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THE EPHEMERAL VENICE: DESIGNING THROUGH WATER IN SÃO PAULO

LUIZ RICARDO ARAUJO FLORENCE

Address: Avenida Paulista, 2584, apto. 78 e-mail: [email protected]

ABSTRACT

The Ephemeral Venice portraits different recent efforts of thinking the city of São Paulo through the perspective of water infrastructure design. The landscape of São Paulo - a complex of urban rivers and basins circumscribed by chains of mountains - possesses the geographical profile that could, albeit with the danger of misconception, summarize the city context. The projects to be analyzed are recent collective enterprises that design a possible city by bring together infrastructure, architecture and landscape, in order to attain to the largest ecological resort: the water.

The reference to Reyner Banham’s essays on Los Angeles are to be noted for the yet uncharted similarities with São Paulo – both cities with an urban fabric consisted by multiple centers whose transportation network are based on private automobiles, connected through long and robust freeways; and in both places modern architecture, specially on the 20th century is remarkably known for its single-family dwellings. Notwithstanding those appealing singularities, Banham’s method of analyzing the city through its urban ecologies is used to also analyze São Paulo and finally compare them. That is an undisputable reference to the framework of an ephemeral Venice within the city’s tissue, and the historical construction of the relationship between water and urban planning, remounting to the work of late-19th- century infrastructure engineer and urban planner Saturnino de Brito; the reference of recent enterprises in Europe, under an older fluvial tradition, references for both Mendes da Rocha and Delijaicov.

The critique proposed by this article addresses to main questions about the two projects. First of all, to appreciate the choice of water as main design criteria; and to question the choice of debating on an architectural and urban typology based on tangible natural elements, in a city with a fairly visible social catastrophe.

Regarding the teaching of architecture, questions also about the recent interest in the subject stimulate this essay. What attracted a vast number of students in the recent present to dedicate several graduation designs to this subject? Also, there are historical and intellectual antecedents of that narrative. This article tries to pinpoint the place of this discourse in the narratives of modern architecture in São Paulo, hoping to contribute in the contemporary debate and praxis.

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INTRODUCTION Brazilian architecture and urban planning has been recently put in the spot because of the expectations regarding the upcoming events – related to sports – of global impact on tourism and on the image of the Brazilian cities. The Olympic games to be held in the city of Rio de Janeiro in 2016 is a fact relevant enough to turn our attention, as architectural and planning historians, to the effect of an ephemeral cycle of developments in one city’s fabric. Throughout recent history in city planning hosting the event of the Olympic games has been a cornerstone for the design of several cities. In this year of 2012, the architectural community will witness the outcome of the Olympic games in the metropolitan area of London, as a signal of a change of mind in urban planning and investment in architectural facilities. Despite some examples of the star-system architectural milieu, such as Zaha Hadid’s pool complex, the major amount of investments are devoted to boosting urban infrastructure of transportation, overall mobility and sewer systems. Far from a coincidence, in this article there is the discussion of a venture at urban design that takes opportunity in the event of the Olympic games to add ress questions about design, nature and the city. The proposal for a non-contemplated Olympic bid, designed by a polycentric architectural atelier, commanded by Paulo Mendes da Rocha, is a portrait of a generation of architects, most of them educated by FAU-USP1, in the debate on urban rivers. Albeit the title of the paper introduces a debate on a specific theme in planning history, the perspective chosen is of the teaching of architecture, and the formation of new ways to introduce design in the debate of city planning and infrastructure. Aware that this theme has been in the common ground for many historians and critics of earlier generations in São Paulo, this article is an effort to bring more recent criteria in to the light, and to expose the theme, that no doubt has been historically framed only in a local spectrum, to a broader audience. With some confidence in future debates, this article is the first step for my research in a topic that composes one significant part of my formation as an architect.

1 Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo – Universidade de São Paulo. It is the architectural school of the public state University in São Paulo. 1 5 th INTERNATIONAL PLANNING HISTORY SOCIETY CONFERENCE

Figure 1- São Paulo Olympic Bid – Tietê Park Complex, 1998, computer generated model. Paulo Mendes da Rocha and Metro Arquitetos.

EARLY PRECEDENTS IN 20TH CENTURY Many historians in architecture and urbanism, fueled by the works of geographers and historians, as Nestor Goulart Reis Filho2, Benedito Silva de Toledo and the geographer Azis Ab’ Saber, introduces a fairly accepted urban concept for the formation of São Paulo. This concept defines a known region where an existing network of indigenous settlings was to be found by the Portuguese pioneers in system of river basins and foot tracks. The region was to be recognized as the basin of the Tietê River, main water body in the region. Several small human settlings were connected by rivers, which provided food and transportation. The city had, from the start, the calling of a nexus of continental connections in South America, from the basin of Rio da Prata to the northern regions in Brazil. This system would be appropriated by the colonial occupation, and from the XVI and XVII centuries the Tietê would function as the biggest avenue in the region3. Goulart compares the city’s basin system to one of a private automobile system, relating the main rivers to great boulevards, and small alleys to its tributaries. Most of the paths would follow the foothills and ridges, or would be parallel to a water strain. Slowly, with the spawn of the urban tissue, the city arrived at the banks of the Tamanduateí River. The first bridges were to be built to cross the Tamanduateí River around the XVIII century. With the presence of a more complex urban structure, the landscape of the Tamanduateí basin was object of concern for the city’s planners4. With the exponential growth of São Paulo urban tissue, the already comprehensive geographical area framed by the river basins were to be occupied, albeit in a rather moderate rate, until the decade of 1910. Not only through landscape, but also sanitary problems were the rivers and its basins the object of designers and engineers. As pointed by professor Carlos Roberto Monteiro de Andrade, one of the most important plans were to be delivered by the engineer Saturnino de Brito5, appointed as director of the Commission for Improvements in the Tietê River 6. Following the work of other Engineers such as Victor da Silva Freire, João Florence de Ulhôa Cintra and Fonseca Rodrigues. Without a doubt influenced by the parkway concept, but mostly by the French Chalet style, easily noted in some of his design, Saturnino de Brito was aware of the up to date international plans at time. When faced with the flooding regime of the rivers in São Paulo, Brito proposed a series of solutions that would oppose to those applied by the Mississippi River Commission at the same time. Instead of building dams

