Instances and scenes of cultural agitation by Valentine Van den Eynde

OCCUPYING CENTRAL SÃO PAULO THE PROTO-URBANISMS OF URBAN MOVEMENTS

INSTANCES AND SCENES OF CULTURAL AGITATION Raissa GONÇALVES MONTEIRO & Valentine VAN DEN EYNDE

OCCUPYING CENTRAL SÃO PAULO THE PROTO-URBANISMS OF URBAN MOVEMENTS

INSTANCES AND SCENES OF CULTURAL AGITATION OCUPANDO O CENTRO DE SÃO PAULO OS PROTO-URBANISMOS DOS MOVIMENTOS URBANOS

INSTÂNCIAS E CENAS DE AGITAÇÃO CULTURAL

Raissa Gonçalves Monteiro Valentine Van den Eynde

Thesis submitted to obtain Master (of Science) of Human Settlements (Raissa Monteiro) Master (of Science) of Urbanism and Strategic Planning (Valentine Van den Eynde)

Faculty of Engineering Department of Architecture Promoter: Bruno De Meulder Guidance: Jeroen Stevens

ACADEMIC YEAR 2015 - 2016

© Copyright by KU Leuven Permission for use of content ‘The authors herewith permit it that the present dissertation be made available for consultation; parts of it may be copied, strictly for personal use. Every other use is subject to strict copyright reservations. Particular reference is made to the obligation of explicitly mentioning the source when quoting the present dissertation’s results.’ Leuven, 2015. All images presented in this booklet are, unless credits are given, made or drawn by the authors. Without written permission of the supervisor(s) and the authors it is forbidden to reproduce or adapt in any form or by any means any part of this publication. Requests for obtaining the right to reproduce or utilize parts of this publication should be addressed to KU Leuven, Faculty of Engineering Science, Departement of Architecture - Kasteelpark Arenberg 1, B-3001 Heverlee (Belgium). Telephone +32-16-321362 or e-mail secretariaat@asro.kuleuven.be. A written permission of the supervisor(s) is also required to use the methods, products, schematics and programs described in this work for industrial or commercial use, and for submitting this publication in scientific contests.

Contact: claire.bosmans@gmail.com kathleendebeukelaer@gmail.com raissagmonteiro@gmail.com valentine.vandeneynde@gmail.com bruno.demeulder@asro.kuleuven.be jeroen.stevens@kuleuven.be

INSIDE A MICROCOSMOS I DENDRO DO MICROCOSMO

[PROTO-URBANISMS]

THE PROTO-URBANISMS OF URBAN MOVEMENTS São Paulo has been reshaped and reframed by successive waves of public, private and popular (re-)investment. Immutable landscape features have been colonized, turned into infrastructures, to be again replaced by other urban armatures, continuously but always partly transforming the city’s built form. Today, the multi-layered city centre can be seen as an assemblage of material relics that testify of an intricate history of tensions, displacements and (de)constructions. This contentious reproduction resulted in a vast and manifold presence of vacancy. Exactly those undefined urban spaces enabled and provoked contemporary insurgent practices. Through a variety of occupations, social and cultural movements are re-imagining and re-composing a decaying urban fabric, initiating impromptu forms of urban reproduction in the informal interstices of the ‘formal’ or ‘official’ city. This collaborative thesis project seeks to unravel the emerging proto-urbanisms that are simultaneously performed by housing and cultural movements.

ABSTRACT

[SELF-CONSTRUCTED CITY]

[CULTURAL AGITATION]

COMPONENTS AND CONSTELLATIONS OF A SELF-CONSTRUCTED CITY

INSTANCES AND SCENES OF CULTURAL AGITATION

By Claire Bosmans & Kathleen De Beukelaer

By Raissa Monteiro & Valentine Van den Eynde

With ‘Frente da Luta por Moradia’ (FLM) – literally, the ‘Frontline of the Housing Struggle - as main focus, the thesis presents a selective anthology of housing occupations occurring in central São Paulo. The compilation of ‘popular’ urban projects allows to decipher particular contributions of the housing movement in the urban reproduction of the city. Each manifestation/case is analysed through a specific lens, therewith addressing recurring components of an alternative city that is successively imagined and constructed by housing movements and their members. Demonstrations in public space together with the ever-shifting constellation of building occupations are eventually précising an emerging notion of ‘occupation urbanism’. In turn, they shed light on a variety of urban practices and actions, ranging over protestations and negotiations, self-construction and re-habitation, novel collectivities, spontaneous urban renewals, new centralities, cultural experiments and enforced social housing projects.

The historical centre of São Paulo is concurrently the site and subject of a plethora of social and cultural practices that agitate the urban scene by occupying and re-appropriating diverse urban spaces. This thesis aims to probe how such cultural and artistic occupations take part in the redevelopment of the city’s central area, by performing particular instances and scenes of insurgent urbanism. Three distinctive ‘occupied’ urban spaces, involving particular constellations of actors, are explored by means of peculiar metaphorical lenses. As instances of a vast landscape of cultural occupations, a building (the artistic occupation ‘Ouvidor 63’), an open space (the contested ‘Praça Roosevelt’) and an elevated highway (’Minhocão’), will allow to shed light on the agency of cultural agitations transforming the urban scenery into a laboratory for unsolicited but remarkable experiments towards other ways of city making.

INSIDE A MICROCOSMOS I DENDRO DO MICROCOSMO

[PROTO-URBANISMS]

OS PROTO-URBANISMOS DOS MOVIMENTOS URBANOS São Paulo tem sido adaptada e remodelada por sucessivas ondas de investimentos públicos, privados e populares. Paisagens fixas foram ‘recolonizadas’ e transformadas em infra-estruturas urbanas, para em seguida serem substituídas por outras morfologias, fazendo com que o seu conjunto construído esteja em constante transformação. Hoje, o multifacetado centro da cidade pode ser visto como um conjunto de vestígios que traduzem uma história de tensões, relocações e (des)construções. Uma das consequências dessas controversas reproduções urbanas foi o aparecimento de altos níveis de vacância na área central. A vasta e diversa presença de espaços vazios, por sua vez, acabou por provocar e permitir o aparecimento de práticas insurgentes que se apropriam desses espaços. Através de várias formas de ocupação, movimentos sociais e culturais (re)imaginam e (re)compõem partes do tecido urbano em decadência, iniciando formas alternativas de reprodução urbana nos interstícios da cidade ‘formal’ ou ‘oficial’. Esse projeto colaborativo de teses procura trazer à tona e discutir sobre formas emergentes de ‘proto-urbanismo’ simultaneamente realizadas por movimentos sociais de moradia e coletivos independentes de arte e cultura, assim como seu impacto para a reativação do metabolismo urbano.

ABSTRACT

[SELF-CONSTRUCTED CITY]

[CULTURAL AGITATION]

COMPONENTS E CONSTALAÇÕES DE UMA CIDADE AUTOCONSTRUÍDA

INSTÂNCIAS E CENAS DE AGITAÇÃO CULTURAL

Por Claire Bosmans & Kathleen De Beukelaer

Por Raissa Monteiro & Valentine Van den Eynde

Com foco no movimento Frente de Luta por Moradia (FLM), essa tese apresenta uma antologia seletiva de ocupações de moradia presentes no centro de São Paulo. Trata-se de uma compilação de ‘projetos urbanos populares’ que permite decifrar que tipos de contribuições os movimentos de moradia tem deixado para os processos de reprodução da cidade. Cada manifestação/caso é analisado através de lentes específicas que destacam os componentes mais recorrentes dessa ‘cidade alternativa’ que é sucessivamente imaginada e construída pelos movimentos de moradia e seus membros. As reivindicações nos espaços públicos juntamente com as dinâmicas ocupações em edifícios e suas constelações sociais tem gradualmente construído uma emergente noção de ‘urbanismo de ocupação’. Esse conceito, por sua vez, evidencia uma gama de ações e práticas urbanas que se diversificam entre protestos e negociações, auto construção e reabilitação, diferentes coletividades, renovações urbanas espontâneas, novas centralidades, experimentos culturais e a realização de projetos de habitação social.

O centro histórico de São Paulo é atualmente local e sujeito de crescentes práticas sociais e culturais que agitam a cena urbana ocupando e reapropriando diversos espaços. O objetivo desse trabalho é investigar como essas ocupações culturais e artísticas contribuem na renovação dos usos da área central, partindo de situações particulares e cenários de urbanismo insurgente. Três tipologias espaciais distintas, envolvendo diferentes constelações sociais e temporalidades, são analisadas ao longo da tese através de nove metáforas conceituais. Como instâncias representativas de um vasto panorama de ocupações culturais, temos um edifício (a ocupação artística ‘Ouvidor 63’), uma via expressa (o viaduto ‘Minhocão’) e um espaço público (a disputada ‘Praça Roosevelt’) - estudados como coadjuvantes para o entendimento dos agentes e processos que tem transformado o cenário urbano em um laboratório de práticas não-solicitadas porém notáveis, pois propõem e experimentam novos modos de co-produzir a cidade.

CONTENT TABLE I SUMÁRIO

PROLOGUE: CULTUR[E]SCAPES: 3 CASES / 9 METAPHORS PRÓLOGO: PAISAGENS CULTURAIS: 3 CASOS / 9 METÁFORAS

[OV]

OUVIDOR 63

ARTISTIC OCCUPATION PRODUCTION OF CULTURE I PRODUÇÃO DE CULTURA

[MO]

29 33

MICROCOSMOS I MICROCOSMO

URBAN COMPOSTER(S) I COMPOSTEIROS URBANOS

ARTBOMBING THE CITY I SEMEANDO ARTE PELA CIDADE

MINHOCÃO

ELEVATED HIGHWAY SHARED SPACE IN TIME I ESPAÇO COMPARTILHADO NO TEMPO

[RO]

107 111

FLEXIBLE INFRASTRUCTURE I INFRA-ESTRUTURA FLEXÍVEL

123

RETROFITTING THE MISFIT I RECOMPONDO O DESCOMPOSTO

131

URBAN GALLERY I GALERIA URBANA

173

PRAÇA FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT

193

IMAGINARY OF THE CITY I IMAGINÁRIO DA CIDADE

197

PUBLIC SPACE

MISE-EN-SCÈNE I MISE-EN-SCÈNE

205

SCENES & SCENARIOS I CENAS & CENÁRIOS

233

PLAYS & PERFORMANCES I ESPETÁCULOS & PERFORMANCES

267

EPILOGUE: URBAN CULTURES AND THE CITY

277

BIBLIOGRAPHY

299

EPÍLOGO: CULTURAS URBANAS E A CIDADE

BIBLIOGRAFIA

Nowadays, as claims to urban rights intensify around Brazil, the central area of São Paulo turned into a prime stage for a diverse range of social groups – hereby called urban movements - that have been autonomously ‘moving’ towards the collective occupation and adaptation of vacant and meaningless spaces as a way to mark their presence and contest their place in the production of an ‘other’ aspired city. The on going Insurgent Urbanisms Research (IU) seeks to create a cartography of those auto-agencies in São Paulo and the potential peculiar ways they contribute in transforming the architecture of the city. It is carried out since 2013 by the OSA Research Group of Urbanism & Architecture (Department of Architecture, KU Leuven), together with students of the Master of Human Settlements, Master of Urbanism and Strategic Planning (Stevens & Knapen, 2013; Shi, 2014; Zeevaert, 2014; Briers & Devos, 2015) and the Master of Engineering and Architecture (Colla, Peeters & Preud’Homme, 2016).

In the form of an ‘action-research’, the IU Studio engages in annual fieldwork sessions to São Paulo for exploring the subject on site, in close collaboration with local partners, scholars, governmental institutions, associations and last but not least, the social movements themselves. This year’s fieldwork session was held during the months of February and March, for a period of 6 weeks (12/02 to 29/03) in the city São Paulo. The main goal was to investigate key spatial tactics, appropriations and behaviours staged by the urban movements, exploring how they have been approaching and acting upon the city’s residual interstices, tackling the dialectic vicissitudes of socio-cultural actions vis-à-vis the material transformation of the city (Stevens, 2015). Inquiring how urban movements and their initiatives engender provisional spatial visions for the city, this research probes whether and how they can be considered

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUÇÃO

as ‘proto-urbanisms’ - a set of (un)conscious and transformative urban practices that prefigure popular modes of city-making, testing and projecting a ‘try-out city’ on real scale and on site.

political mind-sets that provoked its main cycles of urban (re)investments, as well as what gave way to the emergence of vacancy and its consequent re-occupations and re-appropriations.

