ways of reorganization at the local scale that reflect a new attitude towards collective life in the city at large - the appropriation of space by its users through proactive responses where action and proposition co-exist in a 1:1 scale.[4]

This publication searches for common points (a common denominator) among the projects selected from fieldwork. Projects are born from negotiation in situ and from pre-existent realities. They propose the reinterpretation, re-use and re-signification of these realities. They operate as articulators, manipulating present references.

We did not intend to simply catalog these projects, but to investigate them, proposing possible readings that would allow us to identify a field of action and a tactic responsible for the re-codification of an existent urban space. We attribute the strength of these projects to the following relationship: the identification of local potential and the articulation of necessary instruments that allow the re-use and re-signification of specific points. By doing this, we illustrate fields of opportunity for action in São Paulo.

Urban Creative PracticesIn the metropolitan region of São Paulo, these situ-

ations emerge as urgencies, dis-carding the need for pre-design simulation. Urban creative prac-tices generate spaces of quality that provide room for encounter. Points of contact struggle against the void of quality collective spaces.

Community gardens green a dry, red landscape in the far eastern periphery of the city; a playground and art center occupies the core of a dense slum; a boxing school and gym installed under a viaduct that organize sport facilities on a busy commuting route; a young artist stimulates the collective use of common space through his residency in different slums; an open air cinema on an empty site brings cultural activities to a neighborhood lacking of other cultural facilities; sailing and art initiatives draw attention to a polluted river; a recycling program brings a community together in an unattended neighborhood; an overturned crate under a tree provides a space for encounter along a creek.

São PauloWhy do these projects appear in São Paulo? What

do they have to do with its specific logic of space pro-duction? To what extent does this sampling of projects (parallel to traditional / conventional / official plan-ning practices) represent another possible way of city making?

Self-organization is present in these projects, where the population engages in collective practice. This seems to be driven by a verifiable lack of qual-ity spaces of coexistence on the human scale, an ur-ban fact that is a result of decisions made during the urbanization process of the city of São Paulo. These same processes produced urban wastelands and resid-ual spaces that, when interpreted as potential fields for creative practices, represent a possibility of urban re-

Marcos Rosa

Experimentation is a vital means of grasping the ever increasing complexity of cities

Marcos L. Rosa is a Brazilian architect and urban planner (FAU USP, Brazil, 2004) currently working with Kristine Stiphany (collective retrofit - winning project Alcoa innovation prize, December 2009).

Micro Planning, continued pg.26

26 WWW.SLUMLAB.ORG

structuring that is committed to the scale of the user. These thoughts translate into the notion of a city-play-ground, a collective space that is open to creation, ac-tion, and occupation – the reinterpretation of a built scenario to which new meaning is added.

Collective NetworkThe organization of a network from these fields

questions the potential and importance of micro plan-

ning to the construction of the urban environment.Network urbanism? Or strategic micro interven-

tions networked? Case studies demonstrate social net-works of metropolitan reach - circuits of resistance to the generic city that provide the city with micro-envi-ronments, nourishing the discussion around specifici-ties. We identify micro-architectures that can superim-pose functional ones, providing them with complexities capable of inducing quality urban spaces.

These initiatives are often seen as fragile, isolated acts engaged with the notion of responsibility towards common space. We will identify and reflect upon strat-egies associated with selected projects. This approach weaves a series of specific fields and tactics together as a network of projects, cultivating a strategy of net-worked urban creative practices.

Collective ArchitectureThis project envisions the dissolution of bound-

aries and the construction of new interdisciplinary bridges, expanding traditional limits and reclaiming a new role and positioning of the architect and urban planner.

To talk about architecture, in these terms, means to question the possibility of learning for this architecture in light of new questions brought up by specific proj-ects. Such positioning demands a new look at the defi-nition of architecture as a socially shaped space.[5]

Culturally Shaped SpaceA wide understanding of the meaning of ‘architec-

ture’ seems to interest us in order to make the ‘architec-tural’ comprehendible.

