INSTALATION . VIDEO . CREATIVE WRITING | 2017 | BELO HORIZONTE, BRAZIL | LuĂza Bastos Lages
Fictional Landscapes “The mechanisms of progress were able to produce a great fiction. Fiction of the inexhaustible exploitation of nature, fiction of the acceptance of inequality among men and fiction of the illegitimacy of the ways utilized by certain groups to understand the world. But, at last, are we talking about reality or fiction?� Apagamentos, Renata Marques
Here, the landscape is understood as a cultural product, as a result of the build-up of layers of natural action and human interference. It is understood that the landscape is created by the continuous overlapping and blending of natural and social existences, besides corresponding to a mental construct, somewhat from the imaginary that integrates a collective memory. However, despite being frequently associated with a scenic ideal, the landscape is not reduced to the myth of untouched nature. From human intervention, it also corresponds to various facets of a postindustrial society, which encompasses from narrow dirt trails cutting a wooded hill, up to productive landscapes, transformed by industrial complexes. The possibilities for the sensitive apprehension of the landscape, therefore, are not reduced to the traditional picturesque or idyllic, which is often insisted by common sense. The modified Earth surface is the ever-contemporary morphology of the world, which makes, from the western standards of civilization, its own natural idealism resound as purely ideal.
However, strangely fascinating industrial landscapes possibly due to their heterotopic spatiality, or maybe because they constitute forbidden territories, inaccessible clusters - are often produced from a hegemonic and fallacious perspective of progress. Such perspective insists on a growth concept exclusively based on economic aspects, which seems not to acknowledge the material finiteness of the Earth, as well as other possible ways to see and interact with the world. In this context, the industrial landscapes derived from mined territories result from a dynamics of exploitation on the brink of depletion, since they have as a meager threshold - despite frequent circumventions - the sleek legal requirements. Thus, mining operations end up producing landscapes that are self-consumed, from an accelerated transformation under the exclusive diktat of a global economy. In the open pits from which iron ore is exploited, the construction of the terrain, of its natural geological pace, invisible to the eye, is displaced towards a fast, technical and homogenizing action. The landscape becomes volatile. Mountains observed while crossing BR-356 and BR-040 highways are no longer visible. Disguised by the density of extensive eucalyptus forests, their concaves and convexes are made flat. Mechanically geometrized in terraces and slopes, they give room to a mining landscape impregnated of neutrality, once it becomes morphologically homogeneous. This landscape is here, but it might as well be in any other place or mined continent. The rapid dismantle of the terrain promotes ephemeral, similar and reproducible landscapes, which are reduced to their fragments and which may have already been devised as fictional. Despite being concrete, they are so anchored in a fiction of progress, a progress imposed as the sole path to a development held as necessary, that they almost touch the surreal. The rapid dismantle of the landscape and its reconfiguration as an industrially productive landscape, although socially and naturally sterile, are the personal spatial perceptions driving this work. From a critical perspective, I debate such dilapidation of the landscape in the name of the sustainment of a global economy, based, among other instruments, on the geographic transfer of value. This transfer is the mechanism by which the value
extracted and produced in outskirt areas is consistently realized and accumulated someplace else. That is, how nature exploited and work performed at a certain place are converted into capital elsewhere, thus producing the geographically unequal development. In Brazil, there are a total of 189 active mines, of which 132 exploit iron ore. The extraction of iron ore in 2015 in Brazil was concentrated in the action of only 9 main companies. Vale S/A, an originally public company, but privatized in 1997, is currently a multinational corporation, having foreign companies as major shareholders. Vale S/A holds 73.77% of the trading of domestic iron ore. In 2015, the mining companies operating in Brazil traded 460 million tons of mineral goods, of which 420 million are of iron ore. The total amount of sales of mineral goods added up to BRL 67.5 billion ($ 17.7 billion). Of this value, only BRL 1.15 billion ($ 302.6 million) were directed to the public authority as financial compensation for the exploitation carried out in the territory. (Source: DNPM - Brazilian Mining Annual Report, 2016 and IBRAM - 2015). Among Brazilian and foreign shareholders, the amount of capital produced moves from productive landscapes to other regions of the country and the globe. Through the flow of capital, the landscape also moves, traded by means of their mined fragments. In this dynamics, the exploited sites earn low wages, enough for the survival of the population and for the reproduction of their existence for future exploitation, besides the environmental degradation and the offering of natural attributes as resources to be extracted. Therefore, the exploiting process from which the dilapidation of the landscape derives offers little to the site in which it is carried out. So, the geographic landscape of capital, dynamically organized in accumulating centers and degraded outskirts, guarantees itself as such from the maintenance of inequalities on local and global spectrums. The key issue is that the inequality among different regions is both the result of the geographic transfer of value, as well as an instrumental condition for the perpetuation and survival of this mode of production. Therefore, in the paradigm of progress, the construction of unequal relations is the foremost condition for its continuity, not a side effect to be overcome.