Two distinct social groups - from housing and cultural activism - where chosen to study the phenomena in São Paulo. After the fieldwork, five months of intense processing led to the production of three booklets: an introductory common work plus two other theses, focusing respectively on housing and cultural occupations.

Lying under this frame, the two other master theses - Components & Constellations of a Self-Constructed City and Instances and Scenes of Cultural Agitation – will embark within housing and cultural movements, paying special attention to their tactics, ideologies and unconventional ways of dealing with the urban tissue. Produced in parallel, the aim of both works is to engender a kind of urban and architectural critique that represents and recognizes the way those movements act on space, inside their own dynamics, actions and collaborations.

The first book of the trilogy - Occupying Central São Paulo: The Proto-urbanisms of Urban Movements - is a macroapproach that sketches a historical overview of São Paulo’s urban development and its main driving forces as the background of the scene in which the occupations play. Graphical essays unveil the city’s key morphological conditions, social practices, economical interests and

This thesis wasn’t possible without the support and collaboration of a few key actors. First of all, we would like to thank Jeroen Stevens for his unfailing support along the hard process. His passion for the topic, context and people was inspiring and encouraging.Thank for the great support during fieldwork and the many discussions during guidance or readings. Besides, we thank our promoter Bruno de Meulder for his guidance and deep insights we learned along the way. In addition, we would like to thank the commentators present during the World Urbanisms Seminar of June 24th for their valuable remarks and the interesting debates. Furthermore, we would like show our sincere gratitude to our local promoter, Nadia Somekh, for hosting us in São Paulo. Her guidance gave us essential insight for particular context of Central São Paulo. This was further complemented by various scholars we had to chance to meet along the way: Pedro Arantes, Vera Pallamin, and Deborah Sanches, to whom we as well want to express our appreciation. Besides we thank Bruna Fregonezi. We are grateful to Dulci Cipriano for her help, as well as for showing us around the city, and to make us feel welcome.

Specifically in the frame of this book, we are heartily grateful to all of those who assisted us during the journey inside the thriving cultural scene of São Paulo. Special thanks to the Ouvidor 63 community, for accepting our presence inside the occupation. To Paulo Jorge Prado, for welcoming us inside the 9th floor of Ouvidor 63 and to Chico Américo, Diego Tulian, Felipe Fajado and Pablo Mediza for the brotherhood as well as Santiago Bravo and Paul Oviedo, for the help as our ‘research assistants’ and translators. To Carlinhos de Moraes, for the long and interesting conversations, continuous support and communication maintained after the fieldwork. We also appreciate the efforts of the 2nd floor inhabitants for organizing debate sessions during our stay and all the artists who kindly answered our questionnaires. To those who paused their customary activities on Minhocão and Praça Roosevelt to participate on our proposed activities, also answering questionnaires and volunteering to exercise their spatial sensibility by drawing mental maps. We are also grateful for those who crossed our ways, whose shared stories and conversations contributed to construct of a more grounded experience.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

AGRADECIMENTOS

To the head of Associação Novolhar, Paulo Santiago, for presenting us the cultural richness of the Bixiga neighbourhood. For the inspiring talks and insights of our interviewees: Amandy Gonzalez, Anna Carolina Nunes, Augusto Eneas, Carila Matzenbacher, Célia Marcondes, Daniel Silva, Diogo Rios, Felipe Morizini, Luanda Vannuchi, Marília Gallmeister, Marcos Costa, Marcos Flecha, Milene Valentir, Paula Santoro, Ray Monteiro, Roberto Sullivan and Thaís Hercules.

We would like to show our gratitude to VLIR-UOS for granting us a scholarship. This goes hand in hand with thanking Carolina Tavares for renting us her apartment and taking care of our living arrangements.

To the tireless actions of the following collectives towards making São Paulo a more democratic and livable city: Associação Novolhar, Bloco Fluvial do Peixe Seco, Coletivo Hub Livre, Coletivo Yopará, Coletivo Mapa Xilográfico, Organismo Parque Augusta, Ocupação Casa Amarela, SAMOORC, Sampapé and Teatro Oficina.

To conclude, we highlight the importance of this thesis not just as part of an academic journey but also as a personal one, which contributed to our growth as citizens, professionals and human beings.

In addition we appreciate the support of São Paulo’s Municipal Secretary of Culture and its Historical Patrimony Department for their technical guidance, help in collecting data and in depth knowledge about the São Paulo’s urban environment and history. To the feedback and discussions with Eliana Barbosa and Lieven De Cauter, that renewed our energies and helped to better develop the thesis’ concepts.

Lastly we would like to thank our family, friends and loved ones for their support and continuous encouragements throughout our study, and especially along this adventure.

A fast-paced multiplication of bottom-up cultural practices has overrun São Paulo in the latest years. By performing a multitude of creative ad hoc interventions, they have been occupying diverse meaningless spaces in the central area. With remarkable imagination, they often inject other urbanities and simultaneously criticize the city as it is, while proposing and performing future scenarios. From an architectural and urbanistic point of view, the plurality of these urban movements’ practices raise significant questions. Which lessons can be learned from their unconditioned imaginative creativity? Whether and how can their spatial experiments enrich and inform the spatial disciplines? Which methodological tools could be appropriated for uncovering and charting the spatial articulations of those often volatile and temporary practices? How come they can be understood as ‘instances’ and ‘scenes’ of a kind of ‘proto-urbanism’, that is, an urbanism in the making? Grounded by this urbanist mindset and aspiring to contribute and activate discussions on the subject, this booklet was produced by mixing fieldwork methodologies, on one hand, with spatial analysis, on the other hand. The work further combines theoretical considerations of relevant authors with empirical data collected during the participant observations. The following spreads where intentionally layouted and illustrated to put together the different voices, claims and conflicts inside narratives of success and failure – as an attempt to render a visual exploratory journey into the complexity of such urban practices. São Paulo’s case is without doubt exemplary, but for sure not exceptional, as other comparable demonstrations of citizenship awareness are sparkling around the globe.

This work is structured in three main chapters: Prologue (00), Case Studies (01) and Epilogue (02). The prologue - Shaping Cultur[e]scapes - sets up the primary concepts to introduce the investigation domains, going through essential terminologies and framing particular notions of cultural landscape, vacancy and urban movements. It also unfolds the modus operandi used in the following three case studies, deliberately chosen to ground the arguments within the rich urban context of São Paulo. Subdivided into three large pieces, Chapter 01 is dedicated to three exemplary case studies. Each case is build up in sub-chapters that probe how cultural practices, emerging within three different urban typologies, contribute in developing other dynamics to São Paulo’s central area. Lastly, the Epilogue is presented as a concluding theoretical reflection that zooms out on how those practices multiply on the city scale, in a modest attempt to unveil the processes and lessons behind them for the scientific and professional fields of urbanism.

PROLOGUE: CULTUR[E]SCAPES

CONCEPTS & FRAMEWORKS I CONCEITOS & ABORDAGEM

CULTURE

AGITATION

1. social practices associated to a particular field or group of people;

1. in the sense ‘action, being active’;

2. the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively; 3. improvement of the mind, education; 4. from the Latin colere: 'to tend, guard, cultivate', denoting a piece of land

2. an emotional state of excitement or restlessness; 4. attempt to stir up public feeling; 3. the arousing of public concern about an issue and pressing for action on it

definitions adapted from Merriam-Webster and Oxford Online Dictionaries

This research looks into the culturally produced city as a result of the interaction between the urban structure and its in-fills. The urban structure is embodied in the city’s morphology - its physicality, built forms and spatial qualities, designed or not to accommodate social and cultural practices. The so-called in-fills are formed by the agents and various groups whose practices inject social meanings on space. The result of the constant interaction between these urban cultures and the city structure shapes what is defined here as ‘cultural landscape’. Building on Lima (1996:137), ‘landscape’ encompasses ‘both the questions related to the physical space and the different ways of seeing, grasping and comprehending it […] as well as the idea of the art applied to adequate the land to human use and fruition’. From the notion that space is a physical platform that allows or constrains civic culture to be expressed, a variety of built forms can be identified as places of opportunity for autonomous groups to perform practical interventions. The specific focus is on the cultural practices that occupy spatial cracks, vacant and residual spaces in São Paulo’s central area.

Due to their obsolete status, they open potential gaps to particular designs and provisional uses that have been allowing the city to reinvent itself inside the somehow ‘meaningless’ structures of its own built tissue (Tonkiss, 2013). Beyond the latent situation of the material structure, the absence of social functions often generates vacancy of meaning – a loss in the symbolic representation of a space in the minds of most citizens. To understand the crucial role of the voluntary actions that have been transforming spaces ‘waiting for something to happen’ into ‘spaces to make it happen’, both everyday and insurgent cultural practices will be taken into consideration. Everyday cultural practices are understood as the more userbased experiences of the city, an unconscious and implicit way of taking part in urbanity through day-to-day activities such as walking your dog, jogging, going for a stroll, making a picnic or other experiences and micro-stories that move out of the private sphere (of dwelling, cooking and homemaking) into the public one, i.e. the experience of living in a community or neighbourhood (Giard, 1998).

CULTUR[E]SCAPES

PAISAGENS CULTURAIS

SCENE 1. a specified area of activity or interest. 2. a landscape 3. a place with the people, objects and events in it, regarded as having a particular character or making a particular impression 4. from Latin scena, ‘tent, stage’

INSTANCES 1. particular cases; 2. one of a group or collection that shows what the whole is like

Yet, the everyday sometimes transforms into slips into ‘insurgencies’, as in collective actions that emerge out of necessity or in response to crisis, often questioning and/or breaking free from forms of control, rules and established hierarchies. In this research, insurgent actions are mostly demonstrated as acts of contestation, as the majority of the claims embody specific urban agendas. The insurgent cultural practices discussed on this study have the ‘encounter’ as a starting point - the moment when a group of people, usually at a local scale, starts to commonly share the same inner desires and inquietudes about something that must be changed or enhanced. Those groups, hereby addressed as ‘collectives’, whether small or large scale, manifest in the form of on-site ephemeral events, political articulations, pop-up artistic performances, design interventions (such as unsolicited urban furniture or gardening) amongst other actions that are usually imagined and executed at the same time.

Social practices feed spaces and keep them alive. Spaces give the necessary support to keep social practices alive

A place, an idea and a lot of proactive energy are the basic elements that generate this series of spontaneous experiences of activism – that beyond political assumptions and ‘wishful thinkings’ make quick jumps into the practical field - activating spatial reflections, critical explorations of the city and actual urban transformations that increasingly raise awareness while attracting more and more supporters to join the causes they claim for. Cultur(e)scapes are, therefore, cultural landscapes of ‘escape’ - territories activated by meanings, play fields of encounter, experimentation and temporary disruptions that stray from the more conventional modes of city-making usually covered by the discourses of urban planning, management and branding.

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The chief function of the city is to convert power into form, energy into culture, dead matter into the living symbolsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Mumford, 1961

3 CASES / 9 METAPHORES I 3 CASOS / 9 METÁFORAS

In the endeavour to understand how a variety of urban typologies are turned into laboratories of city-making, three exemplary urban settings located in central São Paulo were chosen as case-studies: a building (1), an open space (2) and a piece of infrastructure (3). 1. The artistic occupation Ouvidor 63 2. An elevated highway popularly named Minhocão 3. An open public space, Praça Franklin Roosevelt Since they work on distinct scales and involve particular constellations of actors, these ‘occupied’ urban spaces were documented and examined in the sub-chapters according to their historical backgrounds, rapports with the city as well as morphological and behavioural traits. The three case studies are analysed by means of nine conceptual metaphors, applied as didactic guiding lenses to build up particular narratives for each one and assist their interpretation. More descriptive fieldwork notes and anecdotes are interposed along the narratives, proposing a more intimate characterization of each space. Each sub-chapter sets off

by a spatial contextualization of the case with an analysis of the urban context and a chronological summary with its most relevant historical facts. The theoretical framework and specific methodologies applied to study each typology is grounded on key authors whose conceptualizations and experiences were taken as essential references to strengthen the statements and empirical findings of the thesis. All in all, a variety of methodological tools are applied for developing the analysis: timelines, documentary photography, photomontages and static timelapses; urban and user mapping as well as technical drawings, schemes and diagrams. Further complemented with text, they illustrate the critical investigations, material qualities and overall performances of each scenario. Their mixed uses are part and parcel of the research in itself, exploring different analytical instruments for coming to terms with the spatial logics of an ever-changing theatre of cultural occupations.

