Nogueira, Itaipava – Sunday February 12^th 9am: Sunshine and clear skies…..

Nathaniel Corum, Architecture for Humanity’s head of educational outreach, pulls us together as a complete team to discuss what lies ahead. It’s our 6^th day in Brazil, having spent the previous 3 weeks in Barcelona designing proposals for a sports and community facility in collaboration with Architecture for Humanity. ‘Sports for Change’ is the project’s working title.

He opens with a project recap and continues to outline the focus of the day. We will be developing our proposals with the assistance of fresh information from the preceding days and assembling a concise presentation for tomorrow’s meeting with the project coordinator, architect and engineer responsible for the site master plan, which our design will be a part of.

The morning’s meeting to discuss the day ahead

A group discussion shortly begins, responding to our first visit to the project site in Petropolis the previous day. It’s soon evident our earlier design concepts have now expanded, altered and even been dramatically redirected. One often finds they will have a preconception of a place and its surroundings before first visiting and experiencing it. For many of us this case is no different, and questions are now raised which need to be reconsidered.

“How can we most effectively interconnect the proposal with the natural surrounding?”

Fragmenting into smaller project teams, 2-4 per group, we spread ourselves throughout the hostel to settle into a quiet and peaceful space. Some prefer the fresh air and sunshine while others stay indoors and spread their work over large tables to work most efficiently.

Reflecting on my involvement in the Sports for Change project, I start to question how I can incorporate the concepts and processes I have learned into my upcoming internship in Mongolia. I will be spending a three-month period in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s capital with UN Habitat’s Community-Led Ger Area Upgrading program. A different continent, and a vastly contrasting climate and culture awaits. Thus far my time in Brazil and the collaboration with Architecture for Humanity has been an invaluable experience, broadening my tools for ethical participatory design. Most importantly I’ve found we must approach every project sensitively, regardless of the place in which it may be. It can be a dangerous practice to enter with preconceived ideas and strong opinions before immersing yourself in the local community, culture and area.

We all end the day with a great sense of accomplishment and pride in the work we have developed. Tomorrow morning’s presentations and discussions awaits…

Second day in Itaipava, the day began with beautiful sunlight and a soft breeze carrying fresh tropical air through the hostel, as if coaxing us to wake up. After a brave struggle against pillows and blankets, our group set off to the beautiful Hotel Vale Real. There we were introduced to the architects and several representatives of the local residents, donators, and work groups that have been working on the Petropolis housing project (rebuilding homes for January 2011 flood victims) with the local leaders and government for months now.

At the meeting, we were given important details about the present situation of the project, and learned about the organization that leads the housing project: the Children’s Institute. The institute serves as a Social Entrepreneurship Platform, connecting all sorts of needs, help, and donations and aimed at supporting social projects in a sustainable manner. They want the Petropolis project to serve as an example for other upcoming or potential sustainable reconstruction plans.“We used to simply divide the donated land into similar pieces and build the same houses on them; this time we want to do it in a creative way,” said the representative of FRIJAN – Federation of Industries of the State of Rio de Janeiro.

One important thing, which I believe is crucial to all our projects, was also mentioned: the profile of the family members here is quite different from anywhere else in Brazil: Families have fewer children and people older than 50 constitute the majority of the population. This new piece of data, in addition to the following site visit changed my thoughts about our project entirely.

Only a few minutes by bus and we were visiting the site, which has always been my favorite part of any  project. It is the place where dreams takes shape and become reality. Like Mr. Jorge Mario Jáuregui mentioned in the first day of the field trip: Architects must understand their working sites as well as possible, so that they could hopefully make the right choice, and transform this shitty world!The steepness of the slope had us climbing into two trucks in order to reach the hillside, at which moment the word “accessibility” sprung to our minds. The first thing I noticed in the construction site of the housing project was the material being used. Coming from an island where earthquakes of every scale happen at least twice a year, it was surprising to see that such a thin reinforced bar an could be used in the main structure of a house. And then, the abundant nature I was observing all around me kicked our initial proposal’s football court out of my head as easily as blowing a feather into the air. Do we always have to do something? There is already a court nearby and football does not sound like a great choice of sport for people over 50. Do we even need the mini-basketball court? If we don’t, what sport should we choose? Maybe it does not have to be a sport anyway? Will we kill things off when we decide to level the hilltop with reinforced concrete? The hornbills that just flew out of my sight? The edible herbs? Or the sense of sustainability? One question after another bounced through my head as we made our way to lunch.For lunch, the group took a short walk into downtown Petropolis. Since the very first day we set foot in the country, every single Brazilian that we met asked the same question: Seriously? Are you sure you are leaving Brazil right before the carnival? “It’s a sin,” one of them said.

