Urban Food Studio
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São Paulo, Brazil Studio URBAN FOOD STUDIO U.C. Berkeley Spring 08 Arch. 201 Prof. .R. Davids Sao Paulo has the appearance of a vast, monotonous, dense uplift cut across by deep clefts… SITE Every notion we may have about planning and architecture evaporates here. What do you do about cities with over 10 million inhabitants? You cannot do them justice with ‘normal’ planning or ‘normal’ architecture. That would suggest that the contemplative slowness of the plan or design would work here. In Brazil, action is chronically overtaken by events. No time for consideration, no time for reflection. That’s a European luxury, but here every municipal organization is powerless against the proliferation of the city. All that can be done is to keep things under control. Urban planning becomes a matter of policing rather than a political or cultural discipline.” SAO PAULO Wim Nijenhuis & Nathalie de Vriers in Eating Brazil When Le Corbusier sketched a proposal for São Paulo in 1929, he visualized an aqueduct-like infrastructure of continuous residential buildings with highways on top that would contrast with the undulating contours of the surrounding hills. Its cruciform shape gave the city an armature that would order its future development. Instead, throughout the twentieth century the urbanization of São Paulo was notable for its rapidly accelerating pace and haphazard growth. By century’s end it was among the world’s largest cities and had been rebuilt four times: first in adobe, followed by brick, concrete and finally glass and steel. Until recently the city expanded outwards, consuming more and more land, but a new urban trend has taken hold, favoring regeneration of once vibrant neighborhood that SAO PAULO VERTICAL FAVELA have been partially abandoned. São Paulo: the Bras Neighborhood São Paulo was settled as a small Jesuit outpost on a well-defined horizontal seven hundred and forty five meter high plateau fixed by the boundaries of two river valleys; the Tamanduateí and the Anhangabaú. The latter flowed in a valley that divided the hilltop plateaus in halves. The construction of a bridge over it in 1892, known as the viaduct of the Tea, and the resulting expansion set off development that transformed the village into an important city. The first Industrial development and SAO PAULO RIVER SYSTEM working class residential districts developed towards the East, the former industrial region and the home to thousands of immigrants who settled there during the early 20th century. It’s the region with the largest population in the city and it continues to house a diverse ethnic population but industrial decline and economic shifts have generated empty urban areas, underused industrial zones, empty warehouses and industrial yards; Development of major commercial areas beyond the limits of Sao Paulo’s downtown dates to the mid-1950s, when Paulista Avenue first became the address of choice for large banks and corporations. In the past half century, the development of densely occupied commercial cores has spread even farther west and southwest of downtown Sao Paulo, concentrating particularly along the Marginal-Pinheiros freeway. This growth corridor pulls both commercial development and opportunities for higher skilled jobs farther away from the downtown into areas not easily accessed by those who live in the working class neighborhoods of eastern Sao Paulo and who rely on public transportation. That these new commercial cores lack significant cultural history and exclude a large a portion of the population suggests that they are inadequate successors to Sao Paulo’s historic downtown. The need to re-stabilize investment and residence in the historic downtown requires an equally magnetic pull from the east. The most effective draw would be generated by a growth corridor parallel to the Marginal-Pinheiros, extending from Guarulhos Airport southeastward toward Sacoma, and eventually to the port at Santos. The key import and export capacities of the corridor’s two terminal anchors provide a primary identity to that corridor: trade. Pari and Bras the neighborhoods the studio will study lie along the Tamaduatei river at a central point along the potential growth corridor and offer two assets that position them to as major anchors of the corridor: Ample and eager immigrant workforce. Bras has been home to immigrant populations in the city since its industrialization in the late 19th century. Having passed through phases of being primarily occupied by Africans, Arabs, Armenians and European Jews, the neighborhoods are now strongly Korean. Immigrants are drawn to the area by entrepreneurship opportunities in the garment industry, in which profits can be made quickly and cheaply. The majority of the city’s 50,000 Koreans live in the area, particularly in Bom Retiro. The other major immigrant group in the area is a fast-growing contingent of Bolivians, also in the tens of thousands, many of whom have entered Brazil illegally in search of