CULTUR[E]SCAPES

PAISAGENS CULTURAIS

SHARED SPACE IN TIME

ESPAÇO COMPARTILHADO NO TEMPO

P.107

IMAGINARY OF THE CITY

IMAGINÁRIO DA CIDADE

P.193

0 KM

1 KM

PRODUCTION OF CULTURE PRODUÇÃO DE CULTURA

P.29

3 CASES / 9 METAPHORES I 3 CASOS / 9 METÁFORAS

The case studies are located within the central ring road of São Paulo, at walkable distance from each other and easily accessible through public transport, as they stand near metro lines (Anhanagabaú, República, Santa Cecília, Marechal Deodoro), bus corridors and terminals (Avenues Consolação and Amaral Gurgel, Bus Terminal Bandeira). The first case study, Ouvidor 63 is located in the neighbourhood of Sé, that together with República delineates the historical core of the inner city. Praça Roosevelt, standing at its edge, is a polygonal shaped

node where several key road axis leading to downtown converge. One of them is the Minhocão viaduct – which overpasses several neighbourhoods direction west-east along its 3,4 km of extension. All three are part of the administrative zone of Subprefeitura da Sé, that for hosting and fostering important public spaces and cultural equipments can be characterized as an area of metropolitan convergence, that paradoxically still holds a large stock of vacant and underused spaces [SEE PROTO-URBANISMS].

CULTUR[E]SCAPES

500 M

PAISAGENS CULTURAIS

OUVIDOR 63

production individual

beauties awake

circus reality

local

can

freely

multiply

hearth

possibilities

finding oppressive living governmental self-achievement

control

economic create child stand

search chaos hope non-physical keep able invisibility society positive expropriations alive existing instrumented orderpleasure objectivation person artistic political self-efficient surender

express

want

artfreedom

new

positivity

believe eternal capitalist revolutionize

artist

aims

see life

feel

try

afraid

act spirit

system resist world fight share think

happiness dailychange value better subvert hold

socio-political self-discovery technocratic involuntary sensitive

bring

work

survive love

feelings responsability

critical

stay

[OV] [MO] [RO] OUVIDOR 63 33

Ouvidor 63 is how an ensemble of artists baptised an abandoned institutional building in the city centre of São Paulo, after breaking its door to found an ‘alternative cultural centre’. Although housing occupations have been a common practice in the central area since the late 1990’s [SEE SELFCONSTRUCTED CITY], such ‘artistic occupations’ are less in quantity, but not less remarkable. Since 2014, Ouvidor 63 has been functioning as a hybrid of dwelling and art atelier to different groups and artistic experiments, that find in the structure a low-cost spatial support to reside, produce, enhance social connections and artistic skills. The occupation gained visibility and jumped out of the city borders, hosting artists in residency from all over Latin America, becoming a cosmopolitan laboratory of human interactions and uncensored creativity.

PRODUCTION OF CULTURE I PRODUÇÃO DE CULTURA

Due to its historical importance, the Sé neighbourhood contains many of the most well-known cultural equipments of the city, such as the Municipal Theatre, that hosted the revolutionary Brazilian Modern Art Week of 1922. Standing right beside Parque Anhangabaú and the metropolitan Bus Terminal Bandeira is Rua do Ouvidor - a narrow pedestrianized street that can be accessed directly through an elevated passerelle that crosses the Terminal. Ouvidor Street then becomes an important passageway for commuters that move in and out of the nearby commercial zones, private offices and institutional buildings. However, the intense circulation of pedestrians, cars and public transport happens only during the day - as the area hardly houses residents - switching at night into a dark and silent part of town.

As economic activities moved to new centralities, numerous former office buildings were left vacated in the city centre. Ouvidor 63 is one of those abandoned structures that has been reoccupied, standing next to various housing occupations within its direct surroundings. They are similar in their fight for housing, sturdy holding on to the right to reside in the centre as both a pragmatic and political statement. Nevertheless, Ouvidor takes a much more artistic stance on ‘living’ in the abandoned fabric of the centre.

[OV] [MO] [RO] OUVIDOR 63

[OV]

100 M

public space

housing occupation

cultural activity

vacant open space

vacant building

commerce

MICROCOSMOS I MICROCOSMO

‘By painting walls and doors, or hanging banners from the windows, the disobedient action is made public’ López, 2015

From the outside, the building is a mix of strangeness and excitement - a sort of ‘haunted castle’ that triggers the curiosity. The ‘tower’, as occupants call it, screams to the city through its graffitied facade and broken windows. A scream that resonates in the wide open space of Terminal Bandeira, ribbed by footbridges and bus-docks where every commuter somehow has to face the ‘castle’ and its claiming walls. The front facade has large and generous windows - or rather, window-frames - since the majority of the glass is missing or replaced. At the pedestrian level, the doors

remain mostly closed, as the building is almost fortified. However, the multitude of paintings and tags on the outside turn it far away from a neutral interface with the city. Its three main entrance gates merge within one colourful mural of drawings and words and even an umbrella is incorporated to the facade - protecting a painted fellow from the rain and attesting that inhabitants must have quite creative minds.

[OV] [MO] [RO] OUVIDOR 63

MICROCOSMOS I MICROCOSMO

Transformation of the buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s main entrance after the artists settled in

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Accessing Ouvidor 63 is a quite conscious and sometimes laborious act. Whenever entering or leaving, an uncommon ritual unfolds at the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;gatesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; of the tower. Its metallic front door offers no visual connection between the inside and the outside, except for a 20cm square window. A lock and a chain are hidden on the inner side of the door and inhabitants, through the small window, must blindly reach the lock, untangle the chain and push away the heavy bolt to free the passage.

Ouvidor 63 is an exemplary artistic squat in São Paulo. The building houses an organic community of quite eccentric personalities continuously adapting to their own aspirations. Currently, around 100 artists reside in the building. The notion of ‘artist’ is broad enough to fit a wide range of profiles, as the inhabitants have different backgrounds, nationalities, vocations and ‘seasonalities’ - part of them live permanently while others are traveling by or spending only a few months. Incomers are mostly within a network of trust between friends or acquaintances of those already inside the occupation. Some engage in Ouvidor by choice, in the purpose of living out of the system, using art as a tool to express their personalities and discontentments with the living standards imposed by society. For those who move in out of necessity, the low costs of life allows them to feed their families, continue their studies or find job opportunities in the city centre.

Permanently or temporarily, it is possible to reside in the occupation for one week or for years, according to what best fits the needs. Since no signed contracts or taxes are required, it is a rather flexible housing offer not so easily available on the conventional real state market. The percentage of permanent and more temporary/recent dwellers is quite balanced. When asked ‘from how long they have been living in Ouvidor’, 58% of 26 residents answered to be settled from 24 to 06 months, while 42% have been inside from 06 months to one week. The collective experience of getting along - in Portuguese ‘convivência’ (con - with, vivência - experience) - is a daily challenge. The interesting matrix of life cycles and characters is put in harmony by a set of basic cohabitation rules, where all residents have the compromise to be proactive and contribute as much as possible with the life in the ‘microcosmos’ 1.

1 The title Microcosmos was inspired by an experimental documentary recorded by Letícia Pires and Bruna Rodrigues inside the occupation

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MICROCOSMOS MICROCOSMO

By contesting the standard institutional organizations created for permanence and treating the individual as a ‘dispensable element’ – the autonomous organization inside Ouvidor 63 is deliberately contingent and opened to constant processes of reflection (Karamichas, 2015). The main internal decisions are made through consensus, in the form of open assemblies that take place every week and gather all the dwellers interested in discussing, suggesting topics or solving specific issues of the common life, generally led by a spokesperson or representatives of each floor. It is also the moment when new incomers are introduced to the existing occupants, so that it is clear for all who is living or passing by the occupation, their intentions and connections.

One tries to take all voices into account in the decision-making processes, although, since no leaders or upper voices are imposed, reaching conclusions and closures runs much slower than in a regular hierarchical structure. The heterarchical process functions as a sort of ‘social algorithm’ of individual inputs that in the end results in a combination of compromises to be followed be the personages involved. Over the course of 2 years, navigating between exposure and intimacy, individual expressions and collective dialogue, order and chaos, this complex social structure took over the abandoned office building and transformed it into their own symbolic piece of architecture.

During fieldwork we lived in the ninth floor of Ouvidor 63 for a week, under the banner of master students interested in researching and documenting the occupation.The access was granted thanks to acquaintances, as outsiders are not freely accepted in the occupation unless they come with a purpose or an ideology that matches their own. Among the requirements, inhabitants must be related to art, truly open-minded and willing to live inside a system that is far from the usual comfort zones

MICROCOSMOS I MICROCOSMO

The former office building, with 3.412 m2 of floor area, is structured by a rigid grid of concrete pillars and beams that enable open floor plans and large window frames. The absence of fixed subdivisions give way to varied living arrangements that form the spatiality of each storey, that following the building’s staggered shape vary from 270 to 80m2, some with or without full-length terraces. The inherent ‘liberty’ implied by the building’s decayed structure is not deterministic in terms of imposing layout arrangements, allowing it to be inhabited in different ways according to the occupants needs and social configurations.

10m

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11 FAMILY UNIT

12 LATINO’S LAND

13 INDIVIDUAL CABINS

13 COMMON GARDEN

07 SEVENTH HEAVEN

08 ART ATELIER NUVENTRE

09 GUEST HOUSE

10 STREET ART

03 MUSICIANS CHAMBER

04 KID’S FRIENDLY

05 MULTI-ARTS

06 CIRCUS REALM

-1 GARAGE

00 PORÃO DAS ARTES

01 BODYWORK

02 RAIO2

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As documented in this artistsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; catalogue from February/2016, the groups inhabiting Ouvidor 63 are generally united through common interests, ideologies or even the same mother language or nationality. Each floor organically develops their own rules and rhythms, valuable as long as they do not hurt the general agreements of the collective. As smaller social units of a community, those unique worlds encapsulated in every storey are characterized by several interior installations, improvised yet inventive.

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nationalities

transport

incentivizes survival various solidarity characteristics lots

people

knowledge

society stimulant one self-accomplishments forms self-developing without

alernative amount system

freedom

revolutionary

everyday

learn space

rent

growth 24h community

independently open interact

life

chaotic need

different accessibility

intolerant costs place acquire help

meeting

artistic relative experiences

lot

live

learning

high collective day self-development subverts means flourish

can

art pay

services new

continuous creativity

convivĂŞncia

build

many friends occupation sharing within

good

work

centre residence kindsartists

MICROCOSMOS I MICROCOSMO

interaction

issues

The artist’s catalogue and word clouds result from a profile build-up questionnaire proposed to residents during fieldwork in Ouvidor 63. Questions were related to personal information, trajectories of the occupants and overall life in the occupation. The quotes are reflections about the role of the artist in today’s society and how they think their art contributes to the city. A profile photo-shoot was proposed after the

decisions

living confortable

outside prevents maintain way eviction

proper

difficult

can structure prejudice unhealthy process different

personal

collective

building

conditions occupation

still

oppressed

insecurity

privacy others time

precarious get

personalities

position

lack

eviction centre infiltrations

lot

individuals difficulties

intimacy convivência organization

interacting

economically

suffers

long aspects even artistic socially positive concerning self-management

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sometimes respect

questionnaire, where each occupant had the choice to hold an object related to the art they perform or any other personal item characteristic to them. Hereby translated by word clouds are Ouvidor’s commentaries on positive, negative and symbolic aspects of the community life. Some words, such as convivência, are recurrent in both of them.

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‘To occupy not just as an aesthetic act, but as a statement for the artists’ struggle in today’s society’ Carlinhos de Moraes, 47, inhabitant of the second floor

The building has 13 floors and counts three main areas for communal use: the underground garage (-1), a ground floor split in two levels (00A and 00B) and an accessible rooftop.

elevators and a spiral staircase. The rational construction also compressed toilets, kitchenettes and water tanks in the same vertical structure, serving each floor.

The garage and the ground floor salon (00-B) can be accessed directly from the street. Both doors are mostly opened during public events. The independent hallway on the left corner of the building (00A) is used as the resident’s private entrance. Once inside, the entrance hallway leads to the main circulation core, formed by a pair of deactivated

As the building is still owned by the state, electricity and water come from the city network. They are distributed through a parasite labyrinth of pipes and wires anchored on original system.