As we walked through town in search for a place to eat, we noticed that Petropolis was also preparing itself for the carnival. Now it is getting harder and harder to tell myself that we are only here for work.

Eight o’clock: Four taxis are waiting downstairs to drive us to the UN-HABITAT compound. Through the windshields, we take in one last time the immensity of the city’s architecture. Sadly, it’s our last day in Rio.

The man waiting for us is Erik Vitturp Christensen, Senior Officer of UN-HABITAT’s Human Settlements.
Meeting with Erik Vitturp Christensen, senior officer of Human Settlements

Harmonious urbanization

Friendly from the start and with cigarette in hand, he proudly shows us the beauty of his office set amidst the lush vegetation. Erik explains the new thematic branches and units of the organization. Through a multidisciplinary approach they fulfill a strategy to bridge urban divides, and Rio is an important challenge in that matter. Even just a few days in this city are enough to grasp that. Erik explains that the economic boom experienced by Brazil over the the last few years should be employed in assessing urban problems and promoting social change.

UN-HABITAT acts in this context through several interventions of urban acupuncture, taking into account the local legislation, economy, resources and environment. A sustainable approach is the only way towards harmonious urbanization, and to create cities that are able to grow and regenerate on their own.

Listening to him and to what the organization has been doing tempts us to stay longer or at least to come back very soon.

“Draw your house”

Our student group comes up with the idea of “Draw your house”, an experiment that consists in collecting drawings from ordinary people who we ask to draw their own house, with the aim of observing how people perceive the architecture of their homes throughout different cultural contexts. This experiment takes advantage of the particular structure of our study program that will soon see our group flung across different parts of the world during our internships. It is our way of establishing a common process that we can use to link our present and future experiences, both during and beyond our masters course.

Mara of Il Sorriso Dei Miei Bimbi, who we met yesterday in Rocinha, took part in our project sending us a drawing of her house.

Rediscovering Itaipava

Some time later, Nathaniel Corum, our workshop leader and head of educational outreach for Architecture for Humanity, arrives from a 20-hour flight to meet us. With him, reinforcements: Màrcia, social development professional and Alix, program coordinator of Architecture for Humanity. They will take us to our site, Itaipava, location of our recent three-week workshop in Barcelona.

Itaipava, a small village close to Petropolis, belongs to one of the municipalities most affected by floods and mudslides that hit in January 2011, constituting Brazil’s largest ever natural disaster. Nevertheless, the climate-induced disaster was a preventable one, exacerbated by unplanned and irregular urbanization, mountain deforestation and building in risk-prone areas.

In this framework, the aim of our collaboration will be the design of a sports court that takes into account the complex circumstances of the area and rediscovers the potential of this well-known place not only as a physical space to complement the reconstructed housing units, but moreover as motor for community integration and recovery.

Although Google Earth had allowed us to have a notion of the site before our arrival, there is only so much a virtual reconnaissance can tell you. Emotion, culture and context are key to even begin understanding the implications of a project like this one. So here we are, to fill that gap between virtual and reality.

Middle left: Nathaniel Corum and Alix Ogilvie of Architecture for Humanity

Part 1 | by Ana Livi

On the third day of our trip we went on a bus tour through the city of Rio de Janeiro and Niteroi, the state’s 6th largest city, where we visited interesting and well-known sites in both cities.

Our first stop was Niteroi Contemporary Art Museum (MAC), designed by the famous Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer with the assistance of the structural engineer Bruno Contarini. Built in 1996, the museum is 16 meters high and has a cupola with a diameter of 50 meters that contains three floors. The museum projects itself over the beach of Boa Viagem, and a reflecting pool surrounds the cylindrical base “like a flower,” in the words of Niemeyer.

