2007 Rotch Scholarship

India

2008-05-04T11:07:00.013-05:00

Jaisalmer
Under the stars vaulting the cooled Thar Desert I lay supine, just 100 kilometers from Pakistan and within spitting distance of my camel, losing my corporeality in the constellations above and remembering that it wasn’t my birthday anymore, not anywhere in the world and that one year had passed since the Rotch committee granted this opportunity for which I am infinitely grateful. The sky’s dome contained these thoughts and the calmness of the desert was broken only by the safari leader’s cell phone rattling digitized, trebly sitars over our camels’ low, slobbery air-filled mating calls.

The following day our crew of eight woke early, one by one, and with the benefit of a flat, expansive horizon, we watched the earth roll gently into the sun from atop our dune. A breakfast of hard-boiled eggs, toast and “mysterious nut butter” filled our stomachs, after which our camels staggered back into the heat and we returned to the city of Jaisalmer. Once an important stop along ancient camel trade routes connecting India with regions further west beyond the Arabian Sea, Jaisalmer is now an adventurous tourist destination for backpackers abroad. However, this business is both a blessing and a bane.

The city is camouflaged with desert sandstone hues, save for bright blue 50-gallon-drum-sized plumbing tanks floating above the majority of buildings. There is very little rainfall so residents siphon water from below and now the fort is sinking. That the fort will slowly merge with the landscape from a functioning piece of civilization to archaeological ruin seems an inevitable fate for Jaisalmer. Yet despite this, the outward appearance of the fort’s integrity remains convincing, particularly for enduring the desert sun and sandstorms for over 850 years. Thus, the Jaisalmer Fort combined with the surrounding havelis (heavily ornamented residences of former ministers or landlords) and an adventurous camel safari allows Jaisalmer the exotic tourist appeal associated with India. For me, it was just a quick stop on my three-week detour into the country.

Mumbai
Almost two weeks before the camel encounter, I first arrived Mumbai from Shanghai. At nine in the morning, my cab reeled through traffic in stifling air, from the airport to the neighborhood of Colaba at the southern tip of Mumbai’s islands. Mumbai’s black and yellow cabs buzz around the city like sixty thousand shiny worker bees among two-cycle autorickshaws (though not allowed downtown), delivery trucks, personal cars and bikes. Traffic laws are lax or non-existent and navigating through the city appears to be a free-for-all; take a look at the opening scene of Wes Anderson’s Darjeeling Limited for an accurate portrayal of the frenzied autorickshaw (or taxi) journey through just about any town in India. Watch out for the sacred cow.

It’s estimated around 14 to 15 million people inhabit the city today, with well over half in poverty. Yet, like major South American cities visited, this aspect of the city is not always immediately apparent. The poorer neighborhoods hide primarily on the outskirts of the city, while the core retains the historical image of the city. Recounting the centuries of overlapping ruling parties of India and their influence on Mumbai is as much a dizzying effect as braving a cab. The country’s history spans from the Indus Valley Civilization, over the Mughal and British empires, and into the present day Republic of India, the global outsourcing hub. This complex historical fabric gives the culture a plurality, with each region, state and city possessing a completely unique identity.

At first glance there are two immediate architectural readings of central Mumbai: the buildings constructed before and during the British Raj, and those constructed through the chaotic intensity of contemporary development within the last couple of decades. The former is comprised of a wide variety of structures, especially in the Fort Area, from the Victorian Gothic Chhatrapati Shivaji railway station to the copious Art Deco theaters. Many of these buildings display a fusion of British imperial grandeur with Hindu and/or Indo-Islamic elements, resulting in architectural categorization of the Indo-Saracenic style. On the other hand, the latter vision of the city shares banalities with major developing South American cities visited – Mumbai too is a concrete jungle.

Yet while the Victorian aesthetic of Mumbai may serve as iconography for a formerly repressed India, its residual functionality is clearly an asset. The Oval Maidan, for example, offers a much-needed release from the city for cricket enthusiasts, local residents and tourists, despite its connection to the Raj. The northeastern edge is lined with clothing vendors and further south one can find the University of Mumbai as well as the High Court, both architecturally and culturally significant to India’s history. The highest concentration of art galleries in the country is nearby as are many Bollywood theaters. Recognizing the value of maintaining such a dynamic space, the Oval-Cooperage Residents Association (ORCA) took over the land in the mid 90s and is largely responsible for what might be the most popular public space in Mumbai. ORCA’s efforts were crucial in allowing the continued activation of this public space while simultaneously releasing it from a static and irrelevant symbol into an evolving resource – an important perceptual shift for any city.

However, Mumbai faces more issues with the preservation of not only public space in its physical state, but also as a shared concept between disparate portions of the population. As was similarly observed in South America, Mumbai appears to suffer from a continually increasing segregation of the population. And again with South America, neither architecture, nor urbanism is responsible such demographics, but neither are they employed to conduct experiments of overlapping programmatic conditions that could potentially lead to a cohesive, yet multifarious typology of public spaces. If these spaces do exist within the city – for example around various markets where cows, spices, electronics and all their consumers rub elbows – it is out of necessity or coincidence, not an attempt to maximize the benefits of complex public spaces.

Ahmedabad
Ten hours north of Mumbai, out of Maharashtra state and into Gujarat lies the sprawling, dusty city of Ahmedabad. Over five million people live and work here, but the overall scale is impossible to sense and you would never guess this is where Gandhi took the first steps toward the coast on his famous Salt March. It is a completely flat region and buildings are seldom beyond four or five stories tall which gives Ahmedabad a very different scale than Mumbai.

One deviation from the clamor of Ahmedabad’s cityscape is Louis Kahn’s India Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM), one of seven business schools under the same ownership and financing via the Government of India. Established in 1961, the university is recognized as one of the most important in India and today churns out MBAs for India’s well-known rapidly developing economy.

Escaping from the city into the campus, the noise, pollution and traffic of Ahmedabad are displaced by cathartic, firmly organized landscapes and meeting places between dormitories, administration and classrooms. These social spaces act as points of transition between interior and exterior, between the university’s different programmatic components. Kahn’s monumental geometries convey the austerity of the institution, but his applied sensitivity to scale, materiality and light return the experience to the individual. His intentions are further articulated in the execution of architectural details that form a broader logic recalling the underlying strategies of Islamic and Hindu architecture I observed during my time in other Indian cities.

It is specifically in the transition of structural elements that Indo-Islamic buildings, as with all Islamic architecture, find an element of their identity, with perhaps the foremost example being the squinch. As an architectural device for transitioning between the circular base of a dome, to polygon and concluding in orthagonal floor plan, the squinch is part of a system for connecting different architectural elements that define separate and/or overlapping spaces. Definition of space is thus influenced by a set of architectural rules, or logic and variations emerge depending on the lineage of craftsman and culture.

Employing variation within a minimal material palette, Kahn establishes his own basic architectural logic throughout the project for defining spatial and material transitions. Only a few brickwork patterns are utilized (Stretcher bonds, Flemish bonds and Header bonds) and concrete is used sparingly in the tension members at the base of arches and commonly for floor slabs. The construction and detailing between these materials evolve elements of historic Indian architecture, as is with the use of the many different arcades. These details, both the structural formations and material transitions, seem to embody an architectural language that provided Kahn his unique ability to shape space.

Though there is clearly a difference in appearance between Kahn’s modern resolutions of masonry construction at IIM and, for example, Sarkej Rosa, a collection of Islamic buildings outside the city (where I fractured my toe). However, a relationship between the two exists whereby both attempt to refine space through the logic of highly articulated geometries (though Islam indulging in more surface complexity) and deliberate expression of materiality. Perhaps then it is no surprise that I was told by a local professor in Ahmedabad that Sarkej Rosa was Kahn’s all-time favorite building.

Delhi, Agra & Chandigarh
Following Ahmedabad, I spent a single day in the indigo city of Jodhpur the Mehrangarh Fort that rises like a mushroom out of the desert. The same day I moved on to Jaisalmer and later ended up in Delhi. Around Delhi, I also visited the nearby cities of Agra and Chandigarh.

Agra possesses three major architectural relics: the legendary Taj Mahal, the once-impenetrable Agra Fort and the eclectic Fatehpur Sikri. Though the Taj is effectively the single most iconic building for India, all three are undoubtedly indispensable historical structures. Architecturally, the three building sites are actually composed of many separate buildings and together they project all of the qualities noted in the section about Ahmedabad, albeit through an array of functions, materials and construction. From the Taj’s white marble whose color reflects the passing of the day to the Fort’s overlapping Hindu and Islamic ornamentation, these buildings are an architectural account of the former Mughal Empire. All three still serve as inspiration for contemporary architects in the country.

Perhaps most interesting is the proximity of Agra to Delhi and Chandigarh despite their disparate representations of India. Sir Edwin Lutyen grafted the monumentality of the British Empire onto Delhi’s landscape in 1931. Yet, with much irony, the British left only 16 years later and the new Indian government occupied the same buildings. The British legacy halted immediately after independence, but was replaced, at least in one instance, with modernism’s vision of the future. After the division of India into what is today Pakistan and Bangladesh, also known as Partition, the state of Punjab necessitated a new capital city. Following American architect Albert Mayer’s proposal, Le Corbusier developed a new urban and architectural vision for Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s post-Partition India. Chandigarh emerged as a supposed new progressive identity for the country. However, the urban and architectural vision of Chandigarh failed to take hold in other states.

Thus, India’s premier political chronology – Mughal Empire, British Empire and Republic of India – is accessible within a string of 450 kilometers. Missing is India’s advancement into the global network and subsequent adaptation of the ‘office park’ as the center of financial power. Though I never visited these new Indian cityscapes, the visions crafted by journalists such as Thomas Friedman as well as the stories provided to me by some foreigners living and working in India, I cannot imagine them dissimilar from their American counterparts. However, while critics remain cynical regarding the continual growth of such complexes in the United States, the perception of the banal steel-and-glass office box is still foreign, and stimulating. In search of a contemporary Indian architecture, one that addresses India's rich architectural history and simultaneously speaks of its new global position, one might remain lost. I'm reminded of a one-liner from Wes Anderson's script that might function as a sort of mantra in this context: “We haven’t located us yet”.

(for more photos of India, feel free to visit this link: http://s293.photobucket.com/albums/mm46/archmcp/India/)

China I

2008-03-12T04:54:00.045-05:00

HONG KONG
At six-thirty in the morning, Hong Kong time, an old woman across the lightwell down on 15 woke me with a more than just a clearing of the throat. She was really letting go, rattling her lungs with expectorant coughs and wheezes. I know where the sounds came from because I moved to 15 after a couple of days up on 16. Thus the following morning it was even louder and a little earlier, but the room (if only the size of the bed) is clean and has four minutes of warm water in the shower wand over the toilet. Luxurious. No, really.

This is Chunking Mansion, a 16-floor “rabbit-warren” of Guesthouses, Indian and Pakistani restaurants, small electronics stores, internet “cafes”, convenience stores and one perpetually closed women’s underwear store. This so-called mansion is right in the center of Kowloon, a vast shopping and tourist district with no shortage of brand name and imitation brand name anything for sale. Indian men bark at foreigners about tailored suits and Rolexes, while crisp, white fluorescent-washed storefronts with chrome borders sit under enormous, colorful flickering signs that cantilever over the street, advertising anything you can buy. It’s the kind of space for making a purchase, preferably something shiny and new. Consumer space.

For my cell phone, I opted for a shop in the Chunking. Just outside this 8’ x 10’ shop within the Chunking a steady stream of new and used cell phones are unpacked, unwrapped and set on display by a group of Pakistani men. They must sell thousands of phones a month to foreigners like me, which is high volume for such a small outfit, but the wholesale market is probably ten times as strong. During my stay at the second guesthouse, a Nigerian man was crowding the small lobby with 12 large boxes filled with around 3000 cell phones in all. International small-scale businessmen come in, buy loads of electronics and then cart them back single-handedly to their respective countries. Plus, it’s the Chinese New Year (the year of the rat!), a shopping frenzy, so everyone is buying anything they can get their sale-sifting hands on.