2 Some of prof. Goulart Reis Filho were important to this article. See Goulart Reis Filho, N. Dois Séculos de Projeto no Estado de São Paulo: grandes obras e urbanização. São Paulo, Edusp, 2010, and Goulart Reis Filho, N. São Paulo: vila cidade metrópole. São Paulo, PMSP, 2004. 3 See Goulart Reis Filho, in Projeto Tietê, pp. 6-7. 4 See Benetido Lima de Toledo, in Projeto Tietê, pp. 8, and Azis Ab’ Saber, ibid, pp. 9-10. 5 See Monteiro de Andrade, pp. 161-169. 6 Ibid, pp.161.

3 Cities, nations and regions in planning history and ‘levees only’, such as those implanted at New Orleans, before the 1927 flood, Brito applied examples of ‘spill-ways’, waterways and tributary channels. It was one of the first samples of water squares, to be an important reference, summoned decades after by the architects who would reintroduce the theme of water design in the schools of architecture, further on from the 1960’s.

THE MARGINAL FREEWAYS: PRESTES MAIA AND THE AVENUE PLAN In 1930, São Paulo is a city with almost 1 million inhabitants. The city, once confined in a hill at the Tamanduateí River, begins to spread itself in almost all directions, arriving at the banks of the rivers Tietê and Pinchers. The expansion happened fast, due to the already established network of roads and rivers, naturally qualified as transportation nexus7. However those precarious paths could not anymore attend to the demands of a growing metropolis. The river basins, regions submitted to a regime of floods, offered a challenge for the engineers who planned the crossings. This was the times for the first abstractions of a natural grid. At 1930, with the publication of the Plano de Agendas, the engineer and mayor to be, Francisco Prestes Maia, introduced the first comprehensive image of São Paulo as a transportation network based on private8. During the implantation of his plan, during 1934 and 19459, the body of urban reshaping transformed the city’s structure, which would be prepared for an exponential economical growth in the decades to come. What was supposed to be a plan restricted to respond to demands for the furnishing of a system of freeways historically showed itself as complex urban operation. Within it a major real-state enterprise proved to be an essential part of the capitalist engagement responsible for providing the means for a major real state enterprise. Land would be the financial counterpart for many of the urban infrastructure policies. A vast expropriation operation enabled the acquisition of the necessary landmass for the parkway constructions10, thus providing acres of dry land, through embankment of the river floodable lowlands. The result of the Avenue Plan can be observed clearly even today, as most of the configuration of the axial avenues and parkway ring settled over the Tietê, Tamanduateí and Pinheiros River are still operational. In historical venue, the process of occupation by private automobile in São Paulo needed a wider, denser system of circulation in order to establish the allotment of the city’s territory. Available as they were as natural

7 See Maria Cristina da Silva Leme in Projeto Tietê, pp.12 8 See Maria Cristina da Silva Leme, Revisão do Plano de Avenidas, 1990, pp. 6 and also pp. 22, for one of the commonly known image of the conceptual plan. 9 During the Fabrio Prado and Prestes Maia own tenure, as mayors of São Paulo. 10 See Maria Cristina da Silva Leme, 1990, pp.62-69 for the expropriation enterprise and Odette Seabra, Meandros dos Rios nos Meandros do Poder: TIetê e Pinheiros – valorização dos rios e das várzeas na cidade de São Paulo, for the process of capitalist exploitation of the river lowlands in São Paulo, 1987. 1 5 th INTERNATIONAL PLANNING HISTORY SOCIETY CONFERENCE paths, most of the river and its tributaries were channeled underground, giving way to a series of avenues in valley bottoms. Recently, adding the far too long incomplete Plano de Avenidas, the freeway ring is been completed on a parallel offset on the outskirts of the city11. During the years of extraordinary growth followed by the transformation of the rivers and its natural meanders in order to exploit land, build freeways and generate energy through hydroelectric12, there was almost no sign of the rivers in their natural form. Furthermore, the debate on river design among engineers at the Universidade de São Paulo was long mute, for the concern of any disciple of Saturnino de Brito. Paralleled by an actual shrinkage of the river basins there was a diversion in the technical discourse. Albeit this is not of the concern of the article, but it is hard to deny the promiscuity with which the engineers real state speculators have operated historically in São Paulo.