The building is located in a strategic position that offers a wonderful view of the city of Rio de Janeiro from Niteroi’s side of the Guanabara Bay. Whether it’s looking out from inside inside or outside of the building, it is clear that the sea, the mountains and the Rio skyline are important elements of Niemeyer’s architecture. The building’s isolated position allows visitors to appreciate the different external angles, which coincide with those of the surrounding mountains and the amplitude of the water, with its reflective surface that transforms the heavy concrete structure into a one that transmits lightness and fluidity.  From the interior, the 360-degree-windows allow visitors to enjoy the entire landscape from a higher viewpoint. It is an impressive construction and the art exhibit become secondary to the geometric lines and the natural landscape always on display.

Either you like it or you don’t, but it certainly it is difficult to be indifferent to the space created around and inside the museum. The wind and the sea bring a pleasant feeling of freedom and peace.

Another building that we stopped by to take some pictures of was the social housing complex called ‘Minho cão’ (“big worm” in Portuguese). Designed by the architect Affonso Eduardo Reidy, the project is located in the São Cristóvão district of Rio de Janeiro, opposite from MAC Niteroi. It’s location within  the dense urban fabric makes it difficult to appreciate the entire volume, while the busy avenue that crosses Minhocão with a tunnel that crosss underneath the apartments makes it even more difficult to get close up. Its sinuous 260m length that rise 7 floors above ground is an impressive sight.

An icon of Brazil’s modernism period,  it was built in 1947 and was supposed to be one of the many buildings of the project for the Residential Complex of Pedregulho. However Reidy never saw his project built; he died before its construction and the project was not built according to his design. Many of the complementary buildings for the complex were never realized and Minhocão today has an avenue that intersects at ground level, which was not part of the original project.

The picture above shows the building from the street and the only perspective we were able to have (we could not get closer or enter the complex). The impression is that the building has a very high density of inhabitants and that the cars passing so near the apartments make it very noise and disturbing. Because it is a high-speed avenue, and it is just another tunnel like so many in Rio de Janeiro, many people pass the building everyday without realizing that it is a residential building or acknowledging its historical significance and value as a symbol Brazilian’s modernist architecture.

Part 2 | by Aude Choppinet

Our last stop was a visit to the Rocinha favela. Framed by one of the famous tanga-shaped footbridges of Oscar Niemeyer–inspired by the well known curves of Brazilian women–the Rocinha favela rises between the hills of the South Zone of Rio.

Our guide helps us to navigate through the overwhelmingly urbanized slum, one of Brazil’s biggest. Rocinha has a better developed infrastructure than most other favelas and we can see houses up to four stories high.

The street is filled with people, colourful ads, clothes and food shops. Peeking into the houses we see textile activities and children everywhere. Looking up we are amazed by the tangle of electric wires. Dozens of motorcycles sound their horns trying to navigate up the steep chaotic hillside. The community looks amused by our confusion.

As we continue our walk we are invited to enter a childcare educational center called Escola Saci Sabe Tudo, funded by an Italian NGO Sorriso Dei Miei Bimbi and local NGO Projeto Amigos da Vida. For over ten years they have provided education and activities that help families reintegrate into society.

The heat slaps us in the face as we enter the narrow building. A small group of children welcomes us with a freshly learned “Buenos dias!” as they are in the middle of a Spanish language class. Reflecting on the teachers and women that we’ve met in the last couple of days, I am amazed by the Brazilian resilience, warmth, and culture.

Crossing the footbridge we have an amazing view of the textures and contrasts. The favela appears to endlessly grow and fade into the deep green tropical nature, only the steep hillside forcing an end to its vast expansion.

In a moment of contemplation I try to envision my future for the next three months, which I will be spending in Brazil for my internship. The challenge of absorbing the culture and capturing the role of gender through my work in Sao Paulo and the implementation and customization of favela-mapping tools.

Rio de Janeiro: Sunny, hot and humid. Looks like all of us are getting used to the heat and ready to set about the work.

