I hope to use Boulevard da Paz’s topography to its advantage – creating an economically and environmentally productive space for the favela residents. I am proposing the introduction of agricultural terracing along steep valleys that are currently unusable – growing high value crops to generate income and create jobs, reinforcing the slopes to prevent landslides and using gravity to treat agricultural and urban wastewater runoff.

Efforts from the government has been made to develop housing programs to provide improved living conditions and right to hous

ing for the families here in São Francisco for decades. However, the process of replacing people into the new vertical dwellings creates problems like gentrification and residents unable to pay for the development and therefore, stay, in their new homes.  Also, the lives of residents could hardly be improved by solely providing living spaces; the lack of commercial and public spaces still renders the area a bleak urban landscape.  Moreover, the construction of new highway, Jacu-Pessego, right through São Francisco will bring tremendous impact to the existing communities.

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.