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View from the entrance into the hallway and the staircase

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View from the staircase into the hallway and entrance gate

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ENTRADA 00A ENTRANCE

The entrance hallway has no system of permanent surveillance, being opened and closed by those carrying copies of the front door locker, usually in the pocket of the most permanent dwellers. At all times of the day, a common scene is to cross people waiting for someone to open the front gate so they can come in or out of the building. The feeling of security inside is assured thought mutual recognitions - if a strange face is spotted on the building, all residents are allowed to question with whom that person is related to in the occupation.

MICROCOSMOS I MICROCOSMO

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00A STAIRCASE ESCADARIA It is the main passageway to access the floors, all of them preceded by an entrance hallway. Browsing through the hallways is an artistic experience in itself - it is hard to find a centimetre that is not painted or written. Each group spontaneously imprints its own identity as a sort of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;welcome cardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, making the entrances graphically interesting, recognizable and telling. By bombarding the inside walls of the building with colours, drawings, posters and poetry, they turn the concrete structure into a constant visual metamorphosis.

< Different athmospheres along the staircase and the hallways of each floor

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The general meetings are also held weekly on the ground floor

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FLOOR 00B GROUND TÉRREO

PORÃO DAS ARTES

Connected to the main entrance, two common areas were set up to host larger scale cultural activities, events and meetings: the garage (-1) and the ground floor salon. The ground floor salon (00-B), named Porão das Artes - the ‘arts basement’ - works as the main meeting room and as an improvised theatre. The installations of a former lunch counter (brazilian lanchonete) are now used as a temporary bar to cater the events and generate income. Both spaces are often re-arranged to host parties, circus variety presentations, rehearsals and other artistic performances and exhibitions organized by the Ouvidor community or in partnership with other collectives.

< Improvised theatre space on the back of the salon, where general meetings are also held weekly

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Ground floor salon with sitting spaces made out of pallets. The cut walls give access to the bar and the bathrooms

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FLOOR 02 SECOND SEGUNDO ANDAR R.A.I.O.2

República Autônoma independente Organizada 2° andar

The second floor is inhabited by around 8 people. Its living room with large sitting areas accommodates not only daily life but is used to organise gatherings, debates and film projections opened to the public. The walls are permanent exhibition spaces and they also keep an open library and a wood sculpture workspace standing right beside the kitchen.

Paintings based on afro-brazilian culture stand next to the ongoing production of drums

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FLOOR 03 THIRD TERCEIRO ANDAR

MUSICIANS CHAMBER

On the 3rd floor, a rock band - Nicolas nĂŁo tem Banda (Nicolas doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have a Band) uses the space to live and rehearse, keeping their own homemade music studio, also available for outside musicians willing to record inside the occupation. The band members, originally from Porto Alegre (Rio Grande do Sul), were among the first idealizers who broke down the front door to found Ouvidor 63.

Part of the floor intentionally left free for the band rehearsals

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The sixth floor common space, a mix of living room and juggling playground

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FLOOR 06 SIXTH SEXTA ANDAR

CIRCUS REALM

The 5th floor is populated by welcoming LatinoAmerican street artists. Most of them are traveling through the southern continent in a rather nomadic lifestyle, single or as a family. Inside Ouvidor, they speak PortuĂąol - a portuguese-spanish mix - to communicate with the other fellow Brazilians. Juggling balls, hula-hoops, contact balls and other circus objects are a dominant part of the floorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s scenography.

One of the sleeping rooms of the sixth floor, shared by around three artists

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FLOOR 07 SEVENTH SÉTIMO ANDAR

SEVENTH HEAVEN

In Ouvidor’s ‘micro-cosmology’, the floor number seven becomes the ‘seventh heaven’. Those entering its hallway are welcomed by sky blue walls, floating clouds and quote that states - ‘each individual is fantastic inside its own world’.

Painted hallway of the seventh floor

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Open art atelier at the 8th floor

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FLOOR 08 EIGHTH OITAVO ANDAR ART ATELIER

The 8th floor works as an atelier where artists have free access to come in and produce at all times of the day as well as use the space to display their art pieces or organize workshops open to the public. Wood engraving, sewing, and calligraphy are some of the modalities practiced. It is the home for a collection of furniture, paintings, costumes, sculptures and atypical objects collected or handicrafted by the artists of Ouvidor or visiting fellows. Production is active day and night, which makes it one of the most lively spaces inside the occupation.

< All sorts of materials are used to support the artistic creations, whatever time of the day

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FLOOR 09 NINTH NONO ANDAR

GUEST HOUSE

The inhabitants of the ninth floor took advantage of the sunny and large balcony to start setting up an edible garden using recycled fruit boxes, bottles and buckets. There are no refrigerators inside the floor and guests are invited to join their vegan diet based on plants, vegetables, grains, nuts and fruits. They also welcome and foster students, researchers and those interested in collaborating with the occupation and the roomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s philosophy.

Outside balcony of the 9th floor

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FLOOR 10 TENTH DĂ&#x2030;CIMO ANDAR STREET ART

Divided in three private bedrooms facing a common salon, this floor is a gathering of street artists from various modalities, among them graffiti, tattooing and break-dancing - sometimes all at once.

Costumized walls of the private rooms and the long common salon

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11 ELEVENTH FLOOR

DÉCIMO PRIMEIRO ANDAR FAMILY UNIT

It is the only floor hosting a single family - father, son, his girlfriend and sometimes visiting friends [SEE ARTISTS’ CATALOGUE PAGE 49-50]. The young couple have formal jobs outside the occupation, an exception among the other residents.

The family cat and a Holy Bible complete the living room. On the back, a bedroom built in with recycled plywood

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13 THIRTEENTH FLOOR

DÉCIMO TERCEIRO ANDAR INDIVIDUAL CABINS

The thirteenth floor is the former technical area of the building, composed of a compartment that possibly stored the elevator machinery and a back room with bathroom and kitchenette, supposedly destined to the host a janitor. Today they serve as home for two artists. It has also has a small corridor with a flight of stairs to access the building’s rooftop.

Santiago [SEE ARTISTS’

CATALOGUE PAGE 49-50]

lives in the 13,7 m2 compartment among his juggling objects and costumes

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13 ROOFTOP COBERTURA

COMMON GARDEN

Up on the rooftop, a garden of edible plants and vegetables is cultivated by the community, where everyone is allowed to plant and harvest. They also use the top of the buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ancient water tanks to small gatherings, functioning as a belvedere to enjoy the scenic view over the skyscrapers of the city centre.

< Rooftop garden, protected by fences but keeping a view over the city centre

The Ouvidor 63 ideology is not just about being free from the way society is framed into institutions, but from how it is driven to excessive consumption - starting by the act of occupying an empty building, that is in itself is a statement against real estate surplus. Auto-proclaimed as ‘urban composters’, the act of recycling - from the place they live to their own food - is how Ouvidor 63 takes advantage of society’s excesses and turn it into fertile soil to live and produce art. A commonly heard term employed by the residents to explain those practices is Freeganism 1 - defined as ‘strategies for living based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources,such as: waste reclamation,waste minimization,eco-friendly transportation,rentfree housing, working less hours, gardening and wild foresting’. This lifestyle based on ‘composting’ - in other words, gathering ‘decayed materials’ to convert them into something useful - is an essential part of life in the building’s daily routine. 1 Definition from the website http://freegan.info.

As artists, they perceive creative potential in the most varied objects found in the trash around the city, incorporating or transforming them into art pieces, furniture, room dividers, musical instruments and so forth. Urban foraging, one of the most notorious freegan strategies, is nicknamed in Ouvidor as ‘Shopping Rua’ - the street as a shopping mall: ‘This technique involves rummaging through the garbage of retailers, residences, offices, and other facilities for useful goods. Despite our society’s stereotypes about garbage, the goods recovered by freegans are safe, useable, clean, and in perfect or near-perfect condition, a symptom of a throwaway culture that encourages us to constantly replace our older goods with newer ones, and where retailers plan high-volume product disposal as part of their economic model. Some urban foragers go at it alone, others dive in groups, but we always share the discoveries openly with one another and with anyone along the way who wants them’ 1.

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URBAN COMPOSTER(S)

COMPOSTEIROS URBANOS

Part of the food diet inside the occupation follows the same path. Twice or three times a week the occupants have the habit of collecting food leftovers from restaurants and overripe fruits and vegetables from the big markets, specially at São Paulo’s Municipal Market (Mercadão), located at a 20min walking distance from Ouvidor. Most of the groceries found no longer meet the standards to be put on sale but are still suitable to be consumed.

To live and/or produce inside Ouvidor is completely free of charges, money is only gathered collectively to fix common infrastructural problems like water, sewage or electricity. Not being chained to property charges creates a sort of ‘indirect subsidy’ in which part of the money earned (that in a conventional system would go to rent) can be channelled into other personal improvements, as some of the residents are able to pay for professionalizing courses.

Besides food, paying for a place to live is definitely what consumes the largest portion of the paulistano’s salary - the usual rent for a single dwelling São Paulo today is situated around R$ 1000,00 (one thousand Reais, around 250€), whilst the minimum national salary reached R$880,00 (220€) in the beginning of 2016 2.

In being so, making money is definitely not a goal nor an ideal for the occupants in Ouvidor, but to fully survive it still remains a necessary evil. From the 26 occupants interviewed, only 2 had a formal paid job, so the main form of subsistence still remains on working autonomously, mainly though punctual and temporary ‘gigs’ - freelancing, tattooing, playing in concerts, crafting, making scenography pieces for theatre plays, and what else creativity allows.

2 Rousseff, Dilma. DECRETO Nº 8.618, DE 29.12.2015

URBAN COMPOSTER(S) I COMPOSTEIROS URBANOS

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‘Nowadays it is very hard to find spaces where

you can freely produce the art you believe in without being linked to any capitalist expropriation or formalized approaches They usually manipulate who and what kind of art .

can be funded.

In Ouvidor

we create our own scapeways to

not waste our lifetime and creations waiting on the economic and political system. The money we save by not paying rent - both for a place to live and for a place to produce - and not having to buy expensive materials gives us the possibility of materializing our ideas by having a small relationship with ‘the capital’. Money would go only to buy basic tools and machineries.

We prefer to use

recycled materials

and spend the less money possible

in the production

of our art, to not worry about having to sell it in large quantities and for

inaccessible prices.

Since we don’t depend on a lot of money to survive, we don’t intend to produce objects only for sale. The money we make goes to food, clothing and other basic needs,

such as buying school material, in the case of the students living in the

’

building

Carlinhos de Moraes, 47, inhabitant of the second floor (February, 2016)

URBAN COMPOSTER(S) I COMPOSTEIROS URBANOS

Night expedition to collect unsold food in the municipal market, February 2016

The weekly expeditions to Mercadão (located within 15-20min walking distance from the occupation) usually happen from midnight to 5 o’clock in the morning, when suppliers unload kilos of fruits and vegetables to be sold on the market and its surrounding grocery stores. The aim of this recycling mission is mainly to spot food in good condition that fell down from the trucks or to ask inside the grocery shops if they have food ‘to give away’, meaning partially rotten or deformed perishables that are still edible

but would probably go straight to the dumper if not sold. When asked, some vendors can act indifferently while others are generous, giving away entire boxes of bananas, kilos of eggplants or huge watermelons. Most of the times those trips end up successfully and the residents of Ouvidor 63 come back with full shopping carts of fruits and vegetables. The full cart is levelled up through the staircase and divided among the floors of each participant, that later are transformed in abundant meals at zero cost.

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Drawing inspired on the Brazilian garbage pickers - the catadores - that travel around the city to collect, sort and sell discarded materials for their own subsistence Authors: Rodolfo Ferraz (A.K), Robson Santos (Robn Roots)

[RECYCLING / COLLECTING]

URBAN COMPOSTER(S) I COMPOSTEIROS URBANOS

Djembes molded out of wooden logs or old PVC sewer pipes, on the second floor

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Recycled wood and fabrics are used to mount frames and serve as canvas for paintings Artwork by Sirius Amen, 8th floor

[COMPOSTING / PRODUCING]

URBAN COMPOSTER(S) I COMPOSTEIROS URBANOS

The organization of the second floor is an example of how the ‘composting’ dynamics unfold inside the built space of the building. Nearly all the objects and art pieces are crafted from materials cast aside on sidewalks and dumpers of the centre, some sold as a way to generate income and others destined to collective use. Their open library, made out of donated books and recycled shelves and a wardrobe of second hand clothes are examples of how those ‘captured’ leftovers can be reconverted into functional home decorations. The shared kitchen is where the daily meals are prepared, using the unsold fruits and vegetables collected at the city’s public market (Mercadão).