THE REVIVAL OF WATER DESIGN IN SÃO PAULO In order to trace back to the conceptual basis of the plan for the 2012 Olympic Games Bid13, it is necessary to evoke the atmosphere surrounding the decades before the actual design process, which took place in the end of the 1990’s. One can say that there were indisputable precedents to Paulo Mendes da Rocha crew’s design, and that they have been historically recognized as canons of architecture in FAU-USP. Since 1948, when the school of architecture has been separated from the engineering school in USP to the 1980’s, modern architecture as canonized by the teachers at FAU have constantly discussed the role of infrastructure in city planning. It has been also historically witnessed the detachment between the academic milieu and urban policymaking14. Many of the plans developed during the years of military dictatorship have been great examples of the Brazilian tradition of landscape and urban design, such as the Park at Flamengo, in Rio de Janeiro, by Reidy, or the leisure complex at Pampulha, in the capital of the state of Minas Gerais, by Niemeiyer, before 1964. The genealogy could be taken back to the remodeling old center of Rio de Janeiro and the intervention of Le Corbusier at the mid thirties. Designs like the proposal for the Ecological Park at the Tietê basin in São Paulo, 1986, (Parque Ecológico do Tietê), also by Niemeyer15 – supported by a staff of architects from São Paulo – reveal us some of the idiosyncrasy of

11 The official São Paulo metropolitan freeway ring website: www.rodoanel.sp.gov.br/ 12 See Seabra, 1987. 13 Actually the design process happened specically for the Olympic bid in 2003. However, a essencial precedent designed by Mendes da Rocha for Paris, the Boulevard des Sports, was comissioned in 1998. 14 Many aspects of this phenomenon are to be traced, such as left-wing political position adopted by many of the architecture staff in USP; political exile endured by Artigas, among others including Paulo Mendes da Rocha; differing influences between technicians, French, Dutch, or American. 15 See the Projeto Tietê dossié published by the Institute of Brazilian Architects - IAB – 1991, pp. 22-25.

5 Cities, nations and regions in planning history that era. Beautifully designed and vast in its boundaries, Niemeyer’s park at Tietê, differently from its suburbanized ‘older brother’ designed by Ruy Ohtake16, was a complete change of paradigm. Such was the radical content that one may ask whether was the lack of objectivity in fulfilling the design into reality, or there was a relative degree of skepticism towards the institutional relation between architects and government. In fact, in São Paulo, the marriage between modern architecture and State had been more faithful before the military takeover, or even before the Second World War17. Around the year of 1991 the architectural atmosphere was undoubtedly warmer to the debate on environmental issues. Concomitantly with the maturity of Paulo Mendes and his generation, there was also heated debate among the architectural students. Also a whole generation, consisted by Delijaicov, Carlos Dias, Naum Lewin and Miriam Elvin along with others, was practicing architecture focused on the relation between city design and environment18. The architectural milieu has been somehow affected by the “Rio 92” Conference – a critic review of the Stockholm Conference held twenty years earlier, in 1972. The environmental issue spread in almost every public debate about infrastructure design and city planning gave the tone for important architectural conversations. In 1991 the architectural community organized the Lucio Costa Conference. In some aspects, this was a way of publicizing a proper response to the problematic to be issued in the upcoming year. Parallel to the conference, there was a group of young architects who were preparing an exposition at the unfinished sculpture museum at São Paulo. Former employees from Mendes da Rocha’s office, among others, organized this parallel exposition. “The exposition was sectioned in three segments: Lost Landscape, a historical survey on several uses for urban water channels, and its influence in the city’s design; Present Landscape, an overview on the current situation of rivers in the city; and Projected Landscape, consisting on designs throughout recent history19.” The selection of projects publicized in the IAB catalog linked to the parallel exposition at MuBE show us some built design, such as the Largo 13 train station by João Walter Toscano20, Hydro-electrical power plants at the Tietê-Paraná hydro-way21, and the Tietê Ecological Park designed by a team headed by Haron Cohen, and the Villa-Lobos Park by Decio Tozzi show us that the scale of actual built designed related to the river lowlands at São

16 Ibid., pp. 16-17. 17 An exception worthy of mention is the design for the City at Tietê, by Paulo Mendes da Rocha, comissioned by the military state governor, Paulo Maluf. 18 In conversation with Alexandre Delijaicov, february 2012. 19 Original text: “A mostra sera dividida em três segmentos: Paisagem perdida, um levantamento histórico dos vários usos dos rios urbanos e sua influência no desenho da cidade; paisagem atual, um panorama do que sao hoje os rios; e paisagem projetada, projetos elaborados ao longo da hist6ria.” (quoted from the IAB 1991 catalog) 20 IAB catalog, pp.21 21 Ibid. pp.29. The hidroway was never fully implanted. 1 5 th INTERNATIONAL PLANNING HISTORY SOCIETY CONFERENCE

Paulo had somehow shrank, if compared to the 1930’s and 1940’s. At the other hand, all of the plans and designs that could match to the size, scale and impact of those of Prestes Maia would be neglected the actual built result. Indeed, it was now more expensive to demolish what was already there, instead of simply laying a pioneer layer of concrete, stone and asphalt. The IAB folder show us with this range of design that architecture was standing at a critic point of view, both in the way that those designs represented a way of criticizing the earlier and small-minded planning, however by doing design as critique, it also displays its distance toward the structures of power and decision making at charge. This debate, profoundly rooted at the gates of academic research, even though not exactly technical in its premises, was actually one of the narratives with which the architects who taught at FAU could manipulate in order to address to history and nature in São Paulo. And, it is fair to say, in a rather poetical way.

