The public contest promoted by the City Hall aimed to define an occupation plan for a vast central area in São Paulo.
São Paulo will have to consistently address the problem of managing its natural resources sustainably and rationally. In this context, effective action for urban reconfiguration of a large area, such as the proposal in the ideas contest for a new neighborhood in Água Branca, can only be triggered through infrastructural planning of the region. Intervening on this scale, therefore, means essentially defining the design of this urban infrastructure. That is, to give legible forms to a strategic action of the public power.
In this reflection for another urban model, the association between road and water issues in São Paulo is once again a project theme, as long as a consequent critical stance guides it. The proposal of new train stations on the existing lines plays this strategic role as places of scale mediation, links between the metropolitan mobility system and the localities. A system that includes mass and non-polluting public transport.
They are organized in our project as hubs that receive public equipment, special services, and housing units of social interest. Another issue concerns the definition of public spaces. The places historically consecrated by the most intense public use are those located in areas of full accessibility and circulation and therefore crossed by productive uses. Places that recover the street as a place of animation and everyday sociability.
From this conviction arise the spaces of recreation and encounter in this project that seek proximity to the circulation systems and the water. A way to reinvent more free uses of the city, referring to a leisure space more than consecrated in the Brazilian imagination: the urban beach.
The resulting water square characterizes both the neighborhood public space system and the technical system for drainage, treatment, and reuse of water resources. Resulting from the outbreak of the water table not compromised environmentally defines an identity marking in the landscape of the neighborhood, referencing it spatially as a deed of water in the floodplain territory.
Technical Information
Date project: 2004
Type: Public constest
Architectural date: Martin Corullon, Fernando de Mello Franco, Marta Moreira, Milton Braga, Camila Toledo Fabrini, Guilherme Wisnik e Roberto
Klein; Anja Kolher, Anna Ferrari, Márcia Terazaki, Flávio Rezende, Marina Acayaba, Marina Sabino, Sarah Feldman, Thiago Rolemberg [colaboradores]
Urbanistic consultant: Sarah Feldman
Traffic and transport consultant: Silvana Rubino
Ambiental Consultant: José Eduardo Cavalcante
Budget: Rosangela Castanheira
Render: Roberto Klein
Urbanization area: 100 hectares