1
PHOTOGRAPHY . CREATIVE WRITING | 2017 | BELO HORIZONTE, BRAZIL | LuĂza Bastos Lages
1
2
1/
examples of
2
2
2
sequential photos of two different series
2/
textures of the
private leisure areas
Full Leisure In most of the largest Brazilian cities, spaces are planned and organized according to their functions. In this model, squares and parks are the spaces of public use aimed at leisure and community experience. However, it is common for these spaces to be distant from daily activities, since they exist in a reduced number. The immediate public spaces, attended and utilized more often, are usually reduced to mere remains, or collateral spaces surrounding roadways. Limited to a main function, which is to circulate, and a precarious spatiality, public spaces that permeate daily life offer few possibilities for the experience of collectiveness. In this context, this work discusses the lack of public spaces in Brazilian metropolises through an ironic indication of the disproportional use, infrastructure and area between public spaces and the numerous and adjacent private leisure areas existing in the urban space. Sequential photos of the same frame were registered, taken at different times, of leisure areas and public spaces surrounding
those areas. With this approach, two photographic series were made, depicting two segments of the same area of the city. The photographs shown above, indicated by the number 1, are examples of the sequence of images of each one of these two series which compose the work. Side by side, the sequential photos constitute an example of the urban structure of large Brazilian cities, that are subjected to an economic dynamics which fosters the privatization of city spaces and reduces public spaces to secondary sites. Such sequence of images also highlights that, despite their precarious spatiality and lack of maintenance and infrastructure, public spaces are more utilized than private leisure areas, which remain, most of the time in which they were registered, empty and idle. Despite this incoherent disproportion, private leisure areas are multiplied due to the expansion of real estate enterprises, which use such spaces as their main advertising means. On the other hand, public spaces remain neglected. In this region, it is common
that sidewalks end suddenly, or are not even minimally paved, which interferes with accessibility and the possibility of pedestrian traffic. The function attributed to those spaces as the main one is not always fulfilled, however limited. Besides the sequential photographic registry of the same area, this work also includes photographs that represents the empty and uninhabited texture of private leisure areas. The close-ups highlight textures which are interpreted as abstract patterns, as the expression of the functionalist uniformity and inflexibility of those spaces; which are likely to be regarded as concrete examples of Lefebvrian conceived spaces, materializations of an urban planning and an architectonic design dissociated from the various possibilities of action present in the lived space. In continuous evolution, this is a work composed by the registries already performed and open to new ones of other areas, which jointly and gradually build a critical narrative about the production of urban space.
SCENOGRAPHY . EXHIBITION CONCEPTION | 2012 - 2013 | JUIZ DE FORA AND BELO HORIZONTE, BRAZIL | Interface Tátil Architecture office*
Exhibition *
this project was developed
by the office it [ oa ] - interface tátil [ oficina de arquitetura ]. luíza lages and débora tavares were the leading architects .
The exhibition “O que queremos para o mundo?” (What do we wish for the world?) designed for children, fosters their artistic expression through sensorial perception and experimentation of an interactive scenography. The flexible proposal for this exhibition consists of three cubes which hold its proposal, besides an additional fourth cube, designed for video workshops from the project “O que queremos para o mundo?”. These four independent cubes allow the exhibition to be installed in several spaces, with different layouts. This Exhibition was held at Museum MM- Gerdau, in Belo Horizonte and at the Correios Cultural Center, in Juiz de Fora.
CUBE 1 / OPAQUE
CUBE 2 / TRANSLUCENT
CUBE 3 / TRANSPARENT
in its interior there is a shadow
it offers a tactile experience ,
it gives children the possibility
theater and diverse projections
exploring the corporal
of free expression and
which bring an introspective
perception through the physical
intervention on its walls using
experience for the spectator .
contact with the space ,
pens available in the space .
fulfilled with fabric strips . among the
900
strips ,
4
of
them are interactive , producing different sounds when touched , which allows the visitors to spontaneously create the music played at the exibition .