work Ample trading and transportation infrastructure. The site lies along a freeway connecting the city to the port at Santos and to other major regional destinations to the north and northwest. The freeway is a major bussing and trucking route, and the site itself is a major bus destination for customers of the regional crafts market that happens on site. The bus terminal across the river, the Bras train and subway stations and the Dom Pedro subway station all triangulate the site and offer ready pedestrian access to it. The City has also proposed to eliminate freight rail along the corridor running through the site, retaining only commuter rail and transitioning from six rail lines to two, with a new commuter rail station to situated in the heart of the site’s rail yards. , Program: Urban Food Park: Opsono-, Opson-, -Opsony (Greek: to buy food; to purchase provisions, such as food). Located close to the Sao Paulo’s traditional Central Market, an important access route to Sao Paulo’s port, Santos, “Patio do Pari” presently an abandoned site next to the Tamanduateí River will be dedicated to urban farming, the growing of seedlings of herbaceous and vegetable species, hypermaket, weekly market and and parking for customers, service and network distribution. The project will help to stimulate the latest wave of renewal and change in the city to recover areas of São Paulo’s that are presently disused. The strategy to be employed will respect the voids that have been created re-interpreting them creatively through landscape strategies ecological recovery of the Tamanduatei River, new public space and the introduction of new work and production facilities. Objectives The objectives of the São Paulo Studio are: 1) to analyze and understand the forces that created the São Paulo megalopolis; 2) to contribute ideas to São Paulo’s latest reform efforts and participate in the awakened interest in ecological issues and the relationship between nature, topography , the city and its people. 3) to visit some of Brazil’s Modernist masterpieces, including Lina Bo Bardi’s Leisure and Culture Center (SESC) in Pompeia (1968); Oscar Niemeyer’s Palace of the Arts and Palace of industry (1953) in Ibirapuera Park (1953) designed by Roberto Burle-Marx; Niemeyer’s Copan Apartment Building (1953); Rino Levi and Roberto Cerqueira Cesar’s Central Institute for Cancer São Paulo (1954); Joao Vilanova Artiga’s Faculdad de Arquitetura e Urbanismo São Paulo (1961-69); and Paulo Mendes da Rocha’s Edificio Guambe SP (1964), Museu Brasileiro da Escultura (1988), Pinacoteca do Estado (1998) and Centro Cultural FIESP (1996) among other buildings 4) To re-enforce the links between the department of architecture at U.C. Berkeley and the University of São Paulo , Mckenzie University in Rio and peoples of the Americas Method The Bras neighborhood will be divided into as many fragments as there are students; each will produce a photographic survey of an individual fragment and relate it to topographical information. Other issues to be mapped will include vehicular and pedestrian traffic, use and material patterns sounds and lighting levels and the smells, colors and form of Brazilian food. The results of their work will be collected together into a booklet. Groups of students will be making films, audio recordings and photographic surveys of Sao Paulo. Through visits to local construction sites, students will also be asked to analyze the urban landscape and to study local materials and construction methods. Urban Food Film Primer The creation of a film is very similar to the making of a complex piece of architecture.The viewer or participant in both cases is brought into a knowledge of a new world which is built sequentially over time from the first glimpse and onwards over the duration of the experience. The author of this strange new world slowly reveals the rules and establishes the sense of the place. This is the same for the film maker, from using the “Establishing Shot” to the architects “Promenade Architecturale”; In both, the author will create tensions, establish conflicts, and frustrate the protagonist, all in an effort to heighten the senses and stimulate the emotions of the viewer against the context of this world and its “rules”. In both the perceiver is led through a moving Choreography of “scenes’ or “spaces” towards revealing the work of art that is the final “feature film” or “building”. Thematic Structure In thinking about film editing it is advisable to have a plan – to make rules about the film andhow you want it to look and unfold in time - and then stick to them –. A good place at the start is to consider thematic overarching structure. This can help you to develop an editorial bias towards the extensive and very rich material and footage that you record Time: Consider pacing, rhythm, smooth, choppy, chronology, origins, juxtaposition,inversion, suspension, contraction and expansion, elongation or freeze –passage and transitions, narrative overlaps and simultaneity, historic time,memory and biological vs.