PAULO MENDES AND THE EMBATE BETWEEN NATURE AND ABSTRACTION One can say, without fearing to make some offensive remark, that Paulo Mendes da Rocha had been not so much as worried about the making of a new systematic thought towards the reshaping of nature than questioning the historical process of design in São Paulo, and more on, of Brazilian architecture. If there was one easy way to label what sort of architectural professor Paulo Mendes da Rocha has been, the one better applied in this article is of the architect who narrates the past city through his designs, showing the viewer how much of recollection and memory a future project can hold. That description fits much as an architect-narrator 22. And for his narratives, not only the subject matters, but also the interlocutor. Flávio Motta (1923-), artist and art historian, professor at FAU-USP and college of Mendes da Rocha and Artigas, managed to trace the approach on architecture, nature and space by his fellow staff members. In the 1970’s student magazine Ponto he would make an historical standpoint for Mendes da Rocha’s view of architecture: “Let’s go further in the hypothesis that Paulo Mendes da Rocha has found in Niemeyer the tonic of confrontation Architecture-Nature, and in Artigas, Architecture-Society. It would be to restrain in text what is so rich in context. But let us say: in one, Niemeyer, in the occupation of Nature barely compromised by the hand of men – the architecture stands alone, full of sobriety, that same “sobriety” that Lucio Costa mentioned when dealing with the architecture from the priests of our colonial past; in another, as Artigas, it is through usage, through coexistence with the

22 In an interview for Marin Corullon and Guilherme Wisnik, Paulo Mendes himself describes his designs as literature pieces. See pp. 21 of the second book published by Cosac Naify in 2007.

7 Cities, nations and regions in planning history strives of men in society, in search of a living that reassure his same presence.23 “However this living is not simply the result of a ‘concentration of people as a natural happening’ – as one could suggest about the Gymnasium of Paulistano Athletic Club (Acropole Magazine, #342). The idea of a ventilated space, illuminated, light, and of easy access, efficient circulation, impregnated by good biology, could even represent the premonitory device to those who should face the ‘wounded sub- development’. This world of elegance, of enchantment, is in the opposite of living by a large part of the Brazilian population. (...) It is the architecture which tries to ‘land’ without violations, in front of this deformed man from our Central Brazil, this man closer to Geography than History, who recalls better the tree from cerrado than the Alvorada Palace. Such image could not pass as more than pure literacy. But it offers the scenario for distinguish the relations Nature-Architecture, with no subordination to a technical rigor, pseudo-scientific, metric, like whopping-morality. If this architecture is distant from the man who contemplates with justified joy; if it is viewed as pure exteriority, it is because the distances are other and from another nature. (...) The simplicity of ways, in Niemeyer as in Paulo Mendes da Rocha, has to do with the human solidarity, because it does not invade, nor violates nature. It gets to the point where it is precarious, not by avarice, nor for sinful problems, but by optimism trustful in human solidarity and in the processes of transformation. It does not think, even for a minute, in retain the social drive in its many and also new forms” This long elegy to the works from Niemeyer and Mendes da Rocha reveals the frank opposition to the progress standards applied by the body of planners and engineers aligned to the military government. It is also very peculiar that such resistance to a technical vocabulary would emerge from the architecture school in a not so distant past were connected to engineering. In order to analyze this gap, it is necessary to conjure the different approach that Mendes da Rocha, graduated as architect in 1954 at Mackenzie Presbyterian University has towards designing cities through infrastructure, in many stages of his career.

23 Original text: “Avançaremos a hipótese de que Paulo Mendes da Rocha encontrou em Niemeyer a tônica do confronto Arquitetura-Natureza, e, em Artigas, Arquitetura-Sociedade. Seria restringir no texto aquilo que é tão rico no contexto. Mas diremos: em um, Niemeyer, na ocupação da Natureza pouco comprometida pela ação do homem - a arquitetura se destaca, cheia de sobriedade, daquela mesma "sobriedade" de que fala Lúcio Costa ao tratar da arquitetura dos padres no nosso passado colonial; em outro, como Artigas, é pelo trato, pelo convívio com os conflitos do homem em sociedade, em busca de um viver que garanta a presença desse homem.” (Motta, pp.2, 1971)

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Fig. 2 and 3. City of Tietê, master plan sketches on paper. Paulo Mendes da Rocha, 2000, pp 22.

“The city of Tiete was designed as a great river port that, by connecting · the highway and railroad routes, composed an intermodal system of cargo transport capable o/supporting the economic development of the entire region - a system that simultaneously promoted river transit creating an internal continental path, connecting, on a large scale, the whole of South America - from the Amazon to the River Plate Basin.” Paulo Mendes da Rocha, 2000, pp. 21.

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In 1970, when commissioned for the design of a new State Capital for São Paulo – unmistakable as an echo of the experience in Brasilia, in its progressive agenda – Mendes da Rocha would show to public layers of abstraction through a sketchy master plan, accompanied by a rustic model in wood and metal. In one of his first essays on design the ter ritory, Mendes da Rocha draw orthogonal lines of infrastructure layered over the untouched margins of the River TIetê. It is remarkable that this project, even though produced during the years of military dictatorship, would expose in such large scale the sum of several studies performed by earlier generations of engineers at the Politécnica in São Paulo. Indeed, Paulo Mendes was one of the first architects to promote the debate of urban planning through the specific thematic of urban rivers and channels, since 1948, when the architectural school had been dismembered from the Engineering school. In an earlier design, for the bay at Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, he would oppose to his own paradigm and would reshape the natural landscape into a strong abstract for, the square. In this context, while presenting design solutions that are contradictory yet on the same subject – the domestication of nature by men – Paulo Mendes da Rocha displays the translation of design into literature: using narratives through design, challenging the engineers at the Politécnica to abandon their canons – productivity, progress, economy. It is a radical approach, indeed, and while radical, it set itself apart from the technical debate. While in Brazil the molding of design process tended to change, with the emerging of large architectural and engineering firms, such as Hidroservice, Hidrobrasileira, Promon, among others, it seemed that the craft of architecture tended also to change the profile of the architect. During the 1970’s the architect student recently graduated had now the possibility to join a major architectural and engineering office, and engage 1 5 th INTERNATIONAL PLANNING HISTORY SOCIETY CONFERENCE a life and routine of an office employee24. The majority of the built designs during that age were actually designed under these circumstances. For Mendes da Rocha, however, this path was never an option, not only for his formation in a different age, and also for his political differences with the military rule, that set the tone for planning during this moment, but above all, by his temperament as a professional architect. As commented by Carlos Eduardo Comas in 200125, one can read the production of Paulo Mendes da Rocha and his small studio as a broad range of commissions, from museums and art galleries – such as the Pinacoteca and MuBE - to urban design – from Montevideo to Tietê. This discrepancy between scales, program of activities and overall context cannot fit in any specialized sort of architecture office but a small atelier such as Mendes da Rocha during the 1970’s. Even today, as his office consists only in his own name and a place at the building of the Institute of Architects at downtown São Paulo, the same atmosphere of a small practice prevails in his professional practice. Perhaps also because of the difficulties present during the economical crisis in the country in the 1970’s and 1980’s, there was little space in the market of architecture in São Paulo for large-size private enterprises. In Brazil, whereas the opportunities for sustaining a practice that sold products of intellectual labor were scarce, only construction companies, with a large-scale working capital had flourished in that time. As for Mendes da Rocha, there were difficult times for the practice. Much of his work at that time, and still up to today is produced by practices of disciples, younger generation of offices, such as Eduardo Coloneli, Piratininga Arquitetos Associados, MMBB Arquitetos, Metro Arquitetos, along with others 26. Curiously, these architecture companies, while sorted in different sizes and administrative molds, having different approaches towards architecture practice, are most of them sited in the same neighborhood in downtown São Paulo, close to the building of the Institute of Architects (IAB-SP) and to his fo rmer teacher, Mendes da Rocha.

