Palimpsest - Schindler Globa Award - Boards

PALIMPSEST APPROACH We must understand that disciplines of Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urbanism all echo a single core set of values, and our way of understanding each is as just as complementary to each other as to make a whole, composed of different shards of a single unique beautiful diamond. It gives us a sense of dancing between scales, changing from the very big to the very small, understanding it all as part of a bigger whole, in which, at each scale, it will respond differently with a specific toolset to each scale of the scenario.

But to build the urban structure in which we all live, we must enable ourselves not to think in a single scale, but to flow seamlessly from the building to the city to the metropolitan area to the created landscape, which is all we apprehend at the glance of the eye, in the scales presented to us. Never a solo player, we, architects, are trained to orchestrate layers of specialized knowledge into a weave of joined efforts into solving problems on several scales. It is our capacity to move between scales and disciplines of knowledge and bring the best out of each one, that leads to the immense synergetic capacity our profession has to offer to the future, and for that, we must understand the transformative role the architect has for the future of mankind and this work hopes to showcase the potency of that idea.

We defend not only mixed usage on the traditional terms of mixing commerce and habitation and services, but also, on the sense of several degrees of income and social layering in one place. If the poor and the rich can live in the same cityscape, for the poorest, the marks of living in a bad patch of the city cannot be attributed to them, prejudice is reduced. If playing in the streets, rich and poor can raise side by side, one can learn from the other to form a more balanced future, with less barriers and more hope for equality.

Within diversity we hope to find our biggest strength, by creating the opportunity to mingle, to meet, to co-exist. From bohemian to secluded, from creative to traditional.

Hence, our land usage map also marks the targeted income range of owners or tenants. Likewise, we approach a split social rental and ownership patterns for the apartment blocks, not fully tossing all the eggs into one basket, understanding there is the need for a mixed set of solutions to approach the problems of living and providing habitation to the most sensitive part of our society in a complex social structure as the Brazilian one, which can hopefully be of use in other scenarios.

So, we hope for a mixed, uniform, homogenized city, not as in all looking the same, but all looking diverse, as in a diverse architecture as well as in a diverse population and diverse as possible usage, save for neighborhood unfriendly usages such as heavy industries, but in a new economy, how do we draw the line between a computer design enabled Fab-Lab, within a Co-Working environment, from a furniture shop? The future might lie in the capacity for a local, mass customization of goods, which can then be sourced and shipped the world over in an integrated, borderless, truly fair, socially aware, global market?

BUILDING HISTORY WITH HISTORY

RIVERFRONT

- The attention to the local heritage

When facing such a challenge as a place of such meaning to the São Paulo history, as well as so many layers of history within and around it, we were faced with what had relevance to serve as reminders of place, marks of time, anchors of memory, and not simply undergo an operation of erasure, but rather, reinforcing local memories for those already in the area, as well as those coming in anew. As such, we chose selected historical sites, relevant by their distinct architecture, by their potential for evocating memories, and for their capacity to welcome new significations into a new future and remain architecturally relevant. Some, as the main Pavillion, with its columnated preponderance left little room for doubt, requiring to be treated with due decorum.

Such was the case of the storage silos, repurposed into the heart of a cultural center, near a re-activated historical rail line, evoking the past and present of the place for the last trip, and burial ground, of a brave historical train. Here, within a mixed convention center/hotel/culture center, split in quadrants so activities can be structured in complementary ways to each other, keeping it alive and used as much as possible in weekdays and weekends, the silos on their original floor level on the original terrain, meet the new structures as their rise towards the park, allowing visitors unprecedented access to an industrial structure on raised ground, reaching it almost within touching distance, allowing for understanding it in ways never foreseen by anyone on the ground.