Which sheds light on one small aspect of modern China – many of those cell phones, or at least many parts of them are made here, and thanks to marketplaces like this one most of them are also used in the mainland. China – known for all things immense – has a purported 200 million cell phone subscribers and makes up one quarter of the world’s cell phone consumer market. Trying to measure the immensity makes me think of an exhibit back in the Guggenheim in New York where a pile of cell phones, all turned on, lay in the center of the atrium producing a heat wave tangible at twice the diameter of the pile itself. Or for a two-dimensional comparison, if an average cell phone is about 2” x 4”, 200 million cell phones laid flat measure over 11,000,000 square feet, or almost a half square mile. Cell phone companies are steadily producing.

Hong Kong is harnessing the global cell phone culture and linking it to the city’s tourist sites. It’s a sort of orienting device that brings the cell phone back into the physical realm, or at least creates relationships between the information it disposes and the tangible thing before you. Architects and artists have been hurling these ideas around for some time, but Hong Kong, along with a few other international cities, is experimenting with the system.

Though one can presumably gather select information about the Hong Kong region from Buddha sculptures to iconic skyscrapers, the application falls short of anything more than one of those banana-shaped audio guides at a museum near you. Instead, just travel on the area’s modern region’s extremely modern urban infrastructure.

A continually growing system of roads, bridges, buses, trains and ferries has linked Hong Kong (Special Administrative Region – SAR) with the surrounding areas of Kowloon (tourist area to the north), Lantau (tourist area to the west), the New Territories (relatively unpopulated with recreational arena), Macau (former Portuguese colony meets Atlantic City of the East - pictured below), Shenzhen (Special Economic Zone – SEZ) and Zhuhai (SEZ). It’s an economically complex region - China’s richest, but despite this, maybe not it’s prettiest.

SHENZHEN
Crossing the border from Hong Kong (the New Territories actually) into mainland China is an abrupt transition. Because of Hong Kong’s history as a trading post under British rule and its return to China in 1997 as a Special Administrative Region, the area is heavily modernized and wealthy. Hop over the border into nearby Shenzhen and it’s another world. Personally I felt like it possessed some qualities I’ve read about early 20th century Shanghai, when it was deemed the “Whore of the Orient”.

Over twenty years ago Shenzhen was an old fishing village, but now it’s an industrial center recognized as one of the original frontrunners on China’s list of rapidly urbanizing cities. Thus, in China, Shenzhen is recognized as a leader of industry, urban development, shopping, etc., but my experience didn’t fit the latest glowing articles about this modern city nor some of the interesting speculative work for the city.

Just outside the train station, maybe 50 meters from the border, a straight-faced police officer pointed me in the direction of his travel service collaborators for a ticket to Guilin, attempting to charge over twice the actual price (later I bought an official ticket). After traversing a vast plaza and entering a field of high rises, one encounters dozens of offers for the proverbial massage. Shenzhen is also the weekday shopping destination for idle Hong Kong residents. They head north in the morning, hit the dense accumulation of shopping malls within a 5-kilometer radius and return before dusk. Hong Kong can feel gloomy with hazy, grey skies, but entering Shenzhen, entering China, was a different weight. Its the foremost reality of China’s urbanization – masses of rapidly produced consumer centers, industrial centers, business centers, financial centers etc., all in the form of faceless/lifeless architecture seized by a heavy, unremitting smog.

YANGSHUO
To ameliorate my bleak first impressions of China, I took a detour to Yangshuo, a small area renown for its spectacular landscapes and "quaint" villages. While nearby Guilin is developing like the rest of china Yangshuo appears to be strolling along at a comfortable pace. The quiet Li River meanders through small, sharply rising, conical hills, mirroring their every detail. Nearby, several of the country’s 55 minorities (of 56 ethnic groups) make a living, for example the Zhuang among the terraced rice fields in Lonji (aka, the Dragon’s Backbone). Also in the region are the Yao, who have a particular tradition of growing their hair tremendous lengths, beyond a meter, and then wrap it atop their heads until finding their proper suitor.

Though I would have like to have visited more remote areas in the region, including those of particular architectural interest like the Hakka roundhouses in Yongding or the traditional architecture in LiJiang, it was time to proceed to Shanghai.

SHANGHAI
It’s a 22-hour train ride from Yangshuo to Shanghai - plenty of time to develop a plan of attack for arriving at my hostel. The train came to its final destination around three in the afternoon at which time the droves of Chinese returning from Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) disembarked and I sought out the metro. It turns out the train stopped at what is a new station in southern Shanghai, not the older one, the only one my Lonely Planet guide had shown. The guide also indicates only two metro lines, with two more projected; today there are nine with many more under construction. My 2005 Lonely Planet is outdated, as is my 2006 Shanghai book, as is the Frommer’s Shanghai 2007 guide. Media can’t seem to keep up with the city’s ceaseless demolition and re-creation.

The western influences in China accelerated during the middle of the 19th century when the British were flooding China with opium imported from India. The British, among other western countries including America, had a hankering for Chinese tea, silk and porcelain, but had little to offer in return. Opium filled the trading gap and crippled Chinese culture as addiction became a nationwide problem; the Qing government responded by confiscating 20,000 chests of illegal opium and then setting them ablaze. The First Opium War ensued, the British won and the resulting Treaty of Nanking forced the Chinese to cede the island of Hong Kong and five ports (including Shanghai) for residence and trade, and basically gave foreigners free reign in these concessions. Thus from 1842, when the treaty was signed, until 1937 with the advent of World War II in East Asia, Shanghai became the center of occidental-influenced culture in China.

While the Nationalist Republic Party, the Kuomintang, slowly gained control of the Chinese territories in Shanghai, the French and Americans acquired their own concessions (the latter of which would later merge with the British to form the International Settlement) and together with the British would reshape the urban landscape of the city. Because of its size and function as a simple fishing village, Shanghai never received the attention to urban organization, such as a logical, orthogonal street pattern, prior to western settlement that other Chinese cities such as Beijing had; it was no more than a conglomeration of twisting streets of varying lengths and widths, save for the walls of the old city shaped in a large circle. Following the presence of western powers the city continued to grow organically into a mosaic of urban development, subject to the economic forces of international trade and local commerce. Each territory grew independently of one another and without a master plan or set of civic guidelines such as the Laws of the Indies used by the Spanish to build cities in Latin America.

Though no overall plan transpired, smaller localized constructions materialized with some organization, a few of which are still among the most prominent features of Shanghai’s architecture.

The most familiar presence of western influence during this period is the Bund, a wall of stone-clad buildings built in a variety of styles ranging from Art Deco to Italian Renaissance. Facing east and bordering the Huangpu River, the Bund was once the financial and commercial center of Shanghai and later assumed non-traditional, impromptu functions (during WWII the Japanese occupied some of the buildings, such as the American Club as the Japanese naval headquarters or the Hamilton House transformed into the “Enemy Aliens Office”). Many buildings on the Bund and into the former concessions still exist today, serving various institutions. Though some buildings remain empty, the collection of architecture serves as an effective reminder of the western powers that once inhabited the city.

Lilong
Another, more prolific building type built during the same period known is the lilong, or longtang in Shainghainese. The lilong, a housing typology unique to Shanghai and constructed during the period of western settlement, can be translated as “neighborhood lanes”. The lilong pattern is a combination of traditional spatial organizations native to southeastern China and the well-known Row Housing, or Terrace Housing, established in London during and after the Industrial Revolution. The typology arose from an increasing demand for a systematic housing pattern, as millions of migrants relocated to the metropolis. There are several evolutionary stages of the lilong.

The first stage, the Old Shi-ku-men (“shi” meaning stone and “men” meaning door), is characterized by a hybrid brick-and-wood structure. Individual units, arranged in rows, are organized around a south-facing courtyard space and entry, surrounded by principal communal spaces to the north, east and west. Service and private spaces are located to the north and on the second floor. The houses form a line running east-west (each row facing south), thus providing a secondary lane between each row. The organization of each individual unit and the entire south-facing row retain traditional Chinese southward-oriented public or communal spaces. The resulting pattern of solid-void – row house and lane – is the foundation for the lilong typology exclusive to Shanghai.

The second stage, the New Shi-ku-men, maintains many characteristics of the old, but is denser and more compact. Though rows and individual units still face south, the courtyard is often shifted to one side and decreased in size, while an additional story was sometimes added and rooms partitioned off for additional families. The fall of the Ming Dynasty, of Imperial China, in 1911 coincided with the dissolution of tradition extended families and thus, the New Shi-ku-men addressed the first urbanization of Shanghai wherein many small, low-income families were in need of housing. Primary and secondary lane structure is maintained in the New Shi-ku-men Lilong.

The third stage, the New-Type Lilong, includes three different models accommodating a mix of classes, namely the growing social class. During this period, the lilong saw advancements in internal performance and functions, for example bathrooms with plumbing and improved spatial arrangements like a direct entry into the kitchen from the lane, which allowed easy access and allowed one working in the kitchen to monitor children playing in the lane. The three models, constructed of brick, wood and concrete, also take advantage (to different degrees) of increased natural light and ventilation, and respond to new technologies such as the telephone and automobile. Walled gardens replaced the courtyard and the actual façade of the buildings was set back from the lane, behind the garden. While variations occur with the individual plan and outward appearance, the cohesive integrity of the urban block plan remains the same: privacy of the home, semi-private communal spaces, and the semi-public and public lanes.

The fourth stage, the Garden Lilong, takes the form of detached and semi-detached dwellings and represents a shift in the original social and spatial characteristics of the lilong typology. The creation of exterior, semi-private, semi-public and public spaces is no longer inherent to the design. Houses are either detached or semi-detached, which allows more area for light and ventilation, but increases the open space around the buildings, altering their scale and use. The Garden Lilong symbolizes the introversion of social activities associated with the residential environment; it is also interesting to note that spaces such as clubs, theaters and similar venues hosting social activities emerged in greater numbers during this period. Concurrently, the overall cohesion, the parti, of the developments loses continuity with some blocks as individual, detached units sometimes deviate from the row alignment found in earlier evolutions. The Garden Lilong is constructed of concrete and benefits from increased efficiency of internal spatial arrangements, more facilities and the exposed southward-facing garden.

The fifth and final evolution of the lilong no longer follows the original Old Shi-ku-men or British Terrace Housing horizontality. The Apartment Lilong is a vertical structure, resembling the modern apartment block with anywhere from four to six stories with two to four units per floor. They are constructed of concrete with a variety of external finishes. Apartment Lilong are dense and compact, but ultimately deviate from the ground-related lilong up to this point.

In addition to the aforementioned attributes, the first three types of lilong are often bordered by a periphery of commercial spaces contributing to the greater urban fabric. Food, clothing and other goods are available on the same block as the residences, but in the public realm. The threshold between the interior, communal spaces of the block and the exterior is found in the form of two or three gates at the periphery of the block. Even at these thresholds, these edges, small restaurants, flower shops, etc. can be found. Many of the blocks still share this relationship between the private, residential spaces and the commercial public spaces beyond.

The benefits and values featured in various publications about lilong parallel those recognized by the inhabitants. First, there is a benefit in the proximity of living to services such as restaurants, grocery stores, clothing shops, etc. found at the periphery of many blocks. In turn, the area becomes a localized and highly interactive community (I met one man who lived in his unit for over 60 years; he was in fact born in his home and knew every single resident on the block and related history). Secondly, the (original) spatial arrangements of individual units and the overall organization of rows and lanes promote an environment in which inhabitants willfully rely on each other for simple services, including community policing. Overall, the lilong typology offers a complex network of private, semi-private, semi-public and public spaces that together appear to work in sustaining community living.

In general, the lilong provided a very particular type of mixed-use development that arose from the dynamic conditions exclusive to Shanghai. The evolution of the settlement – the transition from a horizontal to a vertical construction, the dissolution of the semi-public and semi-private spaces, and the rearrangement and increased efficiency of interior spatial organizations – illustrates the frenetic period prior to WWII and later development in communist China.