24 reported by the architect Wilson Bracetti, interviewed in June 2011, for the architectural blog Revista Veneza. 25 In AU, No. 97, 2001. 26 Reported in conversation with José Armênio Brito Cruz, director of Piratininga Arquitetos, in 2012.

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THE RENEWAL OF A LOST PROJECT

Fig. 4 River Port-Park City at Tamanduateí, São Paulo, ink on city print. Alexandre Delijaicov, Masters Dissertation, 2008. 1 5 th INTERNATIONAL PLANNING HISTORY SOCIETY CONFERENCE

If the utopia embedded in Mendes da Rocha design eludes to a literar y narrative of poetic of intellectual desire, the intentions in which Alexandre Delijaicov are of a social utopia, described specially by large-scale urban design. From his first individual sketches in post-graduate research, Alexandre Delijaicov had a clear vision of his meta-project of urban water-channels for the city of São Paulo. In fact, he would correct this last statement, proclaiming that he had only picked up a research that has its beginnings with the common knowledge of the natives on the river basins27. In this pre-colonial regressive utopia, the discourse of the engineers from the first decades of the 20th Century is sheer, especially those of hydraulic engineer Mendes da Rocha – father of Paulo Mendes and a strong influence both to his son and to Delijaicov – and above all, those of engineer Saturnino de Brito. For Delijaicov, the concern with mobility and the recognition of the river basins as transportation network is key not only to these earlier studies, but to the whole contemporary concept of water-ring transportation of large-scale goods, public transportation of loads and trash, and overall public transportation. “At the time of Saturnino de Brito, Who you can say is one of the authors, within this collective authorship, back in the 1920, thought about the water-ring. Even at the time of Engineer Billings the river connections were already been speculated. Moreover, before them, the indigenous populations had already conceived all the transposition of the basins, because they did not have the notion of property on canoes. They belonged to the rivers, and so the people left them at the shores, as they went on dry land. Like a white bicycle. One could leave a canoe at downstream, by a water fall, and take another canoe at upstream”.28 Delijaicov was from the start of his academic career, which we choose to set at the beginning of his Masters dissertation at 2003, interested in locating the theme of water infrastructure within the heritage of architectural and engineering in Brazilian academic field, but also to reinforce the process of design as a tool of research. Highly influenced by the earlier experiments like the Tennessee Valley Authority, Saturnino de Brito, and the Dutch experiments in controlling water bodies with dams and water elevators, Delijaicov’s approach returns to a rather technical debate. However, if we locate in time the start point of Delijaicov’s research at his engagement with academic processes, the first contact with the subject of water design came through the contact with Paulo Mendes da Rocha, with whom he worked until 1993, when he entered the public bureau of architecture of São Paulo, (EDIF), concomitantly with the star of his post- graduate research. ONE ARCHITECT OF MANY OFFICES Regarding what many architectural offices call as a “school” of architecture in São Paulo, as quoted by more than one native architecture critic, there

27 In conversation with Alexandre Delijaicov, february 2012. 28 Ibid.

1 3 Cities, nations and regions in planning history is an atmosphere of a guild in this collective practice. To propagate such idea of a collective practice under a banner of ‘escola paulista’, is to be target for critiques by architectural historians such as Julio Katinsky. As this is concerned, there is only a legible heritage from the practice of Vilanova Artigas to whom even Paulo Mendes da Rocha should pay some credit. Past these different perspectives, there is no doubt of the existence of a network of individual practices that can be summed in larger enterprises, such as the inbuilt proposal for the Olympic Bid in São Paulo, 2012, designed in 2003.