Others, as the trading warehouses, were reintegrated into the new urban landscape, serving as the street fronts of new housing and office spaces, sometimes supermarket, sometimes bohemian group of bars and restaurants, sometimes co-working space with coffee and book stores, where it’s raised floors for truck unloading met the new raised levels of the surrounding areas, in our effort to make the pedestrian rise above the old Marginal Pinheiros and a new Riverfront park. There, old and new face each other in a dance of history, the new timber frame structures giving new breath and meaning, turning old streets into new indoor spaces.

Our main focus on the project was the fact the Pinheiros River today presents itself as open sewage to the city. Its waters are not living, nor support life in way others than those sewers do. We see there is potential for more, and we believe that will happen.

But first, this river must become relevant to the city, and loved, and we mark the potential for such in a riverfront park. Swimming Pools are created to stress the contrast of needing such pools when a river is nearby, but created in a way to invite their integration with river waters when the river finally becomes clean, as a sign of hope for such a future. The park should become part of a system of parks nearing São Paulo’s rivers, a emerald necklace of green areas around the whole of São Paulo. But for such, we needed to face the challenge of the present infrastructure already in place in the form of the railway and the marginal roads. Our approach was one of opportunity. Use the fact the railway provided a latent connection needed by the city to shift it, and lower it just above the river water level, to avoid costly interventions. And use our long span of land to slowly, and incrementally, raise the street level, but by bit, until we can safely pass over the rail and street system, and just walk into the park. The whole new terrain allows for wheelchair-friendly access to the park, most of the territory falling within 1% declivity ratings. In the end, the last road to be crossed, turns the marginal local lane into a true avenue-like connection, linked to the corporate usage as well as having pedestrian friendly traffic calmers and stop lights.

Raised Floorbed

ECO-POINT, SEWAGE, GARBAGE Soon we will need to use it all. We will need to arise beyond labels and prejudice and our waste, what we currently see as waste, must come cradle to cradle into a new usage by economy. São Paulo City has a historic commitment to the Eco-Point solution, where points over the city area welcome and repurpose waste material of all sorts and ways. We place one within our project area, understanding in a striving creative community, there will be place for waste and for reuse and opportunity. Likewise, we want the sewage and garbage systems linked, so organic composting material can be contained and stored and processed into stations scattered around the metropolitan area, in which the processing of waste materials, either from sewage or garbage, can be the source of bio-gas electricity and compost; both reducing the carbon footprint of the city as a whole, co-generating energy when possible, turning a problem into an opportunity.

Riverfront Park

CO-GENERATION Use turbines on rooftops, photovoltaic and composting to co-generate energy to feed the excess into the grid, making generation less centralized on huge infrastructure endeavours and making it diverse and expand into the territory tapping into yet untouched natural resources to hopefully, in the future, replace fossil fuels when possible, and enabling a less polluted, more energy-independent future.

Therefore, project area is, no less, a small city, a Palimpsest waiting to happen. Our strugle was to create in this area a city in which we truly believe.

COMMUNITY SENSE AND THE LOCAL SCALE The Pavillion is central to our approach, as it forms a long axis that links the Gastão Vidigal Avenue with the new proposed CPTM station, and the Marginal Pinheiros route, redirected, separating the local and express lanes to create a sense of a city-wide main road.

The flexible nature of the Pavillion allows a “flexible movable community” with equipament on wheels, which can be shifted in and out of the pavilion spacializing several acitivities, from local festivities to the World Cup matches broadcasts, so crowds of people can gather to watch it side by side, seeing, understanding, contacting and living with the other so that we can see we are all the same, and together, despite our differences, we may strive for the best.

Registration number: 1644-829-3470

CONNECTIVITY

SHARING INSTEAD OF OWNING

LIGHT TIMBER FRAMED LOW RISE BUILDINGS

A TRANSFORMATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE

In our proposal, we consider the current plans of the Metropolitan Rail Company (CPTM) to deviate Line 9 (Emerald) to the city center, and link Osasco Station to the Pinheiros Hub via an express line. Also, we change the position of the Ceasa Station and propose a new one, Mofarrej, to the north.In addition, we propose a tramway on currently unused tracks in the Jaguaré neighborhood, connecting Presidente Altino Station, in Osasco, to the Butantã neighbohood, via the University of São Paulo campus.In both Ceasa and Mofarrej stations, we propose a transposition.