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Extrapolating the building walls, Ouvidor 63 sprout its seeds by collaborating with other collectives and their causes, gaining a lot of visibility as a non bureaucratic and ‘free of charge’ spatial support to artistic practices. Its non-conventional modus operandi is always questioning itself and the modes of urban production in which they are ‘a part of’ and ‘apart from’, as the community is at the same time against the economic city dynamics but also feeding itself from it. The city becomes a place of opportunity to the daily subsistence of the residing artists when they put themselves outside to broadcast their talents in exchange of money. Even having to dodge illegality - as making music or selling art in the streets or in the subway carriages without authorization is considered an illegal practice in São Paulo. They resist in colonizing street corners, crosswalks, squares and public transport lines as a claim to be recognized and valued as agents contributing to the liveliness of the urban environment.

Those inside-out flows are part of the daily routine for many residents, stretching also to the metropolitan areas of the city (the east, west, north and south zones). Although most of times they do not need to go far away from home - living in the centre gives them opportunity to explore the potential of such a resourceful area by being near important stations, markets, cultural facilities, commercial and business areas. The occupation, by injecting street life into a former vacant area, also became a coadjuvant of that dynamics [SEE THE PHOTOMONTAGE PAGE 103-104]. Going the other way around, the attempts to aggregate more people inside the occupation on a regular basis are not fully developed, as a permanent agenda of events opened to the public has not yet been elaborated. At this moment, the most common ways Ouvidor 63 opens its doors to the city are by promoting small scale events, such as the ‘varietés’ - where a set of various circus performances are organized and free contributions

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ARTBOMBING THE CITY SEMEANDO ARTE PELA CIDADE

are asked at the end of the spectacle. Free open band rehearsals, classes of yoga, capoeira dancing, violin, crafting, and tarot reading have also been offered, for free or costing a small symbolic fee. The modalities are always varying, according to the talents and availability of those inside willing to share their skills. They also play the role of a low threshold exposition space and atelier for young artists that havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t yet reached the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;mainstreamâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; culturalartstic circuits. More recently, the occupation is also opened to team up with universities, schools, researchers and other stakeholders interested in supporting the cause and collaborating to legitimize their practices.

Despite their intentions, the perception of the occupation from the outside is rather contentious, as the global tendency of squatting is not well placed in the imaginary of most paulistanos. It is still difficult for Ouvidor 63 to gain credibility as a cultural centre regarding their clandestine

status, the overall conditions of the building and their socially unconventional lifestyle. But while it is a stranger to some, it is also a reference to others - the resident artists are constantly engaging themselves to other collectives, housing and artistic occupations, building up network of independent initiatives and collaborative events.

ARTBOMBING THE CITY I SEMEANDO ARTE PELA CIDADE

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‘We are tuned to all

the voices of the city and their

claims structuring ourselves to create authenticity .

For that, we have been

on the bases of the movement legitimate our discourse and reunite ,

to people

organize ourselves and build a real

manifest

as an

Artistic Occupation, that does not deny its

political role

’

at any moment.

Published on Ocupa Ouvidor 63 online page on 18.05.2014

ARTBOMBING THE CITY I SEMEANDO ARTE PELA CIDADE

This drawing, made in collaboration with Carlinhos de Moraes, shows how the occupation expands from inside the building to re-animate other spaces of the city, connect with other cultural venues, support other occupations and welcome outsiders willing to collaborate in documenting or proposing activities inside Ouvidor 63.

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Assemblage of posters of the various events organized inside the occupation during its 2 years of existence - parties, festivals, workshops, discussion sessions, performances and art exhibitions are on the agenda Posters collected from Ocupa Ouvidor 63 online page on June 2016

ARTBOMBING THE CITY I SEMEANDO ARTE PELA CIDADE

Jorge Paulo Prado, inhabitant of 9th floor, answering the questions of the participants

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Undergraduate students of Architecture and Urbanism attending and registering the event

While in SĂŁo Paulo, two debate sessions were organized together with the occupants of the second floor. In the form of an open forum and accompanied by homemade pizzas, the event Pizza na Torre (Pizza in the Tower) brought themes related to Ouvidor 63 to be debated among the artists, students, scholars and other enthusiasts of the subject. The relationship between Ouvidor 63 and the city, its ideologies, alternative ways of living, as well as the future of the occupation and its community were some of the topics discussed.

100 ARTBOMBING THE CITY I SEMEANDO ARTE PELA CIDADE

‘[...] things step up to a level where squatters get more socially, culturally and politically active. Instead of a house just for living, the building may be transformed into a public venue open to any kind of activities. For instance, it may serve as a meeting place for different political groups and campaigns who cannot enjoy other convenient or non censored spaces for their activities’ Lopéz, 2015

The mobilization of the Ouvidor community built up a widespread social network with several collectives of the city, that together with the inhabitants keep the wheels of culture and art turning inside the occupation.

Static time-lapse of quotidian scenes and cultural agitations performed by the Ouvidor 63 inhabitants when outside the building.

104 PRODUCTION OF CULTURE I PRODUÇÃO DE CULTURA

Ouvidor 63 is a laboratory of cohabitation, artistic cultivations and aesthetic experiences. The challenge to build up a collective identity grounded on dialoguing and sharing, when involving such peculiar personas, becomes a rather laborious yet dynamic process. The internal rules of co-habitation are constantly being provoked and reinvented, adapting to the new incomers and the more emergent needs of the community. It is a model that allows free associations and connectivities between the inhabitants, translated by the way each floor is differently appropriated and cultivates its own independence although having to work as part of the same ‘ecosystem’. The experience of living within the picturesque walls follows no strict routines, schedules or heavy social obligations - what makes time inside runs much slower that in the hectic life of an average paulistano. The struggle against precarity is also a concern to be taken into account, as dwelling in a building enclosed for several years demands great collective efforts to overcome issues of sanitation and the overall repairs. The living standards are way far from the comfort of a regular condominium, giving way to a series of creative improvisations that, out of necessity, domesticated the bare dusty walls into a folksy environment to accommodate from the smallest ordinary events of daily life to the most original artistic expressions.

Alexander Vasudevan (2015:21), on his essay about spatial politics of squatting in Berlin, states that ‘The seizure of place by squatters is in itself an exercise of place making: squatters, by building their own homes, are creating their own world (Neuwirth, 2006: 306).This process of dwellingthrough-construction […] is a product of countless everyday acts of adjustment and assembly, negotiation and improvisation (McFarlane, 2011: 656). The lived city of squatters is, after all, a city structured by the shifting inequities that have come to characterize contemporary urbanization’. Ouvidor 63 managed to ‘place make’ their own nonconventional form of art-residency - away from white-walled art galleries, bureaucratic bids and contracts, top-down curators or any kind of patronage. It comes out as an autoinitiative that envisioned the act of occupying as an ultimate resource to materialize political and ideological aspirations of a group into an ensemble of socio-spatial experimentations - even if it implies crossing forbidden lines and abdicating some individual wills in the name of collectivity. Hence, squatting becomes an act to ‘challenge society’s denial of place by taking one of your own, transforming it into ‘a place of collective world making, a place to imagine alternative worlds, to express anger and solidarity,

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to explore new identities and different intimacies, to experience and share new feelings, and to defy authority and live autonomously’ (Gould, Kaangiester, 2015:15). It can be taken as a form of social resistance against the modes of urban production in which these artists are ‘a part of’ but, at the same time, ‘apart from’ - as quotidian ‘juggling’ exercise, they alternate between a life inside the self-made world of the occupation and the search for subsistence at an outside world ruled by defined standards. Over the course of two years and after a number ups and downs, the occupation gained the reputation of a impromptu cultural centre, living by a small budget and the pro-activeness of its members. Hence, it managed to develop its own other-economies, interchanges of skills and knowledge between the residents as well as constant attempts to enhance their social role, create an agenda of activities and connections with other initiatives of the same nature - consolidating as counterweight model to the regular art venues spread around the city. It became indeed clean how this peculiar cultural occupation pieced together an intriguing microcosmos inside the obsolete structure of the formerly vacated building by ‘composting’ the waste produced by the outside city - an

abandoned construction, left over materials, unwanted food and scattered objects - remodelling and reassembling them into dwellings and art. Furthermore, the resulting ‘cultural production’ extends from beyond the walls of the occupation, continuously ‘art-bombing’ the city with popup interventions, meetings and cultural events that are not given a place yet in the more conventional order of the city. As reflected by Miguel López (2015:10), squatting to make room for cultural production ‘not only constitutes a valuable gesture towards opening up possibilities for underground and counter-cultural manifestations which are banned from the mainstream and commercial spaces, but is also a powerful engine to bring about wider social diversity in the various political exercises of self-management of free, albeit usually temporary spaces’. (Moore & Smart, 2015:10).

MINHOCÃO

109

110

multiple available

opportunity possibility gainedsymbol controversial structure different

slowdown

interaction

useful

connection

east-west streets countless sports open-street walkability convivĂŞncia section

viaduct

peopleleisure

exercice

function

peaceful

free-cars

open

new

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The second case study is the viaduct popularly named MinhocĂŁo - a top-down implemented piece of infrastructure that cuts through neighbourhoods of the city centre and brought along traffic jams, noise and a series of left-over spaces. Citizens were forced to adapt to its insertion, resulting in a series of complaints and successive legislations to close it for cars at night and on weekends - reversing its modes of appropriation and inviting to new uses and urban practices. Nowadays, increasingly used by people, the viaduct status is pending between a highway and a public space - and so are the opinions and aims of the paulistanos about its future destiny.

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The arrival of Minhocão shifted the dynamics of its adjacencies leaving behind a tissue that today is composed of high and low rise residential buildings, vacated historic constructions and small scale public spaces of nonpermanence, mostly near the big avenues or transportation lines (i.e Praça Marechal Deodoro or Largo do Arouche). A great number of popular commercial activities settled on the ground floors (shops, bar, restaurants, supermarkets), characterizing its current heterogeneity. However, the disinterest of owners and heirs to keep on investing in their properties after the highway started functioning created

a sort of ‘grey zone’ around the viaduct. Some of the residential buildings are quite precarious, yet of affordable rent compared to those more distanced to the viaduct. The progressive conversion of Minhocão into an elevated park can also become one of the future vectors of change, as it is a bait to attract private real estate investments.

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100 M

public space

housing occupation

cultural activity

vacant open space

vacant building

commerce

green walls painted walls

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FLEXIBLE INFRASTRUCTURE INFRA-ESTRUTURA FLEXÍVEL

In its original conception, Minhocão was designed as monofunctional corridor to hold maximum flows of vehicles on a daily basis. Pedestrian appropriation - nor appreciation - was on the agenda. Progressively, the legislations that led to its closure endowed the viaduct with a hybrid status - during the week days, it works as a crucial mobility axe in one of the most congested areas of the city, with intense traffic jams at least four days a week on rush hours 1.

1 Magazine Veja São Paulo, 20.05.2015

Every evening and on weekends it becomes a completely carfree, popular and highly frequented linear park.Those two very distinctive uses, separated by time, immersed the concrete mega-structure into a particular condition of ‘in-betweenness’, hence open to multiple appropriations and interpretations. The following timetable of Minhocão shows when it is being used by cars (every weekday from 6h30 to 21h30) and by pedestrians (everyday from 21h30 to 6h30 and on weekends starting Saturday at 15h).

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126 FLEXIBLE INFRASTRUCTURE I INFRA-ESTRUTURA FLEXÍVEL

Everyday, at 9.30pm sharp, the entrances of Minhocão are closed for cars. Ten to fifteen minutes before the closing time people start stretching and warming up around those entrances, warming up for a night exercise while waiting for the cars to leave. Once the watch hits thirty, joggers, bikers, skaters and dog-walkers enter the highway to conquer their space between the last cars. The late drivers seem quite used to the scene and also slow down the pace. The feeling of redemption and freedom is undeniable - in such a congested megalopolis, cars are for once submissive to human presence, having to dodge from people to escape the viaduct. This everyday claim for the highway is definitely reinforcing that São Paulo is experiencing a shift in the mindset about the use of public space.