Figure 5 - São Paulo Olympic Bid – Master Plan and sites locations on aerial photo. Paulo Mendes da Rocha and Metro Arquitetos. In order to fully comprehend the architectural canons in which the Olympic Bid in São Paulo had been defined, one cannot fail to mention the precedents of this design in Mendes da Rocha’s career. A sheer preview of sport facilities complex is the megastructure of the Boulevard des Sports in Paris, designed in 2003 for the to happen events of 2007. The design of the French complex is referenced in large train station halls, and in the underground galleries of the city. The different activities are conjugated under a single metallic roof, a structure rehearsed in designs like the Santos Aquarium, and expressed in built form in the Cais das Artes (Quay of Arts) in Vitória, the city capital for the state of Espírito Santo. Much that the Boulevard des Sports and the intervention in São Paulo share in common is the implantation of geometrical forms of the classical tradition in axis formed by the intersection with water channels. In São Paulo, the sites chosen are precisely the outfall and influxes of the main 1 5 th INTERNATIONAL PLANNING HISTORY SOCIETY CONFERENCE water courses. The choice of site reveals the value assigned for the infrastructure of water as the city’s metropolitan scale, like the shores and beaches in Rio de Janeiro. One interesting aspect of the 2012 São Paulo proposal is the concentration of housing complexes, all of them highly dense, and most of the examples followed the traditional siedlung modernist format. The urban references for all the designs were the axis of water channels – more specifically the rivers Tietê, Pinheiros and Tamanduateí. The water infrastructure in this design is remarkably shy, and most of the reshaping of the water bodies defined metropolitan water squares, with no major harbor facilities what so ever.

Figure 6 - São Paulo Olympic Bid Rowing Complex. Paulo Mendes da Rocha and Metro Arquitetos. What is interesting to realize about this project enterprise and what this article is defined in focusing is the internal production structure. Albeit this large scale design was supposed to be executed by a large scale office, remounting the same spirit as of public bureaus of architecture such as the London City Council, or from major private practices such as Albert Kahn and Skidmore, Owens and Merril, it is no surprise that an architect recognized for his poetic and artistic approach like Paulo Mendes da Rocha would choose to emulate a guild of craftsman of architecture to perform this single work29. The project then was divided into large intervention

29 The list of design staff, combining several architectural firms:Project:Paulo Mendes da Rocha [author]; Coordinators:Cristiane Muniz, Eduardo Colonelli, Fábio Valentim, Fernanda Barbara,

1 5 Cities, nations and regions in planning history areas, defined by important nexus related to hydrographic networks – the outfall of the river Tamanduateí at the Tietê river; the complex at the Tietê Ecological Park; a intervention with urban rezoning and vast housing blocks at the banks of Pinheiros River, next to the University campus; a complex at Água Branca; a sailing complex at the banks of the Guarapiranga Dam. Following the posture briefed by the client, being that the city hall of São Paulo, the design staff introduced a series of sport facilities and numerous housing units throughout the main rivers of the city. The concept was to occupy and to make a stand on the historical importance and the potential of the rivers as landmarks of the city. The rivers in São Paulo were since before that time completely polluted and segregated from the city’s tissue by a framework of express-ways, a deformed idea of the park-ways conceived by Prestes Maia. The architectural firms MMBB and Metro Arquitetos, with whom Mendes da Rocha have the most enduring partnerships, were participating in that project; Una Arquitetos, as well as older collaborators as Piratininga Arquitetos and Eduardo Colonelli – who worked directly for Mendes da Rocha while his office was still running with a full architectural staff – also collaborated. It is notable, especially for MMBB and Metro, the influence of this design in their further production. We can see it in MMBB’s project for a new neighborhood competition at Água Branca (fig. 7) – coincidentally the same place were the office designed their Olympic complex.

Figure 7- São Água Branca New neighborhood design. 2004, São Paulo, MMBB Arquitetos. Curiously in these designs, affirmative founded in modernist heritage, the plastic attributes seem to be more important than any other aspect, from historical concerns to engineering issues, breaking a pattern imposed by

Fernando Viégas, Fernando de Mello Franco, Guilherme Wisnik, José Armênio de Brito Cruz, José Francisco Xavier Magalhães, Marta Moreira, Martin Corullon, Milton Braga, Renata Semin, Sérgio Kipnis; Collaborators:Anna Ferrari, Anna Helena Villela, Cesar Shundi Iwamizu, Cintia Pinheiro Attis, Clóvis Cunha, Cristina Marini, Eduardo Chalabi, Eduardo Ferroni, Eduardo Gurian, Elena Olaszek, Fabiana Stuchi, Felipe Noto, Gustavo Panza, Gustavo Cedroni, Lucia Hamburger, Isabel Silva, Jimmy Liendo Terán, Maria Julia Herklotz, Mariana Viégas, Paula Cardoso, Rodrigo Yoichi Freitas Ito, Silvio Oksman; 3d Model: Roberto Klein

1 5 th INTERNATIONAL PLANNING HISTORY SOCIETY CONFERENCE the first generation The reference of abstract pure forms in these designs overwhelms the technical guidelines of hydrodynamic. Nor any historical trace of the river has been maintained, even though the river is no more than a channel, already transformed by earlier generations of planners.

THE WATER DESIGN BUREAU

Fig. 8 - Water-Ring master plan, GMF, 2011.