Lilong were constructed in Shanghai from approximately 1842 to 1937, up to the point of the Japanese invasion at the start of WWII in East Asia. After the war, and following the exodus of Nationalists to Taiwan, Mao Tse-Tung and the new People’s Republic of China would essentially halt shanghai’s previous form of urbanization and adopt the Soviet Union’s model of socialism, which effectively abolished private enterprise. Thus, since the beginning of WWII, no additional lilongs emerged whereas apartment high-rises proliferated to accommodate the majority of the working class mobilized for the hopeful five-year plans such the Great Leap Forward beginning in 1958.

In 1962 Mao instigated the infamous Cultural Revolution in an attempt to re-instill socialist ideals in the people, and meanwhile repress capitalist values. It’s safe to say the movement was a disaster and reportedly “the most severe setback to [the] socialist cause since [1949].” Political circles turned circles and Deng Xiaopeng, the former Secretary General, led China into a period of significant political, social, economic and cultural reform following the end of the revolution. Then, from around the early 1980s, China stumbled its way into the present-day blur of ominous statistics. Did you know that purportedly…

“…60% of [China’s] projected 1.5 billion 2020 population, or 900 million people, will live in cities.”

“If the current pace of expansion continues, there will be 140 million motor vehicles on China’s roads by 2020.”

“Only 1% of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union.”

“For air quality, a major culprit is coal, on which China relies for about two-thirds of its energy needs. It has abundant supplies of coal and already burns more of it than the United States, Europe and Japan combined.”

“China has only one-fifth as much water per capita as the United States.”

“…300,000 people die each year from ambient air pollution, mostly of heart disease and lung cancer. An additional 110,000 deaths could be attributed to indoor air pollution caused by poorly ventilated coal and wood stoves or toxic fumes from shoddy construction materials.”

“…China now makes half of the world’s cement and flat glass, and about a third of its aluminum.”

“By 2005, the United States share [of steel production] had dropped to 8 percent, while China’s share had risen to 35 percent…”

“Each year for the past few years, China has built about 7.5 billion square feet of commercial and residential space, more than the combined floor space of all the malls and strip malls in the United States.”

And so on…

(DISCLAIMER: This information is out of context and taken from second-hand sources (or maybe further removed) and therefore I neither claim nor bear responsibility for their truthfulness and accuracy. Besides, once such statistics attempting to measure China’s growth and change are published, they are immediately outdated. This is only a blog after all!)

Shanghai is just one of many cities affected, if not re-created by this period of “flash-urbanization” reshaping China and thus a relevant focus for my huge, all-encompassing Rotch study of all things “global” and what notable shifts are manifest at both the city scale and building scale. It’s overwhelming, but how else does one approach understanding China’s current growth?

Today, lilong are disappearing in the wake of urbanization because these structures were not originally designed for such density; the lilong is not a realistic solution to China’s current housing challenges. Instead, Shanghai is undergoing major urban transformations that have replaced lilong and many other buildings with the universal high-rise apartment complex – typically 20 to 30 stories with parking, modernized facilities and formal security. It would seem that non-descript apartment buildings and the introverted shopping mall are the most common construction in the country today.

Of course, housing and consumer goods are necessarily supplying demand, but can China advance its approach to these challenges with a more critical architecture and urbanism? Can China keep a culture from drowning in its own mass? Can China provide extra-large solutions for its extra-large problems? It would seem a perfect opportunity for establishing evolved settlement typologies that negotiate the influx of China's city-dwellers and their needs with interesting and sustainable solutions.

South America

2008-02-06T23:17:00.000-06:00

We're not quite keeping pace with the opposing rotation of the Earth, otherwise the sun would hang on the southern horizon right around 12 o'clock all day, perpendicular to my window. Instead, our steady 519 miles per hour has given the sun a lazy appearance, taking nearly 13 hours to travel south to southwest. We just passed Mt. McKinley and the Bering Strait, and are now gliding toward the International Date Line right into tomorrow. I begin to wonder what kind of buildings one might see at the Bering Strait, but the stewardess interrupts my thoughts, “The score?” I just stare at her, confused. “The Patriots are winning 14-10.” Here, 30,000 feet above the Bering Sea are Patriots fans – a fine thread of globalization up here. Scratch that, “17-14, Giants.”

The South American tour is over and Asia is in sight. So with a total of 17 hours of flight time to kill, it's an opportune time to compile notes and images. From here on out, it will be just one blog, one that merges more academic pursuits with more personal impressions. Or, that's the intent.

Following Brazil, my travels took me down to Argentina, then west over the Andes and up the western edge of South America. Approximately one week, a very short time, was spent in each country. It’s a different way to travel; there is always a lot more to see and less time to acquire an in depth understanding of a place. Still, these quick portraits provide a crucial supplement to a broader cultural perspective of Latin America.

As I traveled beyond Brazil, it became clear very quickly that many countries in South America suffer similar social, economic and political issues. In that respect, it is difficult not to be redundant about some of these characteristics. On the other hand, each country and city possesses a unique identity from which these conditions arise and that contribute to how something is or is not expressed in the form of architecture and urbanism.

ARGENTINA
Flying over northwestern Argentina is like flying over Nebraska; one sees an immense grid penciled across the landscape, plotting agricultural property, webs of urbanity and all that space between. Though it resembles Midwestern America, this landscape lacks some compositional rigidity. Also, in place of a shotgun Main Street slicing through downtown, one finds an equally distributed grid with one or several voids dispersed around center of the town. It is an urbanity organized around property management, political space and public space. It is the townscape of the Laws of the Indies, of Spanish colonization.

There are exceptions, particularly within the more challenging Andean landscapes, but many of towns and old city centers in Spanish-speaking Latin America are organized according to the Laws of the Indies. Mendoza, a small horizontal town in northwestern Argentina, just west of the Andes, is one such example. Mendoza is laid out on a simple grid, with Plaza Indepencia, and four secondary squares a few blocks beyond this, creating a solid-void checkerboard pattern. Further out from the center, the grid remains fairly consistent, with a few adjustments related to topographical variation. Beyond the town proper is the famous wine-producing agricultural region; the edge of the city quietly dissolves into this landscape. Though large, it feels like a slow-moving town, focused on its Malbecs. In other words, the homogenizing affects of globalization are relatively minimal, especially when compared to a city like Buenos Aires.

Due to a variety of historic and geographic circumstances, including Argentina’s relative isolation in terms of Spanish conquest, Buenos Aires has a rich collection of European influenced architecture. From Italian, French Neoclassical, Art Nouveau and modernism, the capital has it all. In the second half of the 19th century, the city modernized with a network of broad avenues not to different than Baron Georges-Eugène Haussman’s avenues constructed in Paris around the same period. As a result, the formal organization of the city is an exception among others in South America, like its architecture.

Contemporary urban development is continuing to change the face of Buenos Aires, particularly along the waterfront just east of downtown. This area, known as Puerto Madero is home to several international business regional headquarters, mixed-use developments including strips of new brick buildings made to resemble industrial building, and a new Calatrava bridge spanning the still-polluted Rio de la Plata. It’s a relatively new area, still under construction and the homogenizing affects of globalization rule the development; the view from TGIFriday’s is an anonymous steel and glass office building, LG I think (the most Argentinean restaurant sits down the river a couple of lochs - Siga la Vaca (‘Follow the Cow’), a steakhouse where one can find everything from crumbly blood sausage to rubbery intestine).

Of course, the argument for a more authentic Argentinean architecture could be made, but in preserving the round-the-clock occupation of a downtown area, this development outperforms the financial-district urbanism clearing out city centers across the world, including America. And still, while visiting the neighborhood, I wondered what Argentineans actually frequent this environment. Or is this development simply maintaining Buenos Aires’ position as a uniquely international city among characteristically Latin American ones? In one or two hundred years, will Puerto Madero acquire the same scale of appeal that historic neighborhoods such as La Boca, Recoleta, and San Telmo have? (And when will they jail that strange man?)

PERU
The most popular tourist site in South America is Machu Picchu, and it is easy to see why. The Incan ruin sits atop a lush, mountain shard at the edge of the jungle just outside of the high Andes and the city of Cusco, once the center of the Incan empire. The combination of archaeological ruin and natural landscape is astonishing. Among all the ruins in northwestern South American, this is the one not to be missed. It is at once an ancient and modern symbol of Peru; a newly elected “Wonder of the World.” The exponential increase in popularity of the site in the past decade has ensured tourism as one of the country’s principle treasures attracting international interest.

Peru has long been appealing because of its known crafts, culture and ruins. In fact, Dwell magazine just published an article on Lima, Peru’s capital, hoping to find something of contemporary architectural movement, but only finding remnants of the past and a few isolated contemporary buildings. There is an open-ended chasm between Spanish colonial architecture and the present. Certainly the city is built up, with over nine million inhabitants in the metropolitan area, and there are simple modern buildings dotted around the city, but there is no identifiable establishment of a uniquely Peruvian contemporary architecture. If anything, one sees the homogenizing affects of globalization as architecture more than a new language.

Miraflores, Lima’s most popular tourist center and (supposed) new cultural center, is a neighborhood like many others in the world. It features all the Starbucks, McDonald’s, KFC, and so on that these centers typically do, while steel and glass hotels rise among shopping centers and international restaurants. Perhaps Miraflores is the new Lima, but it’s the old form of the anonymous international city.

In Lima’s downtown, one can still find traces of the icons of globalization everyone is familiar with, but they adapt to Spanish colonial structures and classical buildings built over the past three centuries. The signs of globalization hide in nooks and niches, around the corner from major attractions like Plaza das Armas. Nothing is destroyed, but then nothing has really evolved. These colonial centers are static, like objects in a museum – artifacts of cultures abandoned or cultures deceased. Still, one cannot help but imagine a new evolution, one in which the architectural languages are not simply catalogued, but are rediscovered and challenged. For example, one could reinterpret the rich wooden balconies suspended off mute stone facades, breaking the wall of the street space. Or perhaps a new ornamental richness could be developed in new building façades, one comparable in textural complexity to the Moorish Baroque churches downtown. Further still, the masonry craft found in Incan temples could be renewed in light of new architectural experiences.

The potential for new architectural explorations is obvious, but realization is a challenge. Again and as in Brazil, there is an issue with the separation of social classes and the isolation of contemporary architecture away from the public realm. What remains to be seen is how Peru will develop architecturally as money enters its economy through both tourism and natural resources and what affect this will also have on the socio-economic landscape.

ECUADOR
The geography surrounding Quito, the capital of Ecuador, is a welcome retreat from the flat, brown and dry landscape of Lima. The city rests in a long thin valley, over 9,000 feet about sea level; altitude sickness is not uncommon for foreigners (coca leaves are employed as a natural remedy in the form of tea, candy or just the raw stuff – chew on it and your gums go numb!). A small hump, atop of which rises a grandiose gothic cathedral, separates the colonial Old Town and the modern, and touristy center, Mariscal.

The Old Town is a fully functioning collection of historic Spanish structures built directly on top of Incan ruins, which in turn were built directly on top of Pre-Incan ruins. Recent studies by the Quitsato research team, suggest that a peculiar east-west alignment of churches in this area share a relationship with the country’s pre-colonial history. This line, established by Pre-Incan societies now beneath the colonial churches, is parallel to the equator just a few miles outside the city. Other Pre-Incan structures notate the actual equatorial line (not to be confused with the French’s monument which is apparently incorrect according to contemporary GPS technology) and have been found to correspond to one another. Thus, a large-scale settlement pattern, designed in relation to solar phenomena and topographical relationships, appears to have been established by Pre-Incan civilizations many centuries ago.

Current development is an entirely new history. In the central area and to the north, the hillsides are filled with staggered massive colorful condo development. Mariscal is a collection of plain structures and tourist traps. To the south is the poorer region, like the periphery of other South American cities. Besides the string of social and political issues of the aforementioned countries, Ecuador also faces the ongoing threat of more than 19 volcanoes. In fact, one volcano, Guagua Pichincha (which I climbed!) is actually immediately adjacent to Quito and erupted recently in 1999, covering the city in a thin veil of ash. (During my visit, another volcano in the city of Banos erupted, whose plume of smoke could be seen right out my window during the flight between Lima and Quito.)