An architectural tour of Rio

Today was the second day of our tour of Rio de Janeiro, the main objective being to visit various important buildings and urban spaces in central Rio, in order to understand the local context and background of our project. The places we chose to visit included those designed by key Brazilian figures like Oscar Niemeyer, Roberto Burle Marx, Afonso Eduardo Reidy, Alfred Agache, Jorge Maria Jáuregui, and Lina Bo Bardi.

1. Igreja de Ns. da Canderalia and Av. Pres Vagas
2. CCBB (Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil) and Fundação Casa França-Brasil
3. Rio de Janeiro Cathedral
4. “Sede do Ministério da Educação e Saúde” Palácio da Cultura Gustavo Capanema do Rio de Janeiro
5. MAM Rio (Museu de Arte Moderna)
6. Parque do Flamengo

We started from Urguaiana station in the morning and finished at Catete station located along one of the main streets, Av. Pres Vagas. Because Petropolis, our project site, is a bit far (approximately 60 km away from the city center) it could seem unnecessary to explore Rio itself, but as foreign architects it is vital to acquire knowledge about the local context starting from the macro level.

A bit of history

Under the administration of the engineer Francisco Pereira Passos, Mayor of Rio de Janeiro from 1902 to 1906, the city initiated an era of great urban renewal. The core of the city went through a period of intensive construction work, which destroyed the last vestiges of its colonial urban design. With the political motivation for rebuilding dirty cramped alleys formed by precarious airless dwellings in order to eliminate epidemic diseases, central Rio was modeled on the monumental splendor perceived as characteristic of the great European capital cities. Through the opening and widening of streets and avenues a great number of poor colonial houses, where the low-income communities used to live, were demolished.

This is actually how favelas, slums that occupy patches all over the city, came to be, when those who lost their homes rebuilt their own dwellings where possible around the city.

One of the remaining colonial buildings at the edge of a main street

Some historical buildings still remain, like a church and public buildings that have been adapted to new uses. Upon our visits to one of these historical areas, we could see how this may have once represented a greater part of Rio, the narrow streets and colorful buildings a much more people-friendly design that serves the local community. Ironically, this atmosphere is now mostly characteristic to the favelas.

Throughout our tour, we observed a very active and energized city center buzzing with offices workers, vendors, tourists… On the whole, people very much support the rapid economic growth of Brazil. If you visit this city only as a tourist it is difficult to grasp the level of sacrifice endured by the local inhabitants of Rio. One of our intentions of visiting the city center is definitely to explore the relationship between physical spaces and people, as well as the consequences of changes made by architects and urban planners over the years.

For example, The Rio de Janeiro Cathedral was built between 1964 and 1979 and replaced a series of old churches that had served as cathedrals since 1676. Surrounded by several sky scrapers, it has a capacity for 20,000 people, though in my opinion, it does not really serve the local people anymore.

In the case of the Museum of Modern Art, you can detect the city’s attempt at modernization, reflected by the official verse that declares its purpose:

“The cultural influence of a modern art museum is not only drawn from the collection of works of art and of courses of study and conferences held there, but more particularly the creation of their own intellectual atmosphere in which the artist is to enrich their own work and ideas in which the public can absorb the artistic culture required by the mind of modern man.”

MAM Rio (Museu de Arte Moderna)

Closing the gaps

In the end, these kinds of developments created both rich and poor, the center and the favelas. Our question is how we can begin to close those two huge gaps. Hopefully this workshop will enable us to find even a small piece of the puzzle.

The beach, our final destination just beside the Flamengo park (another development project), gives us a clue. Here, it seems, there is no difference between rich or poor. A culturally-rooted and common public space where people spend their time without judging their neighbor.

by Yuya Fukada

This is the first student diary entry of the master’s field trip to Brazil to continue work on the Petropolis Sports-for-Change project in Brazil, in collaboration with Architecture for Humanity.
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A warm light bathes a chaotic sea of cubes, the flitter of colorful kites guided by barefoot children hopping atop the rooftops. Antennas, cables, improvised pools, water tanks, the flutter of clothes hung out to dry, corrugated roofs lie forth below us. It is difficult to find an open space, a pause, everything is closed, continuous, breathless…these brick slopes. My eyes cannot manage to focus on any one thing, and continue to wander restless.