“The PhD is the Masters dissertation. It is in fact part of the Masters, which was structured in 3 stages. It was the concept of parks and urban river ports, as a dialectic process of brunt, in its first part, the actual Masters, as a presentation of this concept, whereas the rescue of the recognition of the rivers and their importance as primary urban structures. It departs from the principle of confluence of two networks. The system of river parks would be articulated with the system of urban river ports. The beach and the wharf in front of each other, coexisting in harmony. One should not cancel another, inside a structure of navigable channels, because the one who takes care of the thing, in a rather universal way, not in the mercantilist way. It is another way of usage, not necessarily strictly utilitarian, but also affective and symbolic of recognition of the importance of water, as trees, in the capillarity of the urban context. In other words, the city stays in front of the river, at its margins. That is the first part. I have put this in order to reach to the radical of the problem, the antithesis of this hypothesis of a mercantilist urbanism based on the private automobile, antagonist to the idea o a river port-park city. In this sense, I present the concept of the avenue at valley bottom and the

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train-ways, those structured by the river margins, but on the other hand strangle the rivers. The city became a barrier. I speak of the land laws (Lei das Terras), which are the beginning of the end: it transforms the urban land in merchandise to be sold or acquired. The third part, the synthesis, speaks about the concept of the river port- park city. The concept of the River Metropolis Study Group (Grupo de Estudos da Metrópole Fluvial – GMF) is in the third part of the dissertation”.30

One important matter is the relation between the studio dynamic in the GMF and Delijaicov’s past experience in the public office of architecture31. After entering in the post-graduate studies at FAU-USP, by 1993. Praças de equipamentos – praças d’água Since the early years of the present decade, a disseminated interest with infrastructures of the metropolis arose among the students of FAU. Not only through water, but also in discussions about public transportation, parkways, and the construction highway ring, for example. Although urban infrastructures were already a recurrent theme among many members of the school’s faculty, there is a growing tendency nowadays to bring this subject to design classes, where before the majority of design objects where schools, cultural centers and many sorts of public housing. In this context Alexandre Delijaicov played a hole of an inspiring recruiter for the “cause” of the urban rivers, he who can be located in a generation of young professors of architecture who recently joined the staff of the design department of FAU, along with Milton Braga, Angelo Bucci and Alvaro Puntoni. Delijaicov, within this group, stands out for his clear interest of designing through water. After almost 10 years of lecturing – some students could claim having heard Delijaicov explaining his theory of river port-park city more than two times – the message had came through. But in this process, from his Masters to his PhD thesis, delivered in 2004, there were some changes, or, better said, insights on the idea of water design, that led to a even more intimate relation to the technical debate.

30 In conversation with Alexandre Delijaicov, February 2012. 31 EDIF – Departamento de Edificações – Its foundation traces back to the first generation of public architects who were entirely devoted to designing public facilities for education in the mid 1950’s. The 1 5 th INTERNATIONAL PLANNING HISTORY SOCIETY CONFERENCE

Fig. 9 - Tri-port at Billings Dam, GMF, photomontage on aerial photo, 2011. There is already a generation of young professionals who were tutored by Delijaicov and who are currently expressing their own branches of investigation. This is important for understanding how the designing of the Hydroway-ring differs from the Olympic Bid. Whereas the design of 2003 was conceived by a group of traditional “auto cad” professionals, the group assembled in the GMF is much more heterogeneous. From researchers in public transportation from graphic designers – as we can see at the images 10 to 13, from their personal academic production, the group had been gathered not by typology of practice, as customary, but by typology of design. Many architects in São Paulo, like Gabriel Manzi and Eduardo Gianni, tutored by Delijaicov in their graduation projects, seek now paths to go further in their investigation. And many others, looking for a formation in architecture more close to these subjects, and attracted by the unlikely charisma of Delijaicov, organized a group of research and – or through – design. The foundation of the study group of the river metropolis – Grupo de Estudos da Metrópole Fluvial (GMF) – is based in three important elements: first, is the investment in an academic group as an expression of a public architecture bureau. With the dismantling of EDIF, Delijaicov became a sort of freelance public architect, circulating from public institutions, where he continued proposing programs, such as the CEU’s. There was the conception of a series of public libraries and cultural centers for small villages at the banks of the major river basins in Brazil, sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, for example. But Delijaicov’s new bureau of public architecture would be the school of architecture.

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In second place, there was the interest for fomenting the university extension (one of the three ‘pillars’ of education in USP) in the department of design that should not be based on housing or welfare interest. Seeking to find a more central spot in the debate on infrastructure in Brazil, the students of architecture looked in the faculty for someone who could sponsor an active group in design. With the opportunity offered by the State department of hydrographic transportation for a commission on the preliminary sketch of a hydro-ring in the metropolitan area of São Paulo, there was a start point to join the many individual researches, with Delijaicov’s already monolithic argument standing out as the beacon.

Fig. 9 - Riverside improvements at Armênia Metro Station, ink and watercolor on paper, São Paulo. Danilo Zamboni, graduation work, 2010.

Fig. 10 - Ecopoint at the riverbank, ink and watercolor on paper, São Paulo, Danilo Zamboni, graduation work, 2010.

In third place, and revealing some potential for future ventures, are the assorted individual formations that combined in the GMF. With the embattle of different perspectives in design, planning, historical survey and policy making, the group can deliver a comprehensive view on the subject, impossible for a homogeneous group of architects who have devoted their careers in architectural practice on the draft board. The potential for the future, if there is space for branches of opinion outside Delijaicov prematurely matured and hermetic field of view – he is less than 50 years old - and space for individual growth, the GMF could become what it is been planned to be – a laboratory of design, critique and analysis on infrastructure planning. 1 5 th INTERNATIONAL PLANNING HISTORY SOCIETY CONFERENCE

The GMF, now sediments a vocabulary on infrastructure design more committed to a technical agenda, as the gap between public agencies and the university is been reduced. The program proposed for the Hydro-ring, composed of a system of waste management facilities, multi-modal ports (hydro-train-highway ports), marinas and sluices, dams and water squares with the usage for water treatment, had gave a direct answer to the problem of managing the water channels, where today is from a recent time being investigated.

Fig. 11 - Pier and Marina at Porto Fonciere, Paraguay, Photomontage on aerial photo, Gabriel Manzi, 2009.