Over time, Ecuador’s architectural identity will likely emerge out of their ability to cope with seismic issues and reconstruction as well as addressing the usual social difficulties. However, one potential path for Ecuador and Quito in particular might include the intentional layering of a new, contemporary architecture related to the country’s ongoing exploration of its cultural identity. The country is at a great advantage, with a very rich and well-preserved cultural history to draw from.

COLOMBIA
After the Andes pass through Peru and Ecaudor, they run along the western edge of Colombia before falling into the Carribean. The Pacific lies to the west of the Andes and the llanos, or plains, stretch east into Venezuela. Jungles are scattered everywhere throughout the country and this is one reference for the country’s division: between the revolutionary forces that live in the jungle and everyone else.

Since the middle of the 20th century, Colombia has been challenged by political and social unrest. The assassination of liberal presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán led to the eruption of tensions between opposing political parties. They formed an alliance in an attempt at a resolution, but still found themselves divided. Meanwhile, various revolutionary forces were organizing to fight the government. These groups initially formed by young intellectuals with ‘good’ intentions fell from grace. With little or no money, they formed alliances with drug cartels and over time found their organizations fully corrupt. Many got out and work in Colombian government today, but this also means many politicians have some tie to guerrilla or paramilitary groups.

The struggle between political parties, revolutionaries and drug cartels has more or less left Colombia crippled following World War II to the present day and thus, globalization in Colombia is always in the context of this ongoing battle. As such, it is difficult to discern whether the influences of globalization push inward, as they do in other South American countries, or if the nation actually extends outward as an intentional act aimed at its own dissolution.

The city, whose quantity of masonry construction appears to surpass that of Boston, is intensely red. Bricks are everywhere, including informal construction, simple modern buildings, historical structures, and new contemporary design. Furthermore, architects like Rogelio Salmona developed a contemporary architecture dedicated to the material and detailing, as in the Biblioteca Publica Virgilio Barco. Overall, Bogotá gives the impression of an architecturally rich feeling, one not found in other South America cities. Yet just like any other large South American city, Bogotá has a great deal of social issues, including insufficient housing and infrastructure. Considering its mass, combined with the aforementioned issues, the city can only move so quickly at addressing these problems. Yet, there are organizations attempting to assist those in need, particularly in Bogotá’s eastern periphery.

Un Techo Para Mi Pai, literally “A Roof For My Country”, is an organization that seeks to improve the lives of various Latin American communities through the construction of housing and social programs. Simultaneously, it attempts to tie the lives of young adults outside of these communities to the realities their countries face through a volunteer program. It operates in nine countries total stretching from Central America to South America, including Colombia. It was the last day, the celebration, when I arrived in Bogotá and a friend of mine took me to see the project and how the program works.

The site, in the south of Bogotá, is generally where the poorer populations live, often illegally, but as part of a common process (as in Brazil, the land is ‘loaned’ by the city until it either requests the land back, is purchased by the settler). Individuals were selected in this particular neighborhood for new houses and to form a community organization. National and international companies are solicited for materials, architecture students design the temporary structure and volunteers (sometimes the same students) construct the house. They houses are cheaply constructed and not necessarily pretty, but they provide the basic protection the family needs. As the family and community grow, Techo offers more opportunities for future development. The two grow symbiotically.

In terms of the structure, or building, the basic idea is that one lives in an informal, poorly constructed shack prior to being chosen. They are then offered a period of opportunity with the temporary structure with the expectation that they will eventually acquire a permanent residence. The photo below illustrates the three stages of this process – informal shack, formal 10-year house, permanent masonry house.

Lastly, and the most difficult, is the social formation of the community. Revolutionary forces control many of these poor neighborhoods. In this case, a para-military group controls the area. Any opposition to their control, be it through city police or volunteer organizations, is a threat to their power. As a result, they sometimes react and through intimidation and violence discourage the formal organization of communities. Techo and community leaders have been directly affected.

In Colombia, public and private space is politically charged. Be it new, poorer communities, as in the neighborhood described above, institutions such Universidad Nacional de Colombia or the historical plazas like Plaza de Bolivar, these spaces always function as both a measuring device and stage for the country’s social milieu.

SOCIAL-ANTHROPOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE
There is a thread of logic, accessible through the domain of social anthropology, which has been found particularly appropriate for the understanding and response to social issues in South American countries. The entire continent is unique in its investigation and application of this realm of knowledge, to the extent that even the built environment has been strongly informed by it, as in the case of Brazil’s modern architectural movement. Successful or not, the future of South American architecture lies in the ability of these societies to address their social issues and find architectural expression through the logic of social anthropology. If successful, there is an opportunity for an entirely new string of rationalist architecture, an advance beyond the failures of socialism, the obsoleteness of colonialism and the banalities of globalization.

Sao Paulo

2008-01-11T20:25:00.000-06:00

Fear and Security

(image by BBC)

It’s no secret that Sao Paulo’s crime statistics go virtually unparalleled worldwide. In fact, several news organizations, including the New York Times, annually revive the broad subject of crime in South America. On the other hand, Brazilian news agencies cover the details daily and with a sort of primeval intensity, with Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo supplying the majority of a seemingly unlimited stream of social unrest to draw from. Primetime news is shameless, featuring video footage of bloodstained ATMs as well as police forces shooting, killing and dragging bodies of fugitives from the context of favelas, or illegal settlements. The popular culture is obsessed with lavishly violent media and it only serves to augment the collective sense of fear. And it is effective; though I was never in any danger in Brazil at any time, I found myself carefully looking for the physical boundaries of society around me – the edges of security, or safety.

However, it is not only the media that perpetuate social barriers. The complex history of slavery and the affects of its abrupt abolition are at the center of present-day social inequities. Furthermore, the chaos and informality with which the country was settled contributed to patterns of social segregation. Sociologists and social-anthropologists abound in Brazil, with many if not all addressing in some way the affects of this history on contemporary society. The patterns of socio-economic stratification become increasingly complex over time, particularly during industrialization, when working classes migrate to cities, applying unprecedented pressure on resources, including housing, in urban areas. Sao Paulo exemplifies this rapid, chaotic transformation into modernity.

Urban Organization

For the first three hundred years of Sao Paulo´s develop, little occurred in the way of large-scale urbanization. Created in 1554 by a group of Jesuit missionaries, and officially a city in 1711, the settlement served little more than an outpost between the port city of Santos and the mythical destinations the bandeirantes sought inland. It was not until the middle of the 19th century when coffee production shifted from the state of Rio de Janeiro to the state of Sao Paulo that the city experienced a great flood of wealth and the migrants that followed. It was during this period, from the 1890s to the 1940s, that Sao Paulo first began to take shape.

Concentrated City (1)

The first period of development can be defined as a “concentrated city”. The wealthy and the poor occupied a small area that constituted the city. As the population increased with industrialization, so did the issues regarding how to monitor and control such growth. The elite and government officials attempted to employ Haussman-style urban reorganization, including ideas of controlling sanitation and infrastructure, as well the dimensional and occupational characteristics of public and private space (i.e. street widths and uses, building heights, etc.). Meanwhile, the wealthy removed themselves away from the poor areas associated with unsanitary conditions, a change that resulted in the creation of the neighborhoods Higienópolis, Campos Elísios and Avenida Paulista. It is important to note, that in these neighborhoods in which the wealthy lived, building codes and zoning were enforced, while the poorer neighborhoods went unregulated. As a result, a pattern of “legal ambivalence” arose that still exists today and is responsible for much of the informal settlements found all over the region.

During this period mud and straw construction began to give way to brick, at least for the wealthy. Coffee exportation continued and new goods arrived, including masonry materials from Western Europe, at least until production began at home. Walking around Sao Paulo today, there is no trace of the Sao Paulo constructed of mud and straw nor much of the Sao Paulo formed in brick. The coffee barons constructed many mansions displaying their wealth, but many of these, if not all, were destroyed to make way for the contemporary Sao Paulo.

At the end of this period several factors contributed to the following stage of urban organization. First, the Plano de Avenidas proposed the construction of a radial pattern of large avenues stretching beyond the center of the city. This major redevelopment drove out the poor, working classes and invested in roads and bus systems instead of the small, concentrated trolley system that already existed. Second, industrialists created organizations to study the working-class housing so as to improve their living conditions, in an attempt to remove the financial burden of factory-sponsored housing and promote private home ownership. Third, the Old Republic was overthrown as a result of the trade union movement along with others. Lastly, and as a result of the dissolution of the Old Republic, a new federal government came to power under the rule of Getúlio Vargas. Just as the industrialists had hoped to promote home ownership, so did Vargas. World War II and huge investments into urban infrastructure throughout Brazil triggered an economic crisis and a housing crisis followed. In response, Vargas froze rents, preventing little or no inflation adjustments. The working classes relocated to the periphery to find cheap land and began to construct their new homes.

Concrete and Modern Architecture

Brazilian modern architecture appeared near the end of the first phase of Sao Paulo’s urbanization. Modern architecture in Brazil is considered to have begun with the visit of Le Corbusier and the realization of the Ministry of Education and Health in 1936, designed by Oscar Niemeyer and Lucio Costa with the obvious influence of, if not control by Le Corbusier. Beyond this point, modern architecture in Brazil became increasingly important, taking the form of many civic, institutional and infrastructural works. At the same time, concrete became the primary structural building material as it was relatively affordable, plastic and cheap labor was abundant. Brazil invested heavily in the material and as a result, Sao Paulo received its current classification as an urban “concrete jungle”.

Concrete, as well as red clay tiles or clay bricks (the color of nearly all Brazilian soil), are used indiscriminately for multiple types of projects. In other words, traveling from the wealthy center of Sao Paulo out to the favelas on the periphery, one can see that concrete is everywhere, as is the clay – it is used for condos, favelas, single-family homes, bus terminals, government buildings, commercial buildings, and so on. The only differences are the scale, speed of construction, complexity of form and spatial arrangements.

The working class has always used concrete as a framework for their home and the clay brick as infill. In a process called autoconstruction, a family will construct an initial concrete slab, columns and beams and slowly fill in the walls with clay bricks, leaving opening for windows and doors. Over time, as the family can afford to do so, they will add finishes to the interior and exterior walls and even add floors above. This type of construction – the form, the colors and materials – does not constitute a favela as writers about slums like Mike Davis or the countless commentators of authorless Google photos might have you believe. Instead, this is a type of vernacular building typology specific to Brazil and parts of other South American countries. It is often impossible to tell if an autoconstructed house is legal, that is, an official favela or not. However, what the autoconstructed houses do evoke is a raw image of Le Corbusier’s Domino House. Perhaps this is not surprising considering the country’s relationship with modern architecture.

In revered works of Brazilian architecture, concrete is utilized as a raw, monumental material capable of producing gravity-defying forms and enormous open spaces. Between Corbusier’s pilotis and the exhilarating perceptual effects of the cantilever, Brazilian architects appear to be constantly seeking an unearthly monumentality. Following the history of Brazil and its modern architecture, one can follow repeated attempts at employing architecture as a machine for producing an ideal society, or at least the hope or inspiration thereof. Brasilia is the most obvious example of this phenomenon, but smaller individual works from a variety of architects possess similar qualities.

In Sao Paulo, major works such as Lina Bo Bardi’s Museum of Art at Sao Paulo (MASP), Paulo Mendes de Rocha’s Museum of Brazilian Sculpture (MuBE), and aspects of Oscar Niemeyer’s Memorial of Latin America complex all bear similarities both in the use of materials and the resulting quality, or type of spaces. MASP and MuBE feature long, dynamic spans, and though they create different scales and are set in different contexts both seek to define a grand, monumental public space. Niemeyer’s complex does the same but less with obvious spans at the exterior of his buildings and rather with the vastness of the memorial plaza, not unlike the Monumental Axis of Brasilia.

Concrete is necessarily the national material of Brazil. It crosses socio-cultural boundaries and has been used in a variety of forms and contexts. Sao Paulo is but one catalogue of this indiscriminate use of materials.

Center-Periphery (2)

From the 1950s onward, Sao Paulo took on the form of the second phase of urban organization, the center-periphery model. During this period, the physical segregation of the population became more extreme. Both the working classes and the middle classes became homeowners, but through different processes.