Rio de Janeiro, 35 degrees: Coming from near-freezing temperatures in Barcelona, it’s not an easy transition! We are located in the Botafogo district, southeast of the city. After a hard time waking up, we slowly walk to the JMJA office, where we had an exciting meeting with architect Jorge Mario Jáuregui.

Jáuregui has been working in Rio de Janiero for the last fifteen years on public interest projects, in ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ areas around the city. He is best known for his project on the upgrading of Rio’s favelas and their integration with the rest of the city.

When we arrive at the office (Rua Martins Ferreira, 28), we enter a small red iron door that opens onto a small garden. The architect and staff welcome us into their office as if it were their home, and invite us to sit around a table. The environment at the office is comfortable and you can feel the team busy at work. With great calm and simplicity, Jauregui talks to us about his approach , methodology and philosophy of work.

The starting point of each project, he explains, is to understand the problems of a place and variables of a project using a methodology that has two basic components: analyzing the structure of each site and listening to the needs of the local community.

The Architecturbanist: A diagram of Jáuregui’s methodology.

He advocates a holistic approach that builds upon existing systems and addresses the physical, social, ecological and economic aspects of the context, the analysis of which is key to understanding the relationship between the different parts. This ensures that each proposal is specific to its particular social and geographical conditions.

“The Architect does not work for the client, but for society. He is a provider of public service activities”. The project is a tool that allows us to understand what the community wants. It is this desire that drives the creative act, and the architect has to be able to listen to this desire, or rather, reinterpret it. The relationship with the inhabitants is fundamental, but the architect’s role is to reinterpret the needs of the people; the Freudian free associations approach.

The contemporary socio-spatial context is an unstable field of work, and the challenge consists in imagining new relationships and balancing acts between city, urbanity and space.

Inspired by Jauregui’s talk, we eagerly set foot again to visit one of his most important and recent projects: the cable car system at the Complexo do Alemão in the North Zone of Rio. The project has enabled an improved quality of life for its residents in a place where public space was inexistent, promoting and facilitating connections with the surrounding neighborhoods and the city. The Teleferico has improved the connectivity between favela and city in both directions.

Finally we arrived at the colorful and crowded Bonsucesso station. The red cabins carry the message “compartilhe felicidade” which means “share happiness”. A dense expanse of favela stretches out before us, at once an intimidating and beautiful landscape.

Projeto de articulação socio-espacial – Complexo do Alemão Favelas (Escala Territorial PAC – Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento)

One of Jáuregui’s comments during our meetup resonates throughout the day:

“What then, is the role of the architect in society?” A question I often ask myself. He answers emphatically, with a smile on his face: “To transform this shit world!”

by Michela Guglielmi

As you may have gathered from the photos we’ve recently posted on our Facebook page, our students have been hard at work for the past few weeks preparing their proposals for the Rio Post-Floods workshop led by Nathaniel Corum of Architecture for Humanity.

Set within a larger government housing project for 61 families in Vale do Cuiabá affected by last year’s devastating floods in Rio de Janeiro, the goal of our masters students, in partnership with Architecture for Humanity, is to create a sports facility within the program that acts as a stimulus for community cohesion and recovery. The design brief for the facility calls for a multi-use sports court, a playground, a picnic area and an associated center with indoor and outdoor sheltered meeting space, restrooms, storage for sports equipment and a snack bar/kitchen–all connected to existing community buildings and adjacent hiking trails and natural areas.

Project proposal by Gunter Stoll, Alice Liburdi and Nazanin Mehregan

You can browse through our student’s initial site study and proposals, posted at Architecture for Humanity’s Worldchanging, previously the Open Architecture Network.

As of next week, the students will be on site in Petropolis, Brazil, gathering first-hand knowledge of the characterstics of the site, the local community and the local project team, in order to refine their proposals. Stay tuned, as they will be reporting their daily experiences and project updates on our blog!

Don’t miss this excellent interview by Eric Ho of Architecture Commons with Rahul Mehrotra on the topics of $300 house project (which we previously covered here), low-cost housing in India, and practicing in the bottom of pyramid context for designers. Mehrotra is a practicing architect, urban designer and Professor of Urban Design at Harvard Graduate School of Design, and served as a jury member of the $300 House competition. Here are a few insightful excerpts of the interview, but make sure to read it in full over at Architecture Commons.