Fig. 12 - Pier and Marina at Porto Fonciere, Paraguay, section, Gabriel Manzi, 2009.

FROM DISCOURSE TO POLICY MAKING

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Fig. 13 and 14 - Water-Ring exposition high-contrast map (2012 exposition at FAU-USP) GMF, 2011. Photo: Eduardo Pompeo One important matter to discuss for the upcoming events is about the possible challenges for the design laboratories in FAU, not only GMF, on the subject of transporting the argument from the academic field to one of executive and administrative policies. The recent exposition in the “caramel hall” – the central atrium of the building of the architecture faculty at the USP campus – have summed the work of the Water-ring. The difference of tone is clear from a poetic (and bucolic) enterprise that clearly shaped the narratives up to the 1990’s to this ratter systematic presentation of maps, diagrams, and photo-montages – those in a smaller size. It is somehow not an entire surprise, if one compares to earlier expositions promoted by EDIF staff – we could remember the one for the V International Architecture Biennale in 2003, where the projects for the Unified Educational Centers were presented. But there are visible contributions from the new generations. The main questions, still, persists. What is to be the stand of the GMF on urban policies? The level of commitment in the academic and critic field should be a priority, or is it the time to engage in more executive agendas, changing the traditional line of thought in the University – at least in the architecture school and in the humanities faculty (FFLCH)32. There is another price to be paid, in the struggle to introduce the design laboratories in the debate of urban design in a more executive posture.

32 Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas – Faculty of Filosofy, Languages, and Human Ciences. 1 5 th INTERNATIONAL PLANNING HISTORY SOCIETY CONFERENCE

The poetic load of Mendes da Rocha heritage had lost its space to technical concern in urbanism and a vast survey in water management. There is left little space for a promenade architecturale when one is confronted with the demand for solving a problem of waste management through the Eco- Points. In order to attain social relevance, some elegance had to be sacrificed. Delijaicov has stated, in his interview, about the limits of the intervention where the actions of the GMF are defined, as an academic organization, and not a public bureau of design, as much of the working atmosphere have presented itself during the tour-de-force displayed in the Water-Ring project. Perhaps this generation of young architects could, in the future, reassemble a public department of design, picking up what is now left of EDIF. But such enterprise is committed also the political engagement to be expressed by these architects, such was Delijaicov, during this last decade.

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REFERENCES I would like to thank the generations of architects in São Paulo who have been kind enough to allow reproduction of their work.

Books Ab’ Saber, A. N. São Paulo: Ensaios Entreveros. São Paulo: Edusp, 2004. Artigas, R (org,). Paulo Mendes da Rocha: projetos 1999-2006. São Paulo: Cosac & Naify, 2007 Brito, F. S. R, Melhoramentos no Rio Tietê em São Paulo. São Paulo: F. Bridget – Secção de Obras D`O Estado de São Paulo, 1926. Goulart Reis Filho, N. Dois Séculos de Projeto no Estado de São Paulo: grandes obras e urbanização. São Paulo, Edusp, 2010. Goulart Reis Filho, N. São Paulo: vila cidade metrópole. São Paulo, PMSP, 2004. Leme, M. C. S.. Prestes Maia no Plano de Avenidas: nasce a marginal tietê. São Paulo: Pini, 1991. Rocha, P.A.M. Postulação para os Jogos Olímpicos. São Paulo, Tomie Ohtake, 2010. Seabra, O. C. L. Economia Política do Espaço: a reestruturação da bacia do alto Tietê. São Paulo: Contexto, 2005. Article in Journal Comas, Carlos Eduardo. “Paulo Mendes da Rocha: o Promo dos 90”. AU. São Paulo, No. 97, 2001. - http://www.revistaau.com.br/arquitetura- urbanismo/97/paulo-mendes-da-rocha-o-prumo-dos-90-23748-1.asp Florence, Luiz R.A. “Entrevista com Wilson Bracetti”. Veneza. São Paulo, 2011. http://revistaveneza.wordpress.com/2011/06/27/entrevista- wilson-bracetti-parte-1-de-2/ Rocha, P.A.M. “Aula”. Caramelo. São Paulo: GFAU, No. 10, 1998, 10-25. Motta, Flávio. “Paulo Mendes da Rocha”. Ponto. São Paulo: FAU, 1971, pp. 1- 5. http://www.ponto.org/1/artigo0.html Article in Book Goulart Reis Filho, O Tietê e a cidade. São Paulo: Pini, 1991. Leme, M. C. S. No Plano de Avenidas Nasce a Marginal Tietê. In Projeto Tietê. São Paulo, IAB / PINI, 1991. Rocha, P.A.M. Rios e caminhos: uma reflexão. Catálogo da 7th São Paulo International Architecture Biennale. São Paulo: Imprensa Oficial, 2008 1 5 th INTERNATIONAL PLANNING HISTORY SOCIETY CONFERENCE

Rocha, P.A.M.. Cidade no Tietê. São Paulo: Pini, 1991.

Academic Thesis ANDRADE, Carlos Roberto Monteiro de. Peste e o Plano: o urbanismo sanitarista do engenheiro saturnino de brito. São Paulo: Masters dissertation, FAU-USP, 1992. DELIJAICOV, Alexandre Carlos Penha. Os rios e o desenho urbano da cidade: proposta de projeto para a orla fluvial da grande são paulo. São Paulo: Masters dissertation, FAU-USP, 1998. SEABRA, Odette Carvalho de Lima. Meandros dos Rios nos Meandros do Poder: TIetê e Pinheiros – valorização dos rios e das várzeas na cidade de São Paulo. São Paulo: PhD thesis, FFLCH, 1987.

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