Continued investment into road and bus systems combined with largely unregulated, illegal real-estate speculation triggered the migration of the majority of working classes to peripheral areas. The lack of regulation and consequential illegality of both sales and purchases of property during this period resonates to this day. Though much of the working class had become property owners during this time, or at least attempted to, much of it was through the illegal processes and loopholes of the real estate speculators. Even today, it is estimated that approximately 65 percent of the population of the city occupies illegal residences.

Meanwhile, the central area of the Sao Paulo experienced a concentration of middle and upper classes. The sea of condominiums defining Sao Paulo’s endless skyline today is a result of municipal zoning and construction regulations combined with federal policies controlling financing for the middle-income bracket. Many of the condos and office buildings extended southwest from the city center, from Avenida Paulista (a national and international business center), to Jardins (an upper-middle class residential neighborhood), to Faria Lima (a business and commercial center). However, the condo is a ubiquitous housing typology throughout Sao Paulo and can be found in nearly every district or neighborhood within the greater municipality. Nonetheless, there are spaces in which socio-economic classes begin to overlap, if only for a short period of time and in the appearance of informal configurations.

Material Flow – Global & Local Economies

The pattern to the southwest still continues today as can be seen in the area within Itaim Bibi bordering the Pinheiros River to the west. This new development features a commercial district along Avenida Luis Carlos Berrini with an enormous increase in office space, new hotels and retail space. The residences around this area are also changing. Specifically there is an increase condominium construction, but many one and two-story homes still exist.

Immediately adjacent to this area are pockets of favelas that follow Ave. Agua Espraiada east. The images above depict one favela immediately adjacent to the new bridge and Ave. Berrini. Within this small community are a group of catadors, or individuals who collect a variety of recyclable materials to sell to recycling companies and thus support themselves and their families. Though the government has yet to admit any groups of catadors as part of the greater Sao Paulo’s public services department, some are in the process of negotiation and legitimization.

Catadors haul recyclable material from all over the city via a trailer they manually tow around the city, usually during the night. Major recyclables are the same as in the U.S. or anywhere else – plastics, metals etc., but of particular value and importance in Brazil is aluminum. Brazil possesses the world’s third largest supply of bauxite, which is used to produce aluminum. The country also recycles one of the largest volumes of aluminum per year. It is one of Brazil’s most important industrial materials. With rapidly urbanizing countries such as China and India, Brazil’s position in the global aluminum economy is not likely to change any time soon.

The proposal below seeks to adopt catadors as members of the local government’s public service department. Under this proposal, catadors would become employees of the City of Sao Paulo and money would be invested into projects that create spaces for their carts, storage of materials and into developing patterns of settlement around these spaces. The result is a new live-work building typology particular to the catadors and their lifestyle. An alternative to government-sponsored funding could be to contract directly with recycling companies. In either scenario, the catador community profits through regular monthly income, but also through the development and legalization of their communities. Meanwhile, the process of recycling is streamlined, creating a competitive market for both catadors and recycling companies, while providing a steady supply of recycled aluminum for exportation or use within the country.

The site is wedged between Ave. Agua Espraiada to the south and a green space to the north. The green space is currently occupied by a small portion of favelas on the south edge and is used by some catadors for storage of materials and their trailers. To the west, a large tension-cable bridge spans the Pinheiros River and is nearly complete. To the northwest is the majority of new construction including modern office and commercial buildings of concrete, steel and glass stand tall, transforming Ave. Berrini into an urban canyon. The current property occupied by the favela is an important piece of real estate and unless integrated as a vital component of the neighborhood, the community will be displaced as simply as the other favelas already have.

The hybrid building type is two stories, but can extend vertically to become three to four stories as some typical autoconstructed residences do. The periphery of the first floor is dedicated to typical shops selling food, clothing and other goods. Additionally, this peripheral space includes storage space for catador trailers as well as family and community belongings. The interior of the first floor comprises the functional spaces for the catadors: a small entry space, unloading, baling and shipping. From one side, the taller, urban façade, catadors enter the structure and move into the unloading area. The aluminum and other recyclable materials are organized and stored until transferred to the baling area. Following the baling process, bales of recyclable material are loaded onto small, likely independently owned trucks and shipped to nearby recycling facilities.

The second level is composed of residences surrounding a courtyard potentially used for a variety of functions. This space could function as a small gardening spaces to grow local produce which would open space to provide natural light below and allow the community to be more self-sufficient. Alternately, the courtyard could become a small soccer field for children to play in (pictured); this is perhaps the more realistic outcome considering the intensity with which Brazilians value the sport. In any scenario, residents utilize a collective, but private space.

Concrete and clay-bricks are the primary building materials. Typically, a simple structural grid is in-filled with clay-bricks and reorganized over time as necessary. The catador building type does not deviate from this method, except that it proposes alternate uses of the clay-tile, exploring the orientation of individual bricks and the overall placement of the walls within the structural grid. The details of this type of masonry require additional craft, but offer a greater variety of spatial qualities employing the same material. Furthermore, Sao Paulo’s climate allows for open-air circulation year-round. As the community profits, additional forms of enclosure such as windows, plaster and other forms of insulation may be integrated. The catador building type is a starting point.

Overall, the intention of this proposal is to integrate an existing community into a larger development as an alternative to the typical strategies of relocation that perpetuate the process of large-scale segregation of Sao Paulo’s population. It attempts to do this by tying the existing micro-economy of the catadors to the macro-economy of Brazil’s international aluminum industry. At the same time, the proposal offers a new building typology that employs local materials and building methods, and the organization of which is the result of both local and global forces.

Gated Communities (3)

The third form of urban organization taking place in Sao Paulo is the migration of the upper-middle class from the center to the periphery. These new developments take the form of gated communities, also known as fortified enclaves. Continuing the historical pattern of urban segregation, a portion of the population has chosen to isolate itself from poorer sections, but not for fear of sanitation this time. Instead, the prevailing sense of violence and insecurity in the city of Sao Paulo has reinforced the stratification.

The neighborhoods are organized similarly to the contemporary American suburb and are either praised or abhorred for this reason depending on whom you talk to. Relatively large houses rest on their individual plots, unconnected and spread horizontally across rolling landscapes. Long, smooth driveways and carports face gently curving streets. Every aspect of their design echoes the typical American suburban home, (with maybe the exception materiality – instead of vinyl, they are all stucco or plaster, though one house was carefully shaped to mimic the horizontal serrations of vinyl siding).

The fortified enclave I visited is called Alphaville. It was the first in Sao Paulo and possesses all the qualities listed above (like the absence of vinyl and presence of the long, smooth driveway). I went there with a former professor of International Relations from the University of Sao Paulo. His name is Sergio and he is a smart man, also quite conservative – every day he bears the beige shirt and pants from his military days during the dictatorship ruling Brazil from 1964 to 1985. His good friend lives in Alphaville, so he took me for a visit.

There are no security fences or walls, no security cameras, no guard dogs, etc. surrounding each individual home. Each community just has one insurmountable wall around it, one or two heavily guarded entries, and residences (other functions of the city are outside the gated areas).

For my benefit, Sergio and his friend openly discussed their opinions (though in Portuguese) about the issues of living in this community. Sergio believes these developments are all American and that the big houses, strange openness and isolation do not belong in Brazil. His friend agreed that it is American and maybe a little strange, but that it meant safety for his family (I have to note that it was the only unlocked front door of a house in all of Brazil, or South America for that matter, that I have seen). This is the perpetual argument when considering any of the security measures around Sao Paulo.

A portion of the population wants to live in fortified enclaves so as to protect their children and raise a family without the sense of fear prevailing within the city of Sao Paulo. As major private developments, enclaves are often expensive to live in which means only the wealthier fraction of the population can afford to live there. The idea is that these developments are privately secured and funded; therefore the same community can control the rules and regulations that security enforces. As fortified enclaves increase, so does the propensity for private security. Thus a problem emerges as security shifts from the police officer/public servant paradigm to security guard/private servant.

The overwhelming sense of security is present in many forms besides the fortified enclave. More commonly, one sees it all over the city in other types of residential properties. Condominiums exist in nearly all parts of the city. They rise up on Corbusian pilotis, with the apartments deliberately separated from the ground plane. Property boundaries are defined with some form of security fencing – steel fences, concrete walls topped with broken glass and both often topped with barbed wire or electric wire. The more expensive condos typically have one pedestrian entrance with a booth and a security guard and one gated vehicular entrance to the garage below. Unless you live there or know someone who does, it is impossible to enter the property, which of course is the whole point. Additionally, individual residences often take the form of two-storey row houses with a garage below facing the street and residence above. When these houses are not bordering the street, a separate layer of fencing defines the property edge.

Other individual residences sit on individual lots and are surrounded by large opaque walls and are heavily secured. These are only in the very wealthy neighborhoods as in sections of Jardins. It is an odd feeling to walk in the middle of a residential area with beautiful homes, supposedly some of the most interesting contemporary architecture in the city, but then all you see are enormous blank walls, each with one darkly tinted window – the guard’s looking glass.

Thus, new environments emerge that are characteristically undemocratic and reject the freedoms of public space valued in any society. If architecture is a gauge that expresses the values of a society, then a portion of the population that can afford this expression has chosen enclosure and separation.

Globalization and Privatization

For Sao Paulo, globalization is a pattern of development that often reinforces existing forms of social stratification in Brazilian society. Wealth pours into the country, into the same hands and architecture follows suit by assuming its familiar role as an expression of this wealth. Being well off is not a crime, nor is it necessarily undemocratic, but as a result of the collage of Brazil’s complex social conditions, partially affected by its relationship to the global community as it relates on the local community, democratic space and social equality are left vulnerable. Specifically, physical and psychological boundaries are formed.

The reality of security in Sao Paulo is two-fold. The first reality exists in the form of the evolving private security sector. Those who can afford it, tend to feel safer with the presence of additional security measures such as cameras, physical barriers, and private security guards (which was recently reported as one of the fastest growing employment sectors in Sao Paulo). As this trend continues, combined with problems embedded in state and municipal security forces, those who can afford any form of private security have it. As a byproduct, the second reality is formed: an entire cityscape that serves as a sort of urban-scale panopticon. While there are certainly forms of crime and violence in Sao Paulo that require security measures, the continual division of space through physical barriers, cameras etc. produces an environment, an urban panopticon that alienates segments of the population. The forms of public space typical of a democratic society are therefore threatened.

Architecture is not the proper instrument to restructure this pattern. In fact, one can see that Brazil already attempted to force transformations of social relationships through architecture. During colonization, the churches of Catholic expansion were tools employed to control segments of society. Occidental hierarchies were established through the oppression of people whose cultures valued different social relationships, and the church was the means by which these hierarchies were both expressed and implemented. In the middle of the 20th century, the new capital of Brasilia was supposed to equalize the population by removing these hierarchies and forcing completely new, unnatural social relationships. Now in Sao Paulo, and many other South American cities, these hierarchies are manifest in new forms, particularly in the form of aggressive boundaries.

Thus, in a democratic society architecture should not attempt to impose new relationships between socio-economic classes. It can, however, offer new alignments that respect differences but honor equality among different people. And it can do this amidst the seemingly immovable forces of globalization.

Brazil - Modernity

2007-11-26T17:08:00.000-06:00

History of an Idea

Brasília may be the most holistic attempt to implement an architectural and social utopian ideology in any one location. Conceived as a vision of the future, Brasília was an entirely new, modern organization of a city inscribed onto a largely unsettled landscape in the interior of the country.

The city was not only separated from the rest of the country geographically, but also socially, culturally and economically. It now embodies many contradicting symbols of Brazilian culture, but the city began with the hope of propelling Brazil into modernity.

As far back as middle of the 19th century, there has been a voice for transferring the capital from Rio de Janeiro to the interior of the country. The earliest recorded prophetic advocacy for relocation dates back to 1883 with João Bosco with his vision of the Central Plateau and its potential efficacy for unifying the nation. Later, an array of historical figures advocated for a similar idea, including Tiradentes, the revolutionary of Inconfidencia Mineira in Ouro Preto. In 1891 the idea was formalized in the first Republican Constitution, yet it remained a radical idea and received little attention until the middle of the twentieth century under the administration of Juscelino Kubitschek. Preceding his term, the Brazilian government underwent significant changes that laid the foundations for the ideas Kubitschek would propose.