The new facets of economy turn the production of value away from the massive production of goods, to the production of services. You no longer buy DVDs or media stored in physical media, consuming resources from the planet, but instead, you consume knowledge, creativity, and intellectual products immensely.

As of United Nations FAO stressed, there is a role of Timber into the workflow of the construction industry, not only as temporary formwork for concrete structures, but as the permanent structures themselves, for its capacity for permanent meaningful carbon sequestration. Not only Timber has the capacity to evoke the emotional warmth of environments and has an innate calling for our emotional stability, which hopefully would contribute to overall gains on mental health throughout the population of the area, but is a meaningful way to sequester carbon from the air and permanently trap it within its medium, helping in the struggle against global warming. As such, we make the effort in which, all low rise structures, both tangled with existing ones as the warehouses as new ones, with six pavements or less, will have their structure made out of timber, be it CLT, Glu-Lam or similar technologies to be specified by the architect in charge of the specific project.

It was several times suggested that each future generation would have the capacity to make more with less. The material needs of each generation, through technological advances would be met with fewer and fewer needs of the usage of materials. We cannot anticipate what promises the future brings, but we can trace our grid system understanding change will come. As we suggest block wide or neighborhood wide wireless data transfers as a replacement for the materials and human efforts invested in cabling the same city area; we also suggest we stay open for a future when hydrogen or another infrastructure is needed. As such, our underground infrastructure, on the raised ground created, has spare room for expansion. We loom on a future where locally created electrical power may be harnessed into water turned hydrogen/oxygen during the day, just to be reconverted by Hydrogen-Cell back into water during the night, much like plants work in day/night cycles to remain alive in a local level. We accept we cannot foresee drastic change. But we accept it will come, and we reserve room for it. As such, our underground is constructed for change and evolution.

In the first one, a bridge connecting the Ceasa area to the Jaguaré Hill, also giving access to the riverfront park and connecting to a station in the proposed tramway line.

In the second one, we propose a transposition between the two sides of the tracks via a free span under the platforms, connecting the Ceasa area to the Convention Center to the north.

As such, the production of the new industrial age seems to shift to creative-oriented paradigms where a community which encourages creativity, community living and opportunities for joint creative efforts is welcomed. The need to own, and store, and maintain goods of temporary usage such as cars and bikes can be therefore, replaced

by Sharing them.

There are, in the proposal, cycle paths connecting the area to the Pinheiros River cycle path, and also in both transpositions (Ceasa and Mofarrej stations). Also, there are cycle lanes in key streets, giving accesss to most of the points of interest. Through the Pinheiros River cycle path it is possible to reach the University of São Paulo campus, as well as the areas of Faria Lima and Berrini Aves., which hosts many work stations.

Car Sharing of electric cars, centralized on the Pavillion which marks the civic center, creates a “subway station” effect of enforcing the pavillion’s role as a civic axis for the community, as well as mark it’s placement as the main connection hub, linking pedestrians, bike lanes, car sharing and the train station together, with the BRT lines in the Gastão Vidigal Avenue.

We proposed, by default, a widht of 18m to all streets, including 8 meters of sidewalk and 10m of car, park and cycle lanes. This enrures proper safety space for both pedestrians and cyclists. In the main streets, there would be exclusive bus lanes, and in the local streets, there would be traffic calming street design. To help in dealing with rainwater, we propose raingardens to be built, at every oportunity, along with other vegetation.

The local connection may be accomplished by many bike stations scathered around the area, enabling commuters to take a bike close to home, and release the bike closer to the destination connection, be it train or bus or individual co-shared car; without having the burden of costs of maintenance of full ownership of the bike, or car. And still, be fully integrated to the bigger hub of city wide, or metropolis wide reach of the train and BRT routes.

Registration number: 1644-829-3470