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128 FLEXIBLE INFRASTRUCTURE I INFRA-ESTRUTURA FLEXÍVEL

‘If the benefits of elevated travel for cars are many - no interruptions from cross streets, expedited connection among neighbourhoods, slicing through swaths of the city untouched the Minhocão’s sort of elevated park offers the same simple benefits for bikers, joggers, and pedestrians’ Julia Cooke, Curbed webzine, 2015

Smoke, cars and sadness versus happiness, freedom and green. Minhocão’s double-sided condition is also reflected in the minds of citizens who perceive it as potential public space. Mental map author: Paulo Neves, 37 y/o, inhabitant of Bela Vista > Comes every Sunday to Minhocão to bike and rollerblade

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The latent potential of Minhocão as a public space is embedded in the notion that it was appropriated, in the popular mindset, as a sort of ‘grey canvas’ that constantly sparks urban utopias and supports various manifestations of creativity. What is there to do on an asphalted highway? Nothing and everything, at the same time. Since the viaduct was not re-qualified or received any improvements to welcome non-motorized use, this task is left to the users - that build their own ephemeral scenarios to appropriate the viaduct according to their needs, wishes and unique ideas. This interplay of uses and temporalities attributes multiple identities to the same territory, giving the ‘concrete earthworm’ a sense of place and belonging.

Looking at Minhocão spatially, it is possible to recognize how some of the different seizures behave along its main interfaces. The ensemble of the viaduct is mainly composed by the asphalted upper surface, its under street and concrete columns as well as the façades and blind walls of the surrounding buildings.

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‘Large pieces of transportation infrastructure have traditionally been built to address a singular, perfor-

mance-driven use, and those conceived and

built at a particular moment in history were often to accommodate (or privilege) . Precisely because of these attributes, they serve as translators between adjacent systems, producing as byproduct large

over-engineered other layers above, below and adjacent volumes of space with odd relationships to surrounding buildings, streets,

and their respective orientations. These transportation

systems offer a scaffold that is scaled to the city, relevant to its history, and generally oversized but underused – structures that

have the latent potential to organize

public space more actively and to support a vibrant mixture

of urban programs based on immediate local needs and conditions’ John McGill, The Culver Viaduct. Urban Omnibus Online Journal, 2010

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Upper slab

The upper surface and its openness allows conviviality, despite the ‘brutal’ and cold materiality of the asphalt. It works as a linear belvedere to appreciate the city from above - a full length walk on top of Minhocão can take around 2 hours. The highway is formed of four-lanes, separated in two bidirectional tracks crossing both east and westbound, without intersections. They are fenced on both sides and separated by a pre-fabricated concrete curb, that also holds light poles and signs - all part of the security devices installed to meet the operative needs of the viaduct. It is all about double functionality - when cars are gone, the long ribbon with soft inclinations and curves provides a complete set-up also to activities and softer mobilities.

Middle curb

Guard-rails

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Blind walls and facades

Columns Under street

Bike lanes

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When the sun is down, a soft golden light values the painted pieces of art present on the blind walls along MinhocĂŁo. The upper slab is striped by the shadows of the multiple towers surrounding the viaduct - rhythming the comings and goings of people and defining shaded areas of permanence for those willing to rest. Bikers, pedestrians, strollers, skaters, joggers and dogwalkers are the most frequent users, characterizing a quite sportive and athletic atmosphere, that despite the different modalities and speeds move through the highway in convivial fluxes, most of the time. Those on a calmer pace generally sit on the middle curb while watching the passers-by.

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[Yoga class on a Sunday morning at MinhocĂŁo] Yoga da Marina is an initiative that brings people every Sunday morning to practice yoga on MinhocĂŁo. Organized through an online Facebook group, the enthusiast teacher weekly invites whoever wants to step away from the hectic pace of the city for an hour. The class gathers around 10 people every weekend. At first sight, it seems hard to find comfort and peace of mind sitting on a highway, in the middle of a metropolitan never-stopping city. But being able to (re)connect and centre yourself within the surrounding landscape proved to be a quite pleasant experience.

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Various scales of appropriations and installations happen above the viaduct. Its elevated and elongated surface allows to freely bike, skate, jog, walk the dog or simply take a slow promenade contemplating the high-rise urban landscape of São Paulo. The more stationary activities take place in the middle curb, whose ideal sitting height turned it into a long bench. Also, it is usually reconverted into table (for picnics, sipping drinks, etc) or even in a ‘concrete bed’ to lay down, sunbath, sell goods and teach yoga, as seen in the previous scene.

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The character of the practices vary from spontaneous Sunday picnics, small-scale gatherings or dance parties to highly organized events, like festivals and marathons. Here the marathon took place in February 2016. Minhocรฃo was part of the running track from Estรกdio do Pacaembu towards the city centre.

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Independent markets organized along the middle curb

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Coconut vendor awaiting for costumers on top of MinhocĂŁo

Connected to those happenings is the presence of occasional market stands and food trucks, independent second-hand sales, exchange flea markets and street vendors - who are frequently strolling during weekends, selling cold beverages to refresh the daily sojourns.

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In red, the bike lanes crossing under Minhocão

In opposition to the upper slab, the covered space underneath is a place of non-permanence, where people are in constant transition thought various transportation modes, as it contains bike lanes, bus terminals and a double lane road for cars on each side. The lower part of Minhocão still has an active street life during the day with small shops and bars, but fades during the night, when it is opened to pedestrians ‘upstairs’. The

covered surface also becomes a refuge to homeless people and groups, who found here a place protected from the sun, the rain and the public eye to settle. The implementation of bike lanes reduced their number and some of them were also relocated to shelters, but their presence can still be spotted in between the bike lanes or occupying small squares adjacent to Minhocão, such as Largo do Arouche and Praça Marechal Deodoro.

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[Sunday market at Santa Cecília] Sunday mornings are often hectic under Minhocão. The weekly street fair in front of Largo Santa Cecília [SEE MAP PAGE 118] attracts a large amount of people to buy fruits, vegetables or eat pastel with caldo de cana - a brazilian fast food duo of fried and filled crust pie with sugar cane juice. The presence of the market also brings users to stroll around Minhocão and vice versa, enhancing its neighbourhood dynamics.

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Blind walls along Minhocão being used as commercial billboards in the 1980’s

The facades open up and close according to the dynamics of the viaduct. During the day with the flow of cars, most windows remain closed due to pollution, in a sort of protective behaviour for noise isolation and against pollution. Once Minhocão closes, open windows and occupied balconies can be observed, although those whose windows are aligned to the upper surface struggle with privacy issues and the eyes of the passers-by into their homes. Formerly used as billboards for commercial advertisement, the 170 blind walls mapped along Minhocão, have now been seized as a support for artistic interventions paintings, poetry, projections and vertical gardens have been sprouting over to enrich the contemplative scene 1.

1 numbers from the interview with Felipe Morozini, artist and photographer acting for the Minhocão cause.

From marketing murals to experimental canvases, the blind facades gain fresh life by the actions of collectives like Movimento 90°, that installs green walls as a strategy to bring some vegetation into São Paulo’s central concrete jungle of asphalt and concrete. Their aim is to green 20 blind walls along Minhocão. Three of them have already been implemented and six are waiting for financial support of private enterprises, that though agreements with the building owners and the collective are to be responsible for its maintenance 2.

2 Mônica Reolom, O Estado de S. Paulo , Nov/2014.

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‘The blind walls can collaborate in filtering the air pollution and impacting the thermic comfort both at the building where it is installed and in the surroundings. The plants also help create an acoustic barrier and its textures and shapes, when combined, configure an art piece it itself’ The collective Movimento 90° [www.movimento90.com/]

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Montage of the desire scenario proposed by Movimento 90ยบ

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The theatre group Esparrama have found a clever way to use the windows, that before would turn their backs to the viaduct. Some members of the group living in the apartment were inspired to create a project entitled Esparrama na Janela - ‘sprawling on the window’ - where every Sunday afternoon they present theatre sketches on the third floor of an building facing Minhocão. The passers-by can just sit down on the curb or on the asphalt to enjoy the bliss for children and adults. It is also an opportunity for the inhabitants whose windows and balconies face the theatre play to open up and connect to the outside. The ongoing burden of living adjacent to a horrid highway is surprisingly turned into an opportunity for cultural and artistic explorations.

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Theatre performance being played at windows facing Minhocão

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As MinhocĂŁo does not provide any extra support than the road itself (no bathrooms, water fountains or urban furniture) ephemeral structures and micro-scale settings are built to support the various appropriations. Beach chairs and umbrellas, canopy tents and carpets are regularly brought in. More elaborated events brings food trucks, selling huts and party sound-systems, among other everchangingÂ architectural installations turning the viaduct into a leisure promenade.

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[Wedding celebration, February 2016] Is there a more cheerful way to celebrate diversity and public space than by hosting your wedding on a viaduct? The union of the actresses Kaka and Ângela happened on a Sunday afternoon under a decorated tent full of food and friends. When asked why getting married on Minhocão, they affirm - ‘We think that instead of hiding, we have to dialogue with society. This is just a small action of love, respect and modification, on a public space that is diverse enough for us to feel comfortable’. Therefore, the viaduct proudly turned into some kind of open event venue for the city of São Paulo.

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Users bringing their own beach apparatus to the viaduct

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Temporary public pool assembled in one of the highway lanes

For those living on the Brazilian coast, the beach is the public space par excellence. Those who are not that close, however, also engender their own beach-like environments - be it by simply bringing a foldable chair and umbrella from home or by setting up more complex architectural installations. It is the case of this 50 meter long swimming pool, organized by the architect Luana Geiger in association with the collective Baixo Centro, made possible by an online crowd funding campaign that financed the material 1. Although short-lived, this playful way to remedy the central area’s lack of open public pools demonstrates the collective efforts of civil society to ‘test’, on real scale, ideas for a ‘public space yet to be’. 1 Published on the web portal Globo News, March/2014

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By putting together an entire living room set, artists turn the asphalt into comfort zones

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I believe that any type of creative intervention that opens up a dialogue with the city makes a difference on its daily routine. When intervening on public space, I always think of offering something that will sparkle a new way of thinking and looking at the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Interview with Felipe Morozini,15/03/2016

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Poetry intervention Só não Sobrevivo Só, in English ‘I just do not survive alone’

Artists also put their ideas and dreamed scenarios into action. Felipe Morozini, artist and photographer from São Paulo is a big enthusiast of Minhocão as a public space - residing in an apartment beside the viaduct, he is often inspired to provoke different interventions on the structure - be it by putting together a home-like living room or painting a big-scale poem over the highway.

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Together with its undefined status, this overlap of activities and interests also lead to discuss about a more defined use for Minhocão in the future. Discussions segregate the opinions of scholars, politicians and the civil society. Some groups stand up for its complete demolition and re-structuration of its under street while others are promoting the idea of a green park to be built on its upper surface. Hand in hand with the requests of organized society is a library of several architectural proposals from private offices and universities, illustrating the interest of the urban disciplines and professions into the reconversion of the structure. It turned the military unequivocal infrastructural project into a highly contested, overly-used and over-signified structure crossing São Paulo’s central area.

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‘Boulevard Minhocão: the bigger and most beautiful suspended garden of the world’. Ideas to ‘green’ Minhocão date back to the 1980’s, as seen in the sketch by architect Pitanga do Amparo made in 1987

The sketch illustrates an attempt to integrate a system of public transport (a possible electric tramway or bus) together with a suspended garden on the upper slab of Minhocão. Another set of road tracks is devoted to the same use on the lower part of the viaduct. It would also connect with the surrounding buildings though passerelles, so that users could access snack bars (lanches), art galleries and information centres.

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‘A scar that cuts the city: solutions to the elevated highway Costa e Silva’ Design Proposal of Frentes Arquitetura, conceived taking into account the viaduct’s double-functionality. The project won the Prize Prestes Maia of Urbanism in 2006. The project was also shown in the 10th Venice Biennale and at the 7th International Architecture Bienal of São Paulo in 2007

This proposal, on the other hand, dogmatically separates the two ongoing uses. In the scheme, cars continue to flow on the existing asphalted tracks, partially closed with concrete panels and glass, feasible to reduce the noise damages. An extra level is added to the viaduct to be used as a public space, with greenery and urban furniture. Nevertheless, the choice to add more concrete and segregate uses does not acknowledge the viaduct as the polyvalent structure that it is nowadays.

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‘the park already exists, it’s just missing the trees’ Athos Comolatti, founder of Association Parque Minhocão

Among the voices claiming for changes on the viaduct is Associação Parque Minhocão, founded in 2013. Counting almost 20 members, among them artists, urbanists and dwellers of the surroundings, their actions to promote a green park on top of Minhocão have been quite influential in fantasizing it in the imaginary of the paulistanos. Introducing the New York’s High Line as the inspiring model to trigger enthusiasm, they even gathered artists to participate in the 10th Brazilian Biennale of Architecture, with designs and artworks inspired by the park.