Socio-Political Atmosphere

Prior to Kubitschek’s election, Getúlio Vargas governed Brazil both as president and dictator. In 1930 he was elected into office, but as Vargas faced the multi-faceted problems of governing an extremely stratified socio-economic population, he sought alternative governing methods, using models of Fascism that dominated European politics at the time. In 1938, Vargas established the “New State”, ruled by dictatorship, using oppression and censorship to establish a nationalist regime. However, as Vargas grew increasingly close to the working classes and unions, the end of his term neared. In 1945, a military coup d'état removed him from office. In 1951, after the short presidential term of Eurico Gaspar Dutra, Vargas was elected president again.

Vargas maneuvered between disparate parties by filling and rearranging his administration with representatives from varying political and social factions. As his inconsistency increased, Vargas’ popularity declined. Eventually, his suspected involvement in the murder of Carlos Lacerda, a liberal who spearheaded a campaign to remove Vargas from office, lost Vargas his remaining support. On August 23 1954, an alliance of Vargas’ adversaries signed a manifesto demanding his resignation. The following morning, Vargas committed suicide, shooting himself in the chest.

In addition to the nationwide social unrest that occurred during this time, the government itself became unstable. Vice President Café Filho took over, until a heart attack required him to leave office. Carlos Luz, head of the Chamber of Deputies, followed until he was removed after only one week in office. Next, Nereu Ramos took over for a short time. Then congress governed for 60 days until, finally, Juscelino Kubitschek was elected (was he elected?) president.

Political Motives

The campaign of Kubitschek was founded on the idea of a new Brazil, one based on growth and change, particularly following the chaos of Vargas’s terms. This intention was embodied in the plan to relocate the capital to the interior of the country, constructing a modern image of Brazil. The idea was met with much skepticism. There were doubts about the economic feasibility of the plan and the ability of the government to implement and realize the idea (particularly within one administrative term). Additionally, questions arose regarding the cultural authenticity of the project given the site’s location on the Central Plateau, a region isolated from the rest of the country and associated with indigenous cultures. Nonetheless, the idea maintained strength among voters and Kubitschek was elected in 1956.

Kubitschek’s political plan summarizing the advantages of relocating the capital and building it anew was referred to as the “Target Program”. At the foundation of the Target Program was the theory of developmentalism. The theory “stressed state-directed industrialization as the means by which underdeveloped countries could achieve rapid economic growth and a more favorable position in the world trade” (Houston, 1989, 18). The Target Program was the basis of Kubitschek’s campaign and served as his primary political agenda during his administration.

The Target Program had several purposes. First, it was an attempt to integrate the national economy. Brazil had never fully developed the interior of the country; it had always been a nation of ports, focused toward the sea-based trade. The relocation of the capital to the middle of Brazil represented an ideological shift in the growth and unity of the nation. It sought to strengthen the national consciousness.

Second, the program suggested that further innovation and research would emerge as a result of the unity of people and professions required to construct the new modern city; in other words, the realization of Brasília would serve as an ideological precedent for development throughout the rest of the nation. By investing in such an advanced mega-project, the nation was supposed to continue into a period of technological advancements in the areas of infrastructure, heavy industry and energy production; endeavors that would better the nation locally as well as bring it into the global market.

Western European Assimilation II

While political ideology constructed the mythology of Brasília, the modern architecture and planning movement is responsible for its organization. The Congrès Internationaux d´Architecture Moderne (CIAM) was a western European program, a manifesto organized by Le Corbusier that included contributions from dozens of architects. The group met periodically from 1928 to 1959 and pursued various topics all in the pursuit of “architecture as a social art”. The meeting of 1933 focused on The Functional City, which would later take the form of The Athens Charter, published in 1942 by Le Corbusier, the Western European icon of modernity. It outlines the process and intentions of city-building in shaping the modern man. Furthermore, the charter sought to categorize the operations of a city into its primary functions: “housing, work, recreation and leisure.” These ideas would later be assimilated and altered into a uniquely Brazilian form of planning and architecture in the design of Brasília.

Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, the city’s planner and architect, respectively, are among the founders of the modern architecture movement in Brazil. They formally collaborated with Le Corbusier on multiple occasions and were affected both by the master himself as well as the CIAM organization and its publications. In 1936, with Le Corbusier acting as consultant, they would design the Ministry of Education and Public Health in Rio de Janeiro, largely considered the official origin point of modern architecture in Brazil. Later in 1947, Niemeyer would visit the United States to assist in the design of the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Though Le Corbusier was not directly involved with the design and construction of Brasília, his ideas are deeply ingrained, perhaps laying the foundation of modernism throughout Brazil.

The fact that Brazil initially assimilated many ideas of modern architecture and planning from the industrialized world is of particular significance. Just as the architecture and planning of colonial towns were imported from Western Europe, so too were the conceptions of modernity (constructivism and similar avant-garde movements also had a significant affect on modernism in Brazil). Thus, two parallel themes frequently emerge when analyzing the evolution of architecture in Brazil.

The first theme concerns the resolution of public and private space and its evolution spanning nearly five centuries, from colonization to the modernist movement to so-called globalization. This discussion is concerned with the history and evolution of architecture and planning in Brazil and the resulting social constructs. Here, it is rendered broadly in the entirety of the research, which includes Ouro Preto and Sao Paulo.

The second theme examines the assimilation of architectural languages and ideas by Brazil from developed countries. It concerns Brazil’s assimilation of foreign cultures and is therefore a sensitive subject. Despite subtle variations, the architecture of colonial Brazil is a direct import of the architecture produced during the 17th century in Portugal and other Western European nations. Modern architecture, on the other hand, is more difficult to attribute to a single nation or set of ideas because of the substantial modification to the original import. In other words, modern architecture of Brazil took on its own form to the extent that it is often considered uniquely Brazilian, despite existing in perpetual reference to its origins. There is much debate as to when assimilation is merely a form of importation as opposed to some form of transculturation or hybridity. Is the assimilating culture simply absorbing, or is it reciprocally affecting the origin? At what point does it take ownership of what was assimilated? Where are the theoretical boundaries of a culture?

The Formal City

Niemeyer and Costa’s organization of the plan of Brasilia reflected several primary intentions. First, they identified key functions of the city and isolated them from one another. For example, they separated zones for work from zones for living. Homogeneity of function and building typology emerge as a result. The second component of the their design concept was to introduce a new physical environment to residential areas that would encourage a sense of neighborhood and community among residents. These self-sufficient neighborhoods (at least in terms of living and commerce) would include all classes of individuals inhabiting the city, thus equalizing the socio-economic stratification of the population. Third, there was to be an abundance of public space – wide-open, unprogrammed space. This organization can be traced back to early modernist and constructivist planning techniques, for example the CIAM agenda and Le Corbusier’s vision of the future. Nevertheless, Brasília is an extreme example of such ideologies. Lastly, the plan would engage private automobile transportation as an organizing element of the city, thus introducing new planning techniques governed by vehicular circulation.

The promise of the automobile as a liberating technological force is at the core of the organization of the design of Brasília, as it has been to the modernization of nearly every city in the world. In Brasília, the functions of the city are organized in reference to its streets.

The fundamental gesture in the plan of Brasília is the intersection of two primary axes. This formal gesture has significant historical roots in city building, particularly prevalent in ancient Roman practices. Establishing the location of a new city was a ceremonial rite performed by a priest. The priest, or Augur, would inscribe a symbol into the sky above - a circle divided into four quadrants – determined by the setting and rising of the sun (defining east and west) and the location of a polar star (defining north and south). This symbol, called the templum was the device by which the Augur would observe Nature – the path of the sun and stars, flight patterns of birds, behavior of animals, weather and other “natural” phenomena. The templum represented the union between heaven and earth; it was both a marriage and a birth. As the Augur intuited meaning from ritual he learned of the proper location of the city and projected this information onto the earth. Following the auguration, the templum symbol would also be used to determine the center of the city and its surrounding layout. Thus, the myth is not only manifest through the ceremonial act of founding the city, but also in its survey and construction. Here, the myth is transformed into an instrument of science.

It is clear that these techniques were not employed in establishing the location of Brasília and that the city bares no resemble to the organization of Rome. However, the significance of myth and meaning embodied in the gesture of the two axes crossing is no less significant in the founding of Brasília than in the ancient occidental city. In both cases, the symbol is a powerful mythological construction used to consecrate physical space. In other words, the appearance of Brasília’s organization was intended to symbolize the progress outlined by President Kubitschek.

The diagram of the city, of Plano Piloto as it is called, is an enormous cross with one axis arced slightly upward and away from the center. It is inscribed into the Central Plateau, a geographically isolated tabula rasa. There are two axes: the east-west (E-W) axis and the north-south (N-S) axis. The N-S axis is also known as the monumental axis, the center of which is an immense void, bordered by buildings of various programmatic function. These include the seat of the national government, ministries, a cathedral, the entertainment sector, the commercial sector, the hotel sector, the military sector, and the sports sector. The municipal plaza, radio and TV tower, and the local bus station are located in the center of the axis. Major roads line either side of the axis, producing a definitive edge to the central axis. The E-W major axis intersects the monumental axis at the local bus station, the literal and symbolic center of transportation for the Federal District.

Superquadra

Various types of residential buildings are located along the primary E-W axis. These dwelling types conceived of in the original plan of Brasília share the idea of “collective dwelling”. Nearly two-thirds of Plano Piloto consists of a particular dwelling type known as the superquadra. This organization includes residential apartment blocks with room for small schools and the occasional convenience stand. Located between the superquadras are alternating patterns of different programs. One block, referred to as the Local Commercial Sector includes public buildings (such as libraries), local supermarket (with discounts for those who live in the adjacent superquadra), retail, and a gas station. The other may include a church, a park, movie theater, sports field (for futebol) and perhaps a social club. These different blocks alternate between the superquadras, thus giving access to all these facilities via either edge of the block – one group of facilities to the east and the other to the west.

The apartment blocks are probably the most well known aspect of dwelling associated with Brasília. There are approximately 8 to 11 blocks per superquadra, and categorized into two types in two different neighborhoods. First, there are six-story apartment blocks elevated above the ground plane with a series of columns, or pilotis. These typically hold 36 apartment units and two service cores that include vertical circulation. The other type is a three-story apartment block resting above grade. The former type is more common and simply represents the modernist ideals embodied in Plano Piloto. However, this section of the plan does not represent the entirety of Brasília (including the surrounding satellite towns that were partially planned and conceived of as part of the entire Federal District). This sample is used solely for the purpose of understanding the extent to which the modernist vision is pursued in the plan. Notes regarding other housing typologies and developments will be given attention in subsequent observations of present-day Brasília.

Public Space

The plan of Brasília represents a shift in thinking about urban form and hierarchy. The disorganization of urban life in the pre-industrial city was argued by many, including Le Corbusier, as the source of social stratification (or at least the point of treatment) and thus the inequalities associated with differences in wealth, class and race. Disorganization could be alleviated through the ordering of society. It was thought that, through the principles of modern architecture and planning, the social problems born of pre-industrial urbanity might be solved. Principles of Western European Modernism include the equalization of society, improved health through increased exposure to daylight and fresh air, and the embrace of industrial technologies. Ironically, Brazil adopted the aesthetic of modern architecture and its promises, but the properties of modernity were in direct contrast to the state of the country; there had never been a substantial bourgeoisie class for the people to rise against, Brazil’s climate can be characterized as having an over-abundance of light and air, and the country had never fully industrialized. Nevertheless, the vision of modernism was adopted in an effort to propel the nation into the future. The plan relied heavily on materiality (the plasticity and the low-skilled labor required of concrete) and specific formal techniques in an attempt to order society.

The apartment blocks within the superquadra are physically separated from the ground plane, elevated above a platform the size of the building above. The space underneath the residences is unprogrammed; it is intended as free and open to the public for circulation, light, air and nature. There are no other functions of the city within the block, no overlapping programs, no activation of the void – only the monuments. At times, the buildings are composed in a way that begins to suggest an exterior space, but programmatically function solely as parking.