URBAN INTERVENTION | 2013 - 2017 | BELO HORIZONTE, BRAZIL | Interface Tátil Architecture Office*
Xangri-lá This work is part of an independent project of the Interface Tátil [architecture office], which consists in mapping public spaces with precarious infrastructure and intense use by the inhabitants of the surroundings, in the suburbs of the metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte. The first step of the present work, done in the Xangri-Lá district, consisted in the elaboration of collaborative cartographies in conjunction with the district dwellers. The purpose of this mapping was to investigate the dwellers’ ways of living, as well as the occupation and use of the public spaces of Xangri-Lá district, with a specific focus on Praça Ecológica (Ecological Square). The Praça Ecológica, with a morphologic configuration of a roundabout, has very little equipment of public use, which were all built by the district dwellers themselves. Despite its precarious infrastructure and little shade, the square is intensively used for several activities, such as soccer games, trekking, childhood plays, chatting at sunset, barbecues, among other spontaneous activities. From the acknowledgment of this context and the dwellers’ wish to transform the square, various meetings were held with the neighborhoods, proposing actions for the building of a collective project of spatial intervention. One of the most important actions was the spatialization of the dwellers’ wishes for the square and its surroundings in a mapping of the area. The participants utilized pictograms or drew on blank boards what they envisioned for each site. These actions strengthened the preexisting rapport and contributed to many ideas for the intervention in the square.
*
this project was developed
by the office it [ oa ]
-
interface
tátil [ oficina de arquitetura ]. luíza lages and débora tavares were the leading architects .
XANGRI-LÁ | URBAN INTERVENTION | 2013 - 2017 | BELO HORIZONTE, BRAZIL | Interface Tátil Architecture Office
This work started in 2013 and the proposal for an intervention in the square was submitted to several national bid invitations of culture fostering. However, unfortunately our project was not approved in any bidding processes and we did not manage to raise the resources required for the intervention. In November of 2017, however, after our exhibition entitled “O que queremos para o mundo?” – (What do we wish for the world?) circulated in different cultural centers, we received from the director of the Institute of the same name, the donation of all the structures of that Exhibition, so that they would be refurbished and installed at Praça Ecológica, as support to the demands of the dwellers of Xangri-lá district. From this initial donation others followed, such as seedlings of native plants of the Atlantic Rainforest and used materials, such as plastic pallets. From the collection of all these materials, a project was designed for the adaptation of the structures and to start an intervention process in the square, which is scheduled to occur in 2018. In this project, the four cubes of the exhibition were turned into living and playing areas, as requested by the dwellers.
From existing fabrics, polycarbonate and wooden plates, PVC tubes, among other materials, the four cubes will hold swings, hammocks, resting and climbing panels and an area for barbecues and celebrations. The proposal is that the structures held inside each cube be mobile and removable so that the cubes may be easily occupied by other uses if so desired. Besides these structures, from the donation of used plastic pallets and plastic chairs, we intend to build bleachers for the existing soccer field in the square, the focal point of the activities that take place there. The seedlings of native trees of the Atlantic Rainforest will be planted along the square. We think that these will be the first interventions of a continuous process of collective construction. For all of us, it was especially symbolic as a cultural project in the traditional method, as our Exhibition, held in Cultural Centers and financed by culture fostering laws, enabled the accomplishment of a project of marginal scope after its closure, something which is usually not contemplated by the cultural support mechanisms in Brazil.
ACADEMIC PROJECT | 2012 - 2013 | BELO HORIZONTE, BRAZIL | LuĂza Bastos Lages |
Expasion Plan Morro do Papagaio
SURPEVISOR Prof.
Juliana Torres Ph.D.
this project was indicated, along 385 others, to the 25th
opera prima award, from the 7,633 final graduation
this project won the first triennial award promoted by the regional council of architecture (cau -mg) in 2017
projects presented in brazil in 2013
This project consists of a proposed Expansion Plan for Morro do Papagaio, a gathering of 5 slum clusters located in the South region of Belo Horizonte. The plan proposes an urban park of about 120,000 m2 including dwellings, commercial spaces and common use areas.
intention is providing another collective life experience, unlike that of conventional housing developments, by incorporating the primordial characteristics of the slum that is diversity. Based on that scope, the work was executed at two different but interrelated times.
The park will allow for the integration between the slum and its surroundings via extensive public spaces for mixed use, as well as the environmental preservation of a stream and several springs. The dwellings are inside the park and, the way they were designed, propose another relationship between public and private spaces. The buildings are connected to the park on several floors and have various common spaces inside them. The
The first corresponded to the production of collaborative cartographies made by household members and by the surveyor, as well as immersions into everyday spaces of the Informal Settlement, an ethnographic survey sketch. These efforts produced a complex mapping, loaded with local information that allows one to realize the dwellers’ way of life and the spatial relationship between the slum and the rest of the city.
The second time of the paper - the proposal of the Plan itself - derived from studying and interpreting the cartographic material according to guidelines suggested by the residents. The Plan was then prepared by incorporating the daily way of life of Morro residents to its design in order to provide coherent answers to a space of complex and overlapping social relations. Its rationalized intervention structure, with low-cost proposals, was conceived based on several diagrams used as design instruments and capable of encompassing the complexity of the context.
EXPANSION PLAN - MORRO DO PAPAGAIO | ACADEMIC PROJECT | 2012 - 2013 | BELO HORIZONTE, BRAZIL | Luíza Bastos Lages |
SURPEVISOR Prof.