Recently, the collective has been advocating the closure of Minhocão at 20h00 instead of 21h30. So far they managed to gather more than 7.000 signatures of supporting citizens who support the extension of car-free time during the evening 1.

1 Labaki V. and Junqueira. Portal R7 Notícias. 06/03/2016

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A certain ‘beach utopia’ is also present on those montages proposed by Association Parque Minhocão

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‘for Amaral Gurgel street to be beautiful, we need to demolish Minhocão’ Santa Cecilia Sem Minhocão (facebook page publication, August 2014)

On the ‘opposite lane,’ taking down the viaduct is also one of the claims of civilians and collectives, such as Santa Cecília sem Minhocão (Santa Cecílica without Minhocão) and Movimento Desmonte Minhocão (Movement Dismantle Minhocão - MDM). The collective MDM started by neighbourhood associations, business owners and community leaders, states that ‘Our Movement was created aiming to improve the quality of life for people that

live, work and pass by here, directly affected by visual and sound pollution [...] In its place, they could build a beautiful avenue, with trees, flowers, bike lanes, etc’ says Francisco Gomes, MDM’s director and inhabitant of Santa Cecília (Folha de São Paulo, 2014).

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Montage of a design scenario for the Amaral Gurgel street without the viaduct. The idea of a promenade with bike lanes, however, continue to be present on both proposals

JosĂŠ Geraldo Oliveira, 60, and his wife, Herondina Oliveira, 65, are in favour of the demolition

diversity inclinations variety

along

freedom

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closed different liberty perspectives

conversation

available peaceful plain good near

buildings

leisure space

cultural friendly creative routine projections

area

architectural

free

another

walk practice closure

play

socialization

kids view dogs weekend open-air perspective

people

landscape

surface

curves imaginary

cars

sports

traffic height views

calmer

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The continuous updates in its legal status, architectural proposals and popular interventions make it quite hard to follow all the voices and stakeholders reclaiming MinhocĂŁo at the moment, as each one of them projects their visions

more police water unshadowed bikes mistreated open part degraded

cars

A pool provided by Datafolha Research Institute, in 2014, shows that the common opinions are less polarized - the majority of the paulistanos seems to want MinhocĂŁo to function just as it is nowadays. Out of the 1.121 people interviewed, 7% were for its demolition, 23% aimed for it to become a park, 17% did not respond and finally 53% are satisfied with the way the viaduct is working today.

evenings

insecurity

hot

just dryness closed

dry

region pollution aridity police noisegrey garbage way toilets smells place everyday lower

and alternatives to deal with the concrete mega-structure. On the bright side, this momentum is to be valued when thought the eyes of citizen awareness on the processes of city-making, as it provokes citizens of all ages and backgrounds to wonder what this structure can become according to their own urban experiences.

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Barbosa, 2012

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URBAN GALLERY GALERIA URBANA

Gal·ler·y noun 1. a roofed promenade or colonnade 2. an outdoor balcony 3. a long passageway, corridor 4. the highest balcony in a theatre, containing the cheapest seats 5. a room or building devoted to the exhibition of works of art (Oxford Online Dictionary)

The ‘domestication’ of the concrete earthworm by an overload of different usages, practices and art expressions transformed the plain viaduct into an open-air gallery, in all senses of the word. Through these ephemeral yet recurrent actions, Minhocão’s image is changed from a top-down oppressive piece of infrastructure to a space to host a multitude of urban cultures and tribes, which represents clear expressions of the civil claims to its logic of use to become human friendly instead of car-based, as well as the needs to conquer common spaces against the growing processes of leisure privatization in São Paulo.

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Map locating all the activities proposed during the Baixo Centro festival, on Minhocão and its surrounding public spaces

‘to collaborate with São Paulo, you just need to go to the street and use the city in a more responsible way, treat better your neighbour, understand that the city is what it is because we live in a certain way. Change your relationship with the city and the city will change to you’ Rafael Bresciani, activist of Baixo Centro. Interview to the web portal Criacidades, 2013

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Swings attached to the structure of Minhocão turn the viaduct into a playground opportunity

Inspired by those scattered practices, initiatives like Baixo Centro Festival congregates a series of free interventions into a 10-day cultural spree at Minhocão and around. By creatively occupying, the collective invites citizens to use the viaduct and its surrounding public spaces (i.e Largo de Santa Cecília, Largo do Arouche and Praça Roosevelt) in quite inventive and surprising ways.

As an independent initiative organized once a year, each edition is a creative challenge in itself - among the interventions executed are rope swings to sway under the upper surface, cinema projections on the pillars, artistic interventions colouring the asphalt, dance performances, parties and a set of other temporary atmospheres. However, in 2015, an interdiction to prohibit large scale events on Minhocão was released and the festival, along with other similar activities, were prevented from happening.

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The colonnades on the ground floor are disputed by independent graffiti artists, that see in the bare structural beams a place of opportunity to broadcast their visual aspirations and messages to the city. Today, the 92 wide structural columns from Roosevelt to Avenida Pacaembu (where Minhocão ends) are constantly filled in with visual expressions, tags, paintings and posters. According to the Brazilian national legislation (article 65, law no 9.605

from 02.02.1998), grafting is a legal practice if made to

value public or private patrimony, as long as executed with the authorization of the owner or the governmental bodies. However, in practice, those actions are usually performed by unscripted young artists that leave their traces on almost every corner São Paulo, and the same happens on Minhocão.

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However, graffities can switch from actions executed ‘without formal permissions’ to urban transformations of institutional nature. A group of eleven graffiti artists, after being caught and arrested for painting the pillars of a viaduct in the north periphery of the city, decided to present to the municipality a project for a ‘museum of graffiti’. The partnership was set and the viaduct located in Cruzeiro do Sul Avenue (between the metros Santana and Portuguesa-Tietê), originated São Paulo’s first

Open Museum of Urban Art (MAAU). The columns were transformed in 22 murals distributed among a group of almost 25 artists, whose painting material and support was provided by the Municipal Secretary of Culture, that also financed the recuperation of the left over spaces in between the columns with grass and bike lanes.

Expanding practices: ‘Museu Aberto da Arte Urbana’, located in the neighbourhood of Santana (northern periphery of São Paulo) >

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As became clear, MinhocĂŁo inspired various collectives that have been using all its interfaces as a spatial support for their actions and events. By broadcasting their aspirations and proposing collective activities, they invite the citizens to re-experience and re-think the role of the viaduct in the city.

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‘I realized when people come to stroll along Minhocão they are quickly attracted by the murals and graffitis painted on the blind walls. Having an entire highway to appreciate pieces of art while you walk by transforms the viaduct into an open art gallery and reaffirms the value of art in changing the city, as it can transform mere passageways into points of reference’ interview with Felipe Morozini,15.03.2016

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Minhocão was a piece of infrastructure whose design was manoeuvred under oppressive political forces, disintegrating urban life along its extension. However, it is being progressively re-manipulated in the opposite direction by an ensemble of smaller forces that together have managed to shift its infra-structural role to an ‘infrapolitical role’ (De Cauter, 2008).

into a public space. Whilst no neutral medium is found, the catalogue of options for future designs augment and the different opinions take the subject into the light of urban discussions, stimulating highly qualified professionals or the most amateur of the users to pitch in the discussion - both to be recognized as genuine forms of collaboration triggered by the viaduct.

Gradual public mobilizations led to its functional reversibility and more recent waves have been intensifying the discussions regarding the authenticity of its dual periods of activity - day versus and night use, weekdays and working times versus weekends and leisure time - aggregating a number of different and diverging opinions on the subject. This resonates with Francesca Polletta’s definition of free spaces, what she calls ‘physical or symbolical spaces where it becomes possible to develop oppositional frames’ (Polletta 1-38; Johnston 109-110).

This democratic scenario of contestations can be rather disorientating for urban planners and governmental decisions, but it is definitely rich in terms of arising reflections upon all interfaces of its built structure. A possible remediation of Minhocão, therefore, is to be thought as an integrated approach in case it becomes an architectural device treated for public use; but a possible renovation or demolition must also be able to heal the gaps that are still present on its surrounding the urban tissue.

The concurrent opinions, fantasies and ‘poetizations’ about the future status of Minhocão also turns the viaduct into multi coded structure, speaking to the citizens and making them react to its presence in opposite ways. While some nurture hopes of a public park and do not consider financial limits to invest in it, others repulse the mere presence of the viaduct, claiming its architecture and implementation are too disturbing to be maintained even if permanently turned

Exploring the idea of infrastructure as opportunity, John McGill (New York, 2010) claims that those idiosyncratic spaces can be engaged and ‘folded into the public realm, making them at once more legible and less obtrusive […] this strategy instrumentalizes infrastructure for public use and local benefit, not as an afterthought to private development but as an existing and potent prefigurative device for urban change’.

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The seasonal uses of Minhocão have the power to constantly reboot the feeling of reclaiming the structure, valuing its social function and intensifying the meanings imprinted by each group of users. A viaduct, literally speaking, is not the most attractive nor aesthetically pleasant space. However, when closed for cars, its single function disappears and so arises the potential to be ‘everything and nothing’ at the same time, unfolding endless possibilities of choice on how to make the best of its spatial features to enjoy it as a public space. Initially given to the city as a brutalist object, without any instruction manuals or proposed activities, the citizens started ‘to figure out by themselves’ how to appropriate this bare terrain of possibilities. Its unusual points of views on urban the landscape offered other ways to look at the nearby buildings and blind walls, whilst its longitudinal curb was high enough to almost naturally invite people to sit - showing how raw urbanistic features were reverted into multi-use furnishings. Over the course of almost three decades of cultural experimentations, this forged strong connections between the user and the space, that by creatively intervening could develop a sense of belonging and an affection, endowing a former squalid ‘thing’ with its own genius loci - morphing ‘structure’ into ‘culture’.

Whereas in the former case of Ouvidor, a vacated building structure that was piecemeal converted into an a laboratory of cohabitation and cultural production, Minhocão’s brutalist structure in fact grew into a large scale public ‘atelier.’ Its temporal status of public space allows cultural and artistic manifestations being discussed, tested and demonstrated on real scale. Although arbitrarily implemented under oppressive military power, the viaducts ‘naked’ architecture proved much more ambivalent and open for different uses as indeed successful scenes of cultural agitation turned it from a highway into a highly disputed infrastructure, accommodating a multitude of everyday and artistic uses.

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The third case study, Praça Roosevelt, before becoming a symbolic public space for the central area of São Paulo, has undergone a series of spatial reshapings along the decades steered by different political and social mindsets. From a rough asphalted patio to an overdesigned concrete megastructure, until its current configuration - that demolished part of the previous one to provide accessibility and open it up to the surroundings so it could be fully appropriated. After its inauguration, the plaza indeed became a playfield for a multitude of planned and unplanned events, a variety of artistic manifestations and different users - from all ages, backgrounds and neighbourhoods of São Paulo that by claiming their own place converts the plaza it into a metropolitan reference and a public stage to see and be seen.

198 IMAGINARY OF THE CITY I IMAGINÁRIO DA CIDADE

The neighbourhood of Consolação stands between the historical core (República and Sé) and Avenida Paulista, one of the city’s economic centres.

Landmarks of Brazilian modern architecture also stand in the vicinity Roosevelt, like Copan - a curved mix-use building designed by the architect Oscar Niemeyer.

The closest access by mass public transport is the metro station República, within a 10-min walk from the square [SEE MAP P27]. Well served by public transport, various buses also run in the surrounding avenues, as the plaza is delineated by important axes leading to the centre and to the eastern districts of São Paulo, such as Avenida Consolação and Minhocão Viaduct.

Today, Praça Roosevelt stands in the middle of a 24/7 urban effervescence. However, before being absorbed by the neighbourhood, the site historically went thought multiple urban ‘renewal’ attempts to gradually integrate the former floodplain into the urban tissue and its surrounding programs.

Rua Augusta is also one of those delineating the plaza and extends all the way to Avenida Paulista. It is known for its ‘young-bohemian’ atmosphere, with several designer shops, restaurants, bars and a busy night-life.

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MISE-EN-SCÈNE

The disposition of physical settings and created scenarios inside Praça Roosevelt, as well as the arrangement of the actors and their interactions within the space - or the stage - compose the ‘mise-en-scène’ of this urban plaza, the starter to a following set of metaphors that inspires on theatrical production to investigate architecture as ‘an art of situation, of placing people in meaningful spatial relationships with one another’ (Read, 2005:53).

In order to understand the contemporary condition of Praça Roosevelt, it is crucial to look at its spatial evolution and how the spatial phases influenced the meanings of the plaza throughout history, as well as how each insertion shifted the neighbourhood dynamics, attracting or repulsing users and activities.