On the $300 House competition:

“It suggests that design and technology can solve the problem, and I think that’s the optimistic side of it. So for me the support for the project is founded on the idea that it would spark some kind of innovation. My own belief is that housing is not about technology, it’s not about social processes, it’s not about government, it’s not about how land is dealt with, it’s not about infrastructure, it’s not about any of that; it’s about all of that together.”

On the approach to low-cost housing:

“There is no question in my mind that the local participatory way is the way to go. It’s like when people put equity into the house they begin a sense of ownership of it. If something is prefabricated as a finite object, which I think many of the schemes (of the competition) is limited by and suggests that the technological fix is complete, I think is the wrong way for housing to go.”

“For prefabrication they are like emergency camps that respond to disasters. Architects design units with low cost and repeat them four hundred times in a straight line; you don’t make communities like that.”

On business partnerships:

“Designers have to make those partnerships and the industry has to also meet them more than halfway. Designers also need to make that shift in their mind. NGO tends to do that but they work more with their heart. How do you combine working with the heart and the mind? I think it is the correct moment for designers to begin to create these partnerships. For venture partners to meet them more than halfway it is productive both for their own existence as businesses and also on how to build a society around them.”

On practice (and particularly Farshid Moussavi’s recently controversial comment on students volunteering overseas as often being an ‘easy option’:

“I think she is bang-on on what she is saying. …If you go to Somerville or Cambridge or whatever the civic society is so strong that the resistance to do any of that are so much greater, there are positive sides of it but the downside of is that it stifles innovation. But in places where those resistance don’t exist the innovation is much more appreciated and that makes it very attractive for designers. I think institutions have to play a big role.”

On the rise of architectural NGO’s:

“I think it is a different genre of practice, it is a reaction to what exists, but it is in danger of becoming a stylistic thing. The moment when it becomes too big rather than breaking up into many smaller units I think it faces the danger of becoming corporations.”

The Rio Floods sports center responds to the victims of last year’s floods in Rio de Janeiro, where an unprecedented rainfall between January 11 and 12 unleashed a series of landslides that destroyed an estimated 3000 houses, displaced 100,000 Brazilians and caused over 900 deaths, resulting in the worst natural disaster and preventable loss in Brazilian history. Teaming up with Architecture for Humanity, Nike do Brasil has committed $100,000 in support of a small sports center near Petrópolis, a severely damaged community where the government of Brazil has committed to rebuild housing. Given that sports structures in past disaster recovery efforts have played an integral role in supporting a community’s balanced recovery, this sports facility was conceived to form part of this larger housing project, and will ensure space is protected for public meeting and creative play.

During these 3 weeks, Nathaniel has asked our students to develop conceptual schemes and design recommendations for specific sports interventions within the multi-family post-flood housing community located near Petropolis, using the site and contextual information provided. The primary site is identified as the highest plateau on the project site, though recommendations and designs should connect to the other built and natural project features and seek out additional spatial opportunities for sport use in other project areas.

The Architectural and site design program are to include:
- Multi-Use Sports Court
- Playground for younger children
- Walking/Hiking Trail Connecting to adjacent forests
- Picnic Area
- Site Lighting for night use
- Building
- Restrooms
- Storage for sports equipment
- Snack Bar
- Veranda

The sports center is scheduled to break ground later this year. In the meantime, our students will be developing proposals and visiting the site, while Architecture for Humanity will be recruiting designers who will work from Brazil with the local partners and stakeholders to lead all design phases for the project. Stay tuned for updates on the project and the progress of students on site in Brazil!

At the open conference Rebuilding Japan: Lessons in Architectural Response organized by our program and held on December 12 in Barcelona, each of them presented their distinct approach to one of the last three major earthquakes in Japan: Maki’s role in policy-making in the recent Tohoku earthquake, Sawada’s bottom-up approach in the rural case of Nigata, and Kobayashi’s NGO and community-led efforts in the urban case of Kobe. You can read an interview with the professor Norio Maki (in Catalán) published shortly after in El Punt Avui, or the review of the conference published in Spain’s leading El País newspaper (summarized here in English).

Below is a video interview with Norio Maki during his workshop with the master students. (We apologize for the wind interference!)