Juliana Torres Ph.D.
Besides incorporating ways of life, housings were designed based on the “open building” concept. Housings of several sizes and spatial configurations were also proposed, to comply with diversity of households. The housing proposal begins with a minimum module of 4x4m (16m2), that can be added in different compositions of 2, 3 or 4 modules, resulting in apartments with different plans and sizes: 36, 48 e 64 m2. Futhermore, all housing units have a roof terrace and an area reserved for future expansion. The 64m2 apartments present 4 different spatial organization proposals, among them an apartment according to the accessibility rules. Because the apartments have diverse compositions and a backyard, each entire floor plan of the building is unique.
plan samples
1/ 2/ 3/ 4/
expansion plan
public space
7 th floor 8 th floor 9 th floor 10 th floor
public space close to the houses
flight of stairs
parking lot
housing improv .
1 st floor 2 nd floor 3 rd floor 4 th floor 5 th floor 6 th floor
urbanization improv .
access roads anchor institution preservation area
maintained areas
pedestrian flat paths staircase
/
ramp
fifth floor plan sixth floor plan seventh floor plan eighth floor plan
1
5/ minimum module of 4 x 4 m > apartments with : 36, 48 and 64 m 2. + expansion module and a backyard .
5
2
3
+
4
1
2
40c m
40cm
m 40c 40c m
40cm
40c m
m 40c 40cm
40c m
20cm
40cm
COMPETITION | 2013 | BELO HORIZONTE, BRAZIL | Luíza Lages, Débora Tavares, Bianca Ribeiro, Débora Moura, Fernanda Chagas, Gabriel Jota, Natália Freitas, Carolina Boaventura, Cecília Reis, Laura Castro, Márcio Gabrich and Paula Bruzzi*
m 40c
m 40c
module samples
3
4
Overpass Undersides
1/ bleachers 2/ public kitchen 3/ structure for exhibits 4/ structure for fairs 5/ totem with photovoltaic panels
5
*
this project was developed by
a group of
15
young architects ,
who worked horizontally , in
renovation of overpass undersides
collaboration , with the same
in belo horizonte, with honors.
level of accountability .
The overpass is a passageway, but it can also be a meeting place. This dual purpose is the backbone of the plan, which is based on a commitment with the city and intends to foster interrelationships between it and its inhabitants. The plan proposes spaces for collective ownership, but also allow for individual resignifications in keeping with the needs and desires of users. This plan was the base in the development of the projects of 3 different overpasses located at Belo Horizonte. This plan is based on an analysis of how the overpassses’ undersides and surrounding areas are currently being used. This method is an attempt at designing open spaces that can
be changed according to use and in line with current demands. Wide spaces were proposed in order for a modular street furniture that allows different layouts to be implemented. Since they are modular, easily adapted to the landscape and weather-resistant, these structures can be expanded to areas adjacent to the overpass and to other places in the city. The resulting shape can be used for several purposes, the space created is wide and permeable. The profiled and light structure stands in contrast to the overpass robustness, allows for full visibility and better natural ventilation.
ACADEMIC PROJECT | 2011 | DETMOLD, GERMANY | Luíza Bastos Lages | SUPERVISORS Eva Marguerre e Marcel besau
Wood Malleability This work was developed in the Detmolder Schule für Architektur und Innenarchitektur, Germany. The aim of this project was to discover new and unexpected possibilities in an specific material, which is normally used and handled considering just its traditional and well known characteristics. The project created a new technique, through experimentation processes and laboratory tests, which provides malleability and movement to thick and entire wood boards, a material better known for its robustness and stability. The result of the experiments opened an extremely wide range of possibilities for the production of objects, since the uses of pliable wood are manifold. The products created from this process were the fisch table - made from a single wood board which contains hard and malleable parts - and the blume bag - a rereading of the “Satchel Bags”, made in wood.
ART DIRECTION . SCENOGRAPHY | 2014 | ITABIRITO AND BELO HORIZONTE, BRAZIL | Interface Tátil Architecture office*
Film The art direction and scenography proposal for the children’s film “O que queremos para o mundo?” (What do we wish for the world?) came from a fantastic and imaginary conception of childhood. The proposal intended to bring the most essential aspects of each character to the movie sets and objects, through the usage of specific colours. The movie sets were built with reused materials such as market wooden boxes and pallets, and also using low cost materials such as pine wood, colorful strings and ropes. This film was shown in several festivals in Brazil and abroad. Among them, the film was selected for the San Diego Kids Film Festival, California, and received an honorable mention by the Noida International Film Festival, India.
*
this project was developed
by the office it [ oa ]
-
interface
tátil [ oficina de arquitetura ]. luíza lages and débora tavares were the leading architects .