Productive Striation:
While there is an immediate need to stabilize the terrain defining and immediately surrounding numerous risk zones within the favela of Paraisopolis, how can a site strategy perform in a variety of roles beyond simply retaining loose earth? By introducing a directional “grain” to a site through a series of terraced striations, retaining strategies can begin to define routes of access, for pedestrians, cyclists, and emergency vehicles, as well as mitigate and collect stormwater. Although the two contrast sharply, Paraisopolis shares an important relationship with its affluent neighbor of Morumbi, providing construction labor and domestic services for that neighborhood as well as the rest of city of Sao Paulo. Through the manipulation of the scale and relation to existing topography of each of these striations, together they can define community program elements and create productive outdoor public spaces. Beyond the limits of an individual site , this strategy could be deployed between a series of risk zones, transforming unstable terrain into a corridor of stable development – residential, commercial, or civic. Once these zones have been transformed from liabilities into community assets, the program elements and public outdoor spaces which they contain can contribute to the establishment of Paraisopolis as a more permanent, productive, and prosperous area of settlement.
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Comment:
Hello,
Reading your description, the key word for visualisation seems to be “corridor” which makes me think of labyrinthes and mazes. In particular a project inspired by Jorge Luis Borge’s story “The Immortal” called City of the Immortals – a fantastical fictional landscape. But these corridors also could be defined using tessellation of shapes: check out Eric Gjerde’s Origami Tesselations (one picture there leading to many more, and instructions)
Another key word is “grain” which brings to mind the textiles term (direction of the weave) – looking at the landscape you’re creating as being a malleable fabric could also be interesting. This is perhaps a cliche in formal terms, but a classic example being the link between Archigram’s Cushicle and Blow-Out village is one way the relationship can be fascinating.
Another project that comes to mind, is Lebbeus Woods’ “Nine Reconstructed Boxes” (lots of images of different Woods projects here). In fact, his design approach is applicable to all the slum lab proposals, in that it promotes an open definition of space, holds an otherworldly perspective and is relatively abstract in terms of capitalist view of private property: the boundaries are not clearly defined.
As you lot are New Yorkers, you probably went to this event but in any case, check out this summary of Woods talking at Postopolis at the Storefront for Architecture, and scroll down to read his thoughts on the “design advocacy” approach.
For general inspiration: see also his posts on Dumb Boxes and Dead Words
Back to your project:
The program needs to be defined at this point – residential, commercial, civic or a combination of all 3? You mention transport paths as well as public space, and also the primary function of collecting stormwater … choices need to be made!
Cautionary note:
I find the language and punctuation you have used in your presentation to be a bit ambiguous, which is why I have found it necessary/useful to fish out a few key phrases, in order to clarify the paths your project is taking – beware of this in the future, for non-architects.
I look forward to finding out the next step of your project!
best,
Miranda