As is seen in Ouro Preto and similar colonial settlements, the grouping of buildings suggests an outdoor room, a public space within which various functions of the city and forms of communication take place. The private realm gives programmatic and physical definition to the public; the solid mass of buildings defines the void for congregation. In Brasília, this relationship is inverted - each programmed function is objectified and isolated into its own structure, for example within the superquadra. The plan subverts pre-industrial organization, such as the function of street corners and plazas, and favors models of modernity instead. In other words, old forms of communication are no longer completely valid in the new cityscape, and neither are all the traditional symbols of culture and society.

In pre-industrial society, the significant void represented the public realm and the instance of architectural object, such as one of the many churches in Ouro Preto, was a symbol of power and authority. Again, this system is overturned. In the modern city, all buildings are monuments. The distinction between types of structures is therefore dependent on the individual design or form of the buildings that sometimes relies solely on details or architectural nuances. As the broader functions of the city are also separated, the location of a structure within the ordered plan of the city is also an indication of its function.

Thus, Western European, pre-industrial systems of city organization are never employed in Brasília. And it is this complete inversion, to the point of abstraction, which makes it useful in studying the socio-cultural transformations that occurred in Brazil over time.

Topics for Further Investigation

There are many social and cultural issues surrounding Brasília. Debate regarding these issues has taken the form of various articles, essays and books. James Holston’s publication, The Modern City, provided a much-needed exposure to the history of the city. It is unfortunately one of the only meticulously crafted critiques published in English, and though it offers a great deal, it solicits further debate. The following topics are proposals for continuing exploration.

Brasília is a commuter city. Public and/or private transportation is necessary for work, some shopping and some recreation, all because of the programmatic segregation of the city. This includes residents within the city and particularly those in the outlying satellite towns that commute to their jobs; this necessity applies to all socio-economic classes. As with many modern cities, this dependency on transportation creates traffic problems and an increased need for public transportation and further changes in transportation infrastructure. As a result, there is a need for a re-evaluation of the sustainable aspects of the city, how to further integrate public infrastructure to the greater region and what options the city has for transformations in the future. In a general sense, Brasília faces the same questions of development that any vehicular-based city in the world faces. The rigidity of Brasília’s design makes it difficult to physically alter the city. The mythical presence of Niemeyer and Costa is ubiquitous. These ghosts not only take the form of a collective cultural identity for Brasilienses, but also in the preservation and protection of the city.

In this regard, the phenomenon of "UNESCO-ification" is somewhat relevant. The United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) “functions as a laboratory of ideas and a standard-setter to forge universal agreements on emerging ethical issues.” Among its many altruistic missions is the “Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage.” The World Heritage List identifies structures and landscapes that demand preservation and/or protection; the city of Brasília was added to this list in 1987. The term UNESCO-ification refers to the process and affects of UNESCO classification. In short, it discloses a debate from which arises the argument that some methods of preservation and protection of cultural artifacts, specifically architecture, that may solidify the subject’s original value and/or meaning, unintentionally precluding its ability to redefine itself. In the context of Brasília, this refers to preservation policies set forth by the Brazilian government (not UNESCO as they are actually an organization that informs and assists in their suggested preservation efforts, and operates through local organizations). This debate extends even further into the realm of academic institutions.

At the University of Brasília (UnB), there is a conservative front of educators that heavily cautions against architectural interventions involving the evolution of any works born of the hands of Costa and especially Niemeyer, and perhaps rightly so. Yet, at what point do the ideologies of preservation collapse and allow the inevitable evolution of place? A similar debate can be found concerning the new IIT Student Center in Chicago, Ill designed by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), in the midst of the IIT campus designed by Mies Van Der Rohe. When are pressures great enough to allow the introduction of a new layer of history upon another? At what point does the student have an opportunity to address his master? The topic here is simply about the ability of a historical place to assume new identities, especially when pressures such as population growth and cultural transformations demand re-evaluation. At what point does Brasília deserve socio-political evolution; at what point does it demand it?

Another critique has focused on the original unfamiliarity residents felt with the nature of public and private spaces in the city, and the different patterns of everyday life. Holston describes this phenomenon in great length and with much analytical skill, however his description as well as others’ often fail to investigate the function of time in the relationship between a city and its inhabitants despite its design. In other words, in formal critiques and articles, there is rarely the contemplation of the inevitability of new generations that will be born within and live their entire lives knowing the city. Numerous residents of Brasília I spoke with expressed a sense of belonging to the city and its patterns of modern living. All of these people lived in Plano Piloto and belong somewhere within the middle-class and they all lived in different areas of the city. Though obviously these few people do not represent the entirety of Brasília, they do unveil the reality that Brasília is no longer a new city. It has a history, it has stories and its cultural myths are changing.

Small forces changing the city appear everywhere. People have learned to appropriate space to define their needs and to generate new dynamic, public spaces. As is well known, Brasília possesses an over-abundance of open space. The monumental axis is an enormous void that can provoke agoraphobic sensations in any every visitor to the city, yet it is filled with local youths nearly every day to play sports. Vendors take advantage of public spaces intensified by quotidian events. For example, bus and metro stops and open parking lots that function as transfers for commuters are, incongruently, as densely packed as the base of the TV Tower, a significant tourist destination. People sell food, drink and other goods using spaces defined by buildings, trees and any objects that exist the landscape. There is persistent proof of the demand for public space, and all the while in a form unfamiliar to designers, simply because it is not designed.

These types of appropriations are not a pattern specific to Brasília. These types of situational activities are prevalent in cities throughout the world. They are born of a minimal necessity and initially bare characteristics of temporality, but over time, and out of ritual they often become parts of the city. How then, do designers face such phenomena? How can designers protect the public event? And finally, though we see it in all its varying and complex forms, its transformations through history and refusal to completely dissolve, one can still inquire as to what the meaning of public space is in contemporary society, in the global city?

Pre-Industrial City – Modern City - Contemporary City

Brazil’s multi-faceted webs of social, political, economic and cultural conditions link directly to formations of its cities and architecture. Brazil’s colonization produced forms of space, such as within Ouro Preto, that possess a set of characteristics born out of socio-cultural values imported from Western Europe. These characteristics are physical, as they define a particular scale and use of space, and they are symbolic, as they represent the structure of the society within which they were created. In the country’s modernization, we see another historical process of change. A set of ideologies dominated by order, progress and hope generated a city with its own set of characteristics. Physically, Brasília was organized in relation to its functions and resulted in unfamiliar and untested definitions of public and private space, between the collective and the individual. Ouro Preto and Brasília have provided interesting studies for understanding the westward expansion of civilization in the last 500 years.

Today, cities face even greater questions in the presence of contemporary globalization. Sao Paulo, Brazil is South America’s largest city and faces many of the socio-cultural issues tied to its multiple phases of globalization, up to present day. Throughout its history, the population has become increasingly segregated and a collective sense of fear of violence has prevailed in both the collective psyche and the media. These perceptions and their realities have transformed the city at both urban and architectural scales. A comparative study of the different phases of Brazil’s globalization is important not solely to illuminate the country’s past, but are increasingly relevant as socio-cultural patterns of development found in Sao Paulo are similar to others of cities throughout the world.

Brazil - Colonialism

2007-11-07T12:16:00.000-06:00

Almost 500 years ago, the Portuguese settled the area that is now the country of Brazil. The composition of the country’s population represents a much larger and richer confluence of ethnicities and cultures from around the world. Many of the issues that Brazil faces today are rooted in its complex history from settlement to its presence in the contemporary world.

The history and growth of Brazil can be viewed as the product of three transformations: colonization, modernization and contemporary globalization. These three processes are neither independent from one another nor wholly complete. Beginning with colonization, these transformations will be initially presented within a linear, chronological framework. However, their affects and relationships in history are often non-linear or ambiguous. Inevitably, there are moments where this structure will become insufficient, thus imparting anomalies and revelations inherent to the analysis.

This series of studies will begin with a review of the colonization of Brazil and an analysis of the settlement of Ouro Preto. Later, the study will also analyze the modern city of Brasilia and global city of Sao Paulo.

THE AGE OF EXPLORATION

During the Age of Exploration, the imperial nations of Western Europe invested much of their resources into the expansion of their empires, geographically and economically. Advancements in boat technology, cartography, astronomy and timekeeping made motivations realities.

In the early 15th century, the Portuguese first sailed down the coasts of West Africa, attempting to surpass the Saharan trade route and uncover access to the Mediterranean. By the end of the same century, they had rounded the Cape of Good Hope providing access to the Indian Ocean. The Portuguese were also searching for the trade route west through the Atlantic, which eventually led to their discovery of Brazil. Equally motivated, the Spanish funded multiple voyages for their share of the New World. As competition and claims grew between the Spanish and the Portuguese, the Church attempted to mediate conflicts between the two countries with the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. This treaty gave the Portuguese much of the land that is now Brazil while Spain was awarded the remaining portions of South America.

At this time, maps of the continent were still under considerable development and conceptions of private territory varied (and continued to for over 400 years). For example, the Cantino Planisphere is a map recreated somewhere around 1501-1502 (it is not known by whom and when the original was created, but sometime after Pedro Álvares Cabral’s voyage and subsequent return). The map contains information about the discoveries Cabral, among others, had made during that time. Yet, within months of its recreation, the map was obsolete as a result of the constant flow of new information regarding the New World. It was only with the persistent pursuit of the New World that more accurate forms of mapping afforded the identification of new discoveries and the new demarcations of boundaries and ownership that followed.

Cantino Planosphere

Slavery
In 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral and his fleet of 13 ships arrived at today’s Porto Seguro, down the coast of Salvador. The Portuguese left the land sitting until 1531 when the first settlers arrived in what is now Santos, organizing the first settlement of São Vicente. King Joao III developed a plan to spread out settlements along the coast as both a method of colonizing the country and a strategy for defense against competing explorers, namely the Dutch and French. Meanwhile, the native Indians still populated the interior of the country, frequently attacking settlements and threatening the stability of colonization. However, over time their efforts proved futile.

During the Brazil’s colonization, there was resistance from the native Indians. Despite their initial domination of the interior the population of the tribal people diminished over time. During the 17th and 18th centuries, bandeirantes or “groups of roaming adventurers” invaded the interior of the country, annihilating an extraordinary portion of the indigenous tribes while exploring the interior for riches. These invasions, including the foreign diseases brought with them, resulted in significant decreases in the native population. Those not lost to the bandeirantes were enslaved on sugar plantations, never to return home. Still, the scale of importation to and enslavement of Africans in Brazil far exceeds those of the indigenous peoples.

As early as 1550, African slaves dominated the slave market in Brazil. The Portuguese relied heavily on the African slave market as they found African slaves good workers with stronger immune systems. Nearly 40 percent of all slaves shipped to the New World came to Brazil, a total approximated at 3.6 million men women and children. Consequently, the social issues faced by present-day Brazil are in perpetual reference to its history.

For over three hundred years slavery was fundamental to the development of Brazil’s economy. Enslaved Africans indigenous people were essentially the free labor that fueled the sugarcane industry (Brazil’s first major industry) and later the mining and coffee industries. Slavery was officially abolished in 1888 by Princesa Isabel yet the problem was much more complex. Hundreds of thousands of slaves were now released onto the streets without a means of surviving and nowhere to go, often unskilled and illiterate. Large numbers of the newly freed population either died or sought refuge in urban areas. There are many critiques that suggest the abrupt and unplanned abolition of slavery that Isabel enacted was perhaps the worst response to the injustices done. This act alone significantly transformed cities throughout Brazil as it introduced new, unexpected social and functional complexities to the organization of cities.

Mining
The mining industry also affected the organization of many towns throughout Brazil. During the 18th century bandeirantes pushed inland discovering large deposits of gold, particularly in the present-day state of Minas Gerais. Settlements became cities overnight, lacking the complete planning rationale of doctrines such as the ‘Laws of the Indies’. These developments possess spatial qualities similar to those of planned cities, featuring centralized plazas and other articulated exterior spaces, but with more chaotic patterns of overall organization, often responding to local topography and primitive roads.

