Site issues:

1. Access – confined by traintracks on all sides, there is only one point of access. 2. utilies – only one water connection for entire favela, illegal electricity and illegal sewage that ends up in rivers 3. sanitation is very poor – piles of garbage, stagnant water and sewage runoff 4.  nearby is an area notirious for all-day drug use, violence, etc.

As you can see in the site plan above, there is a lot of old industry and service surrounding the site… a lot of old dilapidated buildings.  there is just not enough residence in the area to promote a healthy social situation, and the drug users took over.  but this area is so close to downtown Sao Paulo, that it can really be somthing special…. something new and exciting for the entire city that will revitalize the area and bring businesses and people in the following years… the conditions in the favela are really just too poor to keep the favela there, but it is important that housing is first created just on the border of the site, so that the faveladores have a new home nearby before the favela is removed….

the basic idea is to cover the train tracks, the train yard, and the mill with a series of roof systems… this will provide program space on top of and below this roof system…

below is a conceptual site plan for intervention…

above you see the room system (some of which is covered in linear park, which is green), and then layered on top of the roof system are different programs – some cafes, galleries, some shops, some athletic facilities – so that we start to have an extremely active site, mixed with open areas full of grasses and trees, with beautiful views looking out to the rest of Sao Paulo…

the roof system will tie into existing buildings of the site and next to the site and will make connections to the rest of the city via ramps, stairs, platforms, elevators, cable cars, and more…

so the next question is what will the units of program look like…

a kit of prefabircated parts will allow for simple construction of a variety of complex shapes… the above image is only one example….

above is the aggregation of these program components, and the roof system will weave these elements together.

the above rendering is not the greatest rendering, but it gives my first overall idea of the system…  but i intend for the design to be less massive than this, less solid…  it will be segmented more and there will be more cuts into the roof to get light down below, and of course much of the roof will be covered with green grasses and trees and people…  program space is on top of and beneath the roof…

Parque Sao Domingos is essentially an island favela surrounded by middle-class housing.  There are 669 inhabitants living in a fairly small plot of land.  The site has a unique condition of having a large soccer field as well as a sports court that have been religiously not invaded.  The two main issues of the site are: a) all the houses bordering the street to the southeast have been built over a stormwater canal and are in danger of collapsing and b) the site is very dense and unhealthy in areas.  The proposal currently is to do an “acupuncture removal” to de-densify and allow room to go down and repair the water canal.  These open spacescan have leisure activities inside the favela, or the spaces on the edges can become programmed areas that are currently lacking in the site.  A community center and new housing can be built over the existing sports court and the soccer field can be re-dimensioned and rearranged to allow for more program around or even underneath.

Photography courtesy of Lambert.

Proposal: Youth social network driven by cultural events. Through a social network which provides dutch-morrocan youth cultural events, they socialize among those with the same interest and find themselves in the society. Variety of dutch-morrocan youth prefered cultural events are held in multiple locations in all over Hoograven. Each time a different event takes place in one of many event locations and other networked event areas direct the scattered youth to the event location. All the locations are public that is exposed to the neighborhood. As what a little camera does to Kibera youth community and the culture, this network is a motivation for dutch-morrocan youth to what they can cause for their own cultural standing in the community and to find themselves in Dutch society.

Programs proposed: cultural obsession is a good vehicle to transfer the youth enthusiasm toward finding social identity of their own. Skateboard parks, Video graffiti walls, concert stages, and all include information interface integrated to the programs that direct the youth to the event. All the proposed programs are linked to existing local youth programs in an effort for cultural boost of the community.

View proposal (pdf).

Informal food markets dominate the distribution chain in Mexico City.

Informal Food Markets in Mexico City