The concrete space - that which plays a role in our routines - is nothing without life; it will first be consti-tuted through life praxis.[6] Architectural differs from architecture in these terms: by accepting the exposure of the discipline to subjective relationships with space cannot be completely anticipated by the planning practice.[7] Architecture is then understood as space constructed and constituted from cultural and social practices. Space not only for things and uses, but ar-

ticulated space for complex living processes.[8]Hélio Oiticica’s [9] definition of the artist as the

maker, anyone active and propositive in their environ-ment, generously allows anyone to take a proposing role in the environment they inhabit. According to this definition, creators would be those working in collec-tivity, about collectiveness.[10]

“To participate is to complete a proposed schema.” [11] Participating is taken as the key to define and un-derstand urban space (in opposition to the notion of transmission and reception separated). Collectiveness - sharing the city - serves as a basis for re-thinking so-cial matters in urbanistic terms: “The city is our poten-tial and we are its makers.”[12]

Architecture might be defined in a wide, gener-ous way, as an “articulated space where cultural and social life can unfold.”[13] If we take architecture as a discipline which is to respond to changing urban pat-terns, concentrating around space as a key element to be worked within [14], specific urban fields are to be exposed: the social production of space (Raum) and a maneuvering repertoire of a contemporary urban planning.

If we define architectural as a space open to inter-vention and if we understand the architect as everyone active in his or her environment, we point at the possi-bility of another investigation of the city and to another way of planning the urban. We accept the real city as a product of political decisions, projects, and personal and collective wishes and we believe there is, in this city, enormous potential for re-organization, re-artic-ulation, re-codification. Here, we demonstrate the task of mapping fields where such ways of reorganization take place and of identifying possible fields open to the incorporation of new objects that stimulate exchange. Finally, we show the need to understand and propose mechanisms coherent to the identified fields and their potentials. We call this task microplanning.

Microplanning. Urban creative Practices is a book organized by Marcos L. Rosa for the Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft (The International Forum of the Deutsche Bank). In cooperation with Sophie Wolfrum, Urban Land Scape research initiative, Technische Universität München. Booklauch in 2010.

www.microplanning.net

[1] As defined by Michael de Certeau.[2] The Deutsche Bank Urban Age Award (DBUAA) is an open com-

petition for projects that are envisioned and organized through partner-ships and cooperative practices. The DBUAA is organized by the Alfred Herrhausen Society, the international forum of the Deutsche Bank, and is a joint initiative with the Urban Age Conference, organized with the London School of Economics.

[3] Subject developed by Sophie Wolfrum in Raum artikulieren, in:

Lederer, Arno (Org.) ach. Ansichten zur Architektur, n.21 Mai-juni 2006, IoeB Universitaet Stuttgart.

[4] Collective action as proposed by Nicolas Bourriaud, in oposition to the passive criticism, awaiting for changes: “But is there such a thing as a truly public space today? These fragile, isolated acts engage the notion of responsibility: if there is a hole in the sidewalk, why does a city employee fill it in, and not you and me?” In: Bourriaud, Nicolas, Postproduction, 2002, p. 80.

[5] Subject developed in: Wolfrum, Sophie, Raum artikulieren, in: Lederer, Arno (Org.) ach. Ansichten zur Architektur, n.21 Mai-juni 2006, IoeB Universitaet Stuttgart.

[6] ibidem, original: “Der konkrete Raum, der in unserem Alltag eine Rolle spielt, ist nichts dem Leben Aeusserliches sondern wird durch unsere Lebenspraxis erst konstituiert.”

[7] Janson, Alban/ Wolfrum, Sophie, Kapazitaet: Spielraum und Prae-gnanz 2006.

[8] ibidem: “Architecture is culturally formed and designed space. Space not only for the storage of things and traces, but articulated space for the unfolding of living processes”.

[9] Hélio Oiticica (1937–80) Tate Modern exhibition catalog. Hélio Oiticica. The body of colour. Tate Modern. June 2007.)

[10] Lagnado, Lisette, No Amor e na Adversidade, in: Lagnado, Lisette/ Pedrosa, Adriano (ed.). 27a. Bienal de São Paulo: Como Viver Jun-to. São Paulo: Fundação Bienal, 2006. 7 de outubro a 17 de dezembro de 2006. Pavilhão da Bienal, Parque do Ibirapuera, São Paulo. Bilíngüe: por-tuguês/inglês.

[11] Borriaud, Nicolas, Postproduction, 2002: 89.[12] Maier, Julia/Rick, Matthias, Raumlaborberlin. Acting in Public,

2008: editorial[13] ibidem[14] “In an epoch of space, architecture is vital. We need architecture

to shape our world.” Original: “In einer Epoche des Raumes ist Architektur lebensnotwendig. Wir brauchen Architektur, um unsere Welt zu gestalten.” In Wolfrum, Sophie, Raum artikulieren, In Lederer, Arno (Org.) ach. Ansi-chten zur Architektur, n.21 Mai-juni 2006, IoeB Universitaet Stuttgart.

Micro Planning, cont.