The state of Minas Gerais possesses many examples for study. After the gold rush ceased, mining town populations declined significantly; many were abandoned altogether. As a result of the emigration many colonial mining towns have been preserved and thus possess an important cross-section of the country’s past. Some of the most well preserved mining towns created during this time frame include Sabará, Mariana, São João del Rei, and Ouro Preto. All are in close proximity to one another and share similar spatial and organizational qualities. Ouro Preto stands out due to its well-preserved character of streets and squares as well as its large collection of Baroque churches.

OURO PRETO

History
Around 1700 bandeirantes from Sao Paulo searching gold and precious stones established the arraiais, or mining camps of Ouro Preto. The settlement expanded with the increasing mining and in 1711 Vila Rica de Ouro Preto was founded. Only ten years later, after the city received and influx of goods and services from around the world because of its growing wealth, Emperor Dom Pedro I decreed the town the capital of Minas Gerais state and renamed it simply, Ouro Preto.

Around 1750 gold extraction peaked, as did the population. In its prime, the city held around 100,000 inhabitants, twice the size of New York’s population during the same time period. Furthermore, a quarter of the population lived in the city center and the remaining lived in immediate surrounding area. During this time, many churches and civic buildings were constructed from the wealth pouring out of the mines. Following the peak, the economy collapsed, the city was reduced to a fraction of its peak population and the capital was relocated to Belo Horizonte in 1897. As a result, Ouro Preto and similar surrounding mining towns have been preserved in their original preindustrial character. For this reason, Ouro Preto still possesses a significant collection of historical Baroque architecture and its original organization remains nearly untouched. These conditions make Ouro Preto ideal for a comparative analysis to other major Brazilian cities, namely Brasilia and Sao Paulo.

Development
The development of the Ouro Preto was informed by multiple factors that are not entirely independent of one another. On the contrary, the creation and development of any city is typically a fluid transformation, a product of the many interrelated forces, antagonistic and combinative. Below, three factors are separated from one another for historical and analytical clarity with regard to the overall study.

First, the initial settlement of the area was established around an old colonial trail that spanned over the three centralized three hills of Ouro Preto. As the gold-mining economy flourished, the colonial trail developed into a major road connecting the coast to the interior. This path was used as a route through which gold and travelers made their way back to the coast, to the Portuguese Crown, and by which more bandeirantes made their way inland. Today, a portion of this route spanning over the three hills is still present in the form of some of the city’s primary streets, including Rua Direita and the main square, Praça Tiradentes.

Colonial Trail

Second, the city grew out of the chaotic economic conditions of the gold rush. Colonization has always pursued some combination of wealth, political power and religious dominance. Yet, within the framework of imperialism, significant entrepreneurial opportunities arose. The entire Minas Gerais region was separated from the coast and the Crown. This distance, combined with the quantity of gold and the frenetic development that followed provided the opportunity to change one’s status, though this was more often than not dependent on “striking it rich”. The settlement in fact was so detached that an enslaved African King, Chico-Rei, managed to buy his own freedom, his son’s and ultimately his entire tribe (at least for a period of time). The city swelled with a variety of large groups all related to the mining industry including slaves, entrepreneurs, members of the Portuguese government and individual prospectors. Supporting the town itself were doctors, builders, cooks, artists etc. Ouro Preto became a melting pot and the unpredictable economic conditions disrupted traditional social hierarchies.

Igreja de Santa Efigênia dos Pretos

Third, as the city grew, the formation and function of the newly formed street followed patterns of pre-industrial urbanization similar to that of 17th and 18th century Western Europe. Generally speaking, in the pre-industrial city massing of buildings, often contiguous, form important circulation paths and definition to exterior space. These properties alone were fundamental to the formation of public space in the pre-industrial urban environment. In addition, materiality, ornamentation, and scale of buildings as well as the characteristics of the adjoining street play a role in indicating sociality of an urban environment. Characteristics of the pre-industrial city are articulated below in the analysis of Rua Direita, Praça Tiradentes, and the town’s Baroque architecture.

Pre-Industrial Western European Imports
Baroque architecture dates back to 17th century Italy and spread throughout Europe, slowly permeating other cultures including the Dutch, French, Spanish and Portuguese. The style itself was born out of a Counter-Reformation to the Catholic Church and found its niche as an expression of the church’s affluence. This highly sculptural architecture pursued an aesthetic sensitivity to light and color within the framework of plastic formal language. At the same time, the structures maintained their symbolic role, signifying the wealth and power of religious orders, and later, political powers. Examples can be found throughout Western Europe as well as the sea-faring nations’ colonial expansion. Ouro Preto is just of many examples in Brazil many examples that reveal the assimilation of Baroque architecture by colonial Brazilian culture.

There are at least 23 Baroque churches in Ouro Preto and nearly all are adorned with some form of Rococo painting or relief. Foreign artisans and their descendants occupied wealthy cities such as Ouro Preto, capitalizing on their wealth and motivation to express it through the design and construction of churches and civic buildings and monuments. Case in point is Antonio Francisco Lisboa, commonly referred to as Aleijadinho, an icon of colonial Brazil’s rich artistic heritage. He is recognized as the premier sculptor and architect in the Minas Gerais region during the 18th century.

Aleijadinho and other artists constructed the Ouro Preto during its flourishing era and adapted the imported architectural ideals to meet both the unique topography of the area and the diverse sections of the population, from government officials to entrepreneurs to slaves. As a result, churches can be found throughout every neighborhood of Ouro Preto. Still, the churches always relate to their context in the same manner. As the city is composed of continuous masses of buildings, defined as ‘ground’, exterior spaces are formed for the use of public activity, but also function as an opportunity for public display. Churches, monuments and civic structures are typical forms of public display. This pattern describes much of the urban organization of Ouro Preto. As described by James Holston: solid = ground = private, void = figure = public. Thus, the church becomes a focal and symbolic object within the public realm, completing a common organization of the Western European city during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Igreja de Sao Francisco de Assis & Santuario de N.S. da Conceicao de Antonio Dia

Igreja de Sao Francisco de Paula & Igreja de N.S. do Carmo

Praça Tiradentes is a large public space that marks the center of Ouro Preto and is named after Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, also known as Tiradentes (Tooth Puller). He was a dentist and revolutionary and to this day symbolizes freedom from the Portuguese Crown. After attempting to organize anti-government actions in Ouro Preto, his co-conspirators were exiled while he faced a death sentence. In 1792, his body was hanged in the city of Ouro Preto and a monumental statue now stands in the center of the plaza recognizing Tiradentes as a martyr of Brazil’s independence from the Portuguese Crown.

Four exterior walls and a large cobblestone-paved ground define the exterior space of the plaza. The east and west walls are contiguous commercial spaces, interrupted only by small streets (including Rua Direita on the west). The south end is completed by what was formerly the old municipal headquarters and jail, now the Museu da Inconfidência, while the north end marks the entry to the Museu de Ciência e Técnica, part of the Federal University of Ouro Preto which was once the Governer’s house until the capital was relocated. Together, the solid mass of buildings around the square create a void, or exterior space that is the quintessential solid-void, figure-ground relationship found in many Western European cities, including many of their colonies outside of the European continent. Located in the center of town and housing functions of government, finance and business, the square functioned as a space for the exchange goods, services, ideas, etc., and still does today; it was also a symbolic organization of the city. Though the baroque churches spread throughout Ouro Preto were constructed to express the opulence of its mining industry, Praça Tiradentes represented order, political power and communication.

(Rua Direita & Praça Tiradentes

The east and west walls are one, two and three-storey buildings. Many have probably been modified, rebuilt or filled in over time, but the much of the pattern of development has remained consistent: the first floor is always dedicated to a programmatic function that spills out into the street (commercial/retail), the exterior walls retain continuity despite changes in height, and materiality, scale and proportion are also consistent, i.e. windows, doors and ornamentation, forming a unified surface.

Rua Direita (officially Rua Conde de Bobadela) is perhaps the primary commercial street in Ouro Preto. The old, cobblestone-paved road ascends a steep hill terminating into the city’s center, Praça Tiradentes. At its base the road flattens out, changing names, but still following similar formal characteristics. Buildings line both of sides of the street varying from approximately 30’-40’ apart, with facades sharing the same plane, but slowly stepping up the step slope of the natural topography. The first floor of nearly all the structures is a store: restaurants, hotels and retail. On the second floor, many of the spaces have been converted from residential to office space or as an expansion of the first floor program. Many buildings are two stories tall, though some extend to three. The scale of the street is pedestrian, despite its current vehicular use. Most buildings all have small balconies, with intricately crafted metal guardrails and each of the buildings possesses unique characteristics of color, ornament and signage, despite sharing party walls (I butchered this one – deleted too much of the original sentence). There are virtually no contemporary buildings in Ouro Preto, much less on Rua Direita.

The relationship between public and private space in this context is simple to visualize. The solid, contiguous buildings function as both the residence and workspace for the working class, while simultaneously physically defining the public realm, that is, the outdoor rooms of the city. In other words, physical manifestation of private property (the buildings) not only defines the public realm, but also creates a space for it. The street functions in essentially the same manner today as it did hundreds of years ago.

Praça Tiradentes & Rua Direita

Ouro Preto Today
Ouro Preto’s population now amounts to over 65,000 inhabitants and boasts a strong tourist economy. It possesses metallurgic and mining industries, including Alcan, perhaps the most important aluminum factory in the country. The town is also home to multiple universities, including the established Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto.

Architecturally, the town has been well preserved, physically and functionally. In 1933 the country declared Ouro Preto a national monument and in 1981 UNESCO declared it a World Heritage site, though some churches are in need of repair and maintenance. Visitors from all over the world continue to come to Ouro Preto and learn about Brazilian culture. Elementary students fill the churches, learn of the country’s independence and study the gems and minerals of the region. In the evenings, Rua Direita is packed with students from the local universities and many bars feature live music and dancing which pours out onto the streets. In the day, Praça Tiradentes buzzes with groups of children as well as roaming residents, tourists and business owners, while vendors and taxis fill the voids. At night, the plaza hosts live performances featuring traditional and contemporary genres of Brazilian music. At times, one can imagine the town as active as it once was centuries ago.

As noted previously, the organization of Ouro Preto is in many ways not unique, but is of Western European origin and thus similar examples can be seen in various forms throughout Brazil, as well as the rest of the occidental world. Yet, this organization remains an important departure point from which modernity set out to re-evaluate and reconfigure established patterns of social hierarchies, and thus the definition of public and private space. The nation’s capital, Brasilia is the result of such redefinition.

Panorama of Ouro Preto

Agenda

2007-08-31T22:48:00.000-05:00

Approximately half of the world’s population now lives in urban areas. Globalization has initiated mass migrations from rural to urban areas. As a result, major cities are faced with challenges of diminishing resources, poverty, housing shortages and a host of other issues on an immense scale. At the same time, each city has developed individual responses to these issues. Inevitably, these circumstances are a framework of the city’s identity. These idiosyncrasies, as they are manifest through architecture, are the focus of this study.

This study will focus on architectural conditions specific to several megacities, metropolitan areas with a population exceeding 10 million that are often associated with mass migration. Specifically, Sao Paulo, Brazil and Shanghai, China present two very different environments for an analysis of megacity phenomena. The study will attempt to identify the immense, yet distinctive situations these cities possess. In addition, the study will identify how global integration has affected each city in terms of its architecture including its adaptation or assimilation of international ideologies, as well as its response to global forces and how these forces contribute to a new or different architectural environment.

Research will include observation, analysis and reaction to these cultural idiosyncrasies through the lens of proposed architectural/artistic interventions. These interventions are not an attempt to solve socio-cultural issues with architecture, but rather to use the medium as an interpretative tool for understanding the unique environments these megacities possess. The act of design is intended to serve as an act of mediation.

Additional cities will be visited throughout South America and Asia, and by contrast these explorations will be less intensive with regard the overall study. Instead they will complete a comprehensive exposure to major globalizing cities and thus a broader context with which to understand Sao Paulo and Shanghai.

At this time, I would like to officially extend my gratitude to the Rotch Committee for this wonderful opportunity to study architecture abroad. I am very fortunate and honored to have received such an award. It is my hope that I can return with new insight and experiences to share with the architectural community back home. Thank you.