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‘Every room is a stage, every public space is a theatre and every façade is a backdrop. Each has places for entry and exit, scenery, props, and a design that sets up potential relationships between people. In this sense, architecture and theatre are sister arts, creating worlds where people interact in studied spatial relationships’ Read, 2005:53

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map 01. Delimitation of the Chácara Martinho Prado, 18th century map 02. Consolação Church and the Saracura water stream running though the chácara’s terrrain, 1881

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map 03. City tissue starts to be conformed into streets and allotments, 1987

Configured as the backside terrain of a large private property (Chácara Martinho Prado, map 01) the area where is now Praça Roosevelt gained its first ‘public’ status when a little chapel was built on its terrain in 1799. Named to pay homage to a patron saint, the Consolação Chapel turned into a reference meeting point for those crossing São Paulo from the eastern periphery towards the centre and viceversa - a place for travellers to stop, meet and participate on religious celebrations between arrivals and departures. The access road bordering the chapel became Consolação Street and in 1840 the chapel was officialized into a church - followed by the consolidation of the urban tissue and the Consolação corridor as an important axe to reach the central ring of the city.

map 04. Consolidated shape the shape of the plaza, 1905

In the 19th Century this region was still considered a suburb of the city, mainly configured by vast terrains and luxurious houses, the so-called Brazilian chácaras - smallscale farms where the entrepreneurial coffee landlords and their families used to live. The decline of the coffee economy and the following processes of industrialization marked the beginning of the 20th century by bringing rapid urban changes. The former chácaras started to be sold and allotted, leading to the emergence of neighbourhoods like Consolação and others on the surroundings (ie. Santa Cecília, Vila Buarque and Higienópolis), inhabited by a following generation of the emergent elite.

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map 05. Praça Roosevelt on the 1930’s

Cine Bijou, the first Art Cinema of São Paulo, opens in front of Praça Roosevelt

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Patio of the plaza being used as market and parking, 1950’s and 1960’s

In 1930, the floodplains behind Consolação church were donated by its owners to the municipality due to difficulties of dealing with the sewage contamination of a water stream running on its surface, a branch of the Saracura River (map 02). Praça da Consolação was officially declared as an area of public interest but its residual character did not change. Since the government made no major invests to qualify it as a public space, it remained as a sort of terrain vague inside the otherwise fastly developing metropolis. After the installation of the Ford and General Motors headquarters in São Paulo, the city’s daily life was taken by cars and the profile of the streets re-adapted to meet the growing traffic demands. In the 1950’s the large vacant area of the plaza was converted into a car parking, due to the strategic location on Avenida Consolação, hosting more than 700 vehicles during the week. The cars belonged to workers and businessmen coming to the city centre during its crescent process of industrialization. On the other

map 06 Part of Praça Roosevelt and its connection with República in 1958. On top, the Copan building.

hand, during the weekends, a public market used to take place and attract large numbers of people, extending the square’s civic functions to even concerts and political rallies (Ferreira, 2009). For the middle and high class working elite, the area surrounding Roosevelt at that time was known for having the most well-frequented shops and leisure spaces of São Paulo, upholding a strong cultural and bohemian scene in streets like Rua Augusta and Rua Martinho Prado (Ferreira, 2009). The opening of the first art cinema of the city - Cine Bijou, that later became a theatre school – came along with other theatres, bars and concert houses for the bossa-nova affectionate that ended up attracting many intellectuals, musicians, and a great variety of art-related people (Calliari, 2012).

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Opening of Radial Leste-Oeste, an expressway that includes the Sketch of the original design proposal (1970).The portion extending Minhocão viaduct, crossing under Avenida Consolação and the beyond the plaza’s delimitations (on the left) was not built terrain of the ‘future’ Praça Roosevelt, 1968

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Levels of the plaza under construction

The first design implemented. Google Earth, 2002

Under the military regime that started in 1964, carbased policies of urban development continued to bring significant changes for the urban fabric of the centre. Under the governance of Mayor Faria Lima, the 3,5 km express-way Radial Leste-Oeste was carved under Praça da Consolação to enhance the east-west traffic outflows – taking into the scene the Minhocão Viaduct, completed one year after.

very much linked to the New Brutalism trends spread out by the British architects Alison & Peter Smithson since the late 1950’s. It approached the idea of cluster-city, a model of vertical urbanism where the city would expand on itself, grouping many urban functions into one large-scale built ensemble. Surfaces, layers and programs were connected through elevated streets and pathways – the streets in the sky – bringing several possibilities of pedestrian circulation strictly separated from the car flows.

By being in a confluence of continuous infrastructural investments, bigger aspirations from the public bodies emerged to turn the flat-surfaced patio into a metaphorical symbol of the city’s modernization process. A change of shape and identity came about in 1968 when a project proposal commissioned by the municipality was launched. The ‘updated’ version of Praça da Consolação was named Praça Franklin Roosevelt by, after the ex-American president. The luso-brazilian landscape architect Roberto Coelho Cardozo was responsible for the design, proposing to transform the flat terrain into a ‘building-square’ - concept

Praça Roosevelt’s ‘building square’ planned to create a new topography filled with open-air public areas, an auditorium, an educational complex, a cultural centre, commercial areas and two floors of parking space, with the east-west road strip crossing underneath and three tunnel entrances, one facing Rua Augusta and two facing Avenida Consolação. Inaugurated in 1970 for São Paulo’s 416th anniversary, the 5-floor structure was delivered to the population, although having part of its initial program modified. Sports courts, a supermarket, and a skating area requested by the citizens were among the changes.

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‘Roosevelt was more than a square – it was part of a road system, a building and a viaduct’ Calliari, 2012

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‘A More Human City – in the audacity of this architectonic creation, Praça Roosevelt resumes the New São Paulo. A plaza unique in the world, as unique as this state capital. In São Paulo, the future was anticipated by new construction works that achieved the miracle of enhancing and making it more human, because they were made with the eyes turned to man’ text translated from the Spread of magazine ‘Manchete’, 1970 >

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‘Inside the city administration itself, Praça Roosevelt was a problem and no one wanted to carry that responsibility. Not to mention that the freshening of the spaces made everyone occupy small pieces of it, and no one would identify with the proposals of the plaza as a whole’ Architect Ruben Reis, ex-manager of urban operations of São Paulo Municipal Secretary of Urban Development (Yamashita, 2013)

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View from one of the elevated plazas, 1969

Degrated state of the concrete furnishings in the 1980’s

‘Ball games prohibited’, 2008

After the excitement of its inauguration, constant alterations on the original functions characterized the spaces within the building-square. To stimulate its dynamics of use, various facilities were implemented over time – library, post-office, flower-shop, restaurant, police station, social centre, school, among others are on the list. As for the external area, some accesses were also blocked or fenced to control the use during night-time. For Ferreira (2009), these continuous reformulations of the original project demonstrated a certain lack of convergence with the real necessities of the population, reaffirming inefficiency of state control over the uses. He argues how Praça Roosevelt was quite successful in technical terms,

while its constant changes of program created functional gaps that gave way to subverted appropriations, becoming inhabited by homeless, drug addicts, dealers, transsexuals and prostitutes among other marginal groups. Public efforts of requalification became low leading to a state of abandonment and degradation of the physical structure in the 1980’s and early 1990’s. From a symbolic front-side of development and modernization, the place gradually slipped into decay and degradation..

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Satyrianas festival occupying Praça Roosevelt, 2009. The festival offers activities for both day and nigh, access is free and spectators collaborate with voluntary donations

The deficiency of state control during those decades transformed the plaza into a spot of ‘non-legitimized social practices’, a terrain vague that attracted the presence of graffiti artists and skaters who saw in its large surfaces of concrete a place to meet and practice their artistic and performing skills. The state of decadence on Roosevelt and adjacencies decreased the rental prices, hence made them accessible for alternative bars, clubs, massage houses and cabarets to establish themselves in this rather privileged area of the expanded city centre. Its ‘undergroundness’ became

a brand and attracted theatre companies, who profited from the conditions to start building up their theatre spaces at accessible costs. In 1997, the Studio Heleny Guariba occupied what once was the Cine Bijou and the theatre company Satyros started functioning in 2000, both on the ground floor of the residential towers on the east side of the square. Inspired by the ‘dodgy’ histories and personages roaming around the degraded Praça Roosevelt, Satyros Company was able to come up with burlesque and critical theatre performances, a remarkable work that attracted back many

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Currently, Espaço Satyros continues to attract audience and fill in the sidewalk beside Praça Roosevelt

of the long gone culture enthusiasts of the area. Further, the company started to organize annual festivals, ‘theatre play marathons’ and other cultural events that turned the plaza once again into a point of convergence. The spring festival Satyrianas goes beyond theather and also incorporates photography, visual arts, circus, music, literature and many kinds of street art. The artistic vocation of the area started to recover itself the following years with the upcoming of small bars and other artistic groups and theatre companies such as Teatro do Ator and Espaço Parlapatões, in 2006.

Step by step, instances of cultural ‘agitation’ injected the vacant square with urbanity, and here again its degraded ‘residual’ character turned into an open invitation for cultural-artistic experiments that crossed the conventional borders between ‘art production’, on the one hand, and ‘urban production’, on the other hand.

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Those numerous cultural investments contributed to impulse the project of re-qualification of the degraded area that was being discussed since 2002 in the municipality, when Praça Roosevelt was included in the PROCENTRO – Program of Rehabilitation for the Central Area of São Paulo. Renovation plans for the square started to be gradually taken into debate, with contested opinions between demolishing or reshaping the existent (Yamashita, 2013). Collectives and independent groups joined the discussion - such as Associação Viva o Centro and the Ação Local Roosevelt – as well as cultural makers, neighbours and local skaters and artists, all willing to affirm their interests on what was to become the ‘new Praça Roosevelt’. In 2006, local newspapers start to report the civil concerns about the future of the plaza. Based on research data from Ação Local Roosevelt, Revista da Folha1 states that ‘half of the population living in the surroundings of Praça Roosevelt is against the demolition of the building-square and its elevated plazas, whilst half is in favour of a complete urban renewal.

1 Article by Paulo Sampaio to Revista da Folha, 23.02.2006

The demands and claims the second ‘other half’, prodemolition and pro-renewal, resonated strongly. They claimed for more green and spaces of permanence and contemplation, police stations and more openness and accessibility to the space. Therefore, demolishing the elevated structures and adapting the square to the street level was one of the first concerns of the second commissioned proposal for Praça Roosevelt. The Brazilian architectural office Borelli & Merigo teamed up with the municipality to take part in the adjustments of the redesign until its execution, finished in 2012. The program kept the two floors of parking space (556 spaces), the tunnel entrances and police stations. Flower beds, low grass and a corridor of benches with small sized trees were added, as the parking underneath does not allow to grow medium or large-sized species. Although not so structurally complex and bold as the previous project, the complexity this time came with its users - it has been taken over as a play field for a multitude of planned and unplanned events, a variety of artistic manifestations and the presence of people from all ages, backgrounds and neighbourhoods of São Paulo keeping its liveliness at all times of the day and the night.

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b a

c f

25.100 m2 a. church (Igreja da Consolação) b. children’s playground c. Military Police headquaters d. Metropolitan Civil Guard headquaters e. unused steel-glass structures f. space reserved for dogs, the ‘cachorródromo’

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Proposals for demolishing the elevated plazas for more accessibility, depicted in previous studies realized by the municipality

Finished state of the second design in 2012

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‘the main idea was to connect the square with its surroundings – making sure all sides have ramps or stairs so that people can actually feel invited’ Marcos Costa, from the office Borelli & Merigo, 2016

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The large open north-south axe, surrounded by benches and trees, creates a kind of boulevard for pedestrians, dogs, bikers, skaters and commuters

In this mental map, the square is drawn an integrating part of the neighbourhood. Its main streets, services and mental landmarks are pointed out such as the Copan building, Minhocão and the Augusta Park.

Author of the mental map > Andrea Boller, 36 y/o. Inhabitant of República, comes to Roosevelt every morning to walk her dog

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The variety of functions that established on the surroundings of Roosevelt orchestrates constant influxes of people throughout the plaza. On the left side, offices, schools and institutional buildings remain active during the day, while the right side is filled with bars and theatres that heat up the night scene along the street, where also the residential buildings are concentrated. The actors that play upon the square’s ‘main stage’ by performing either ordinary daily activities (like walking the dog or taking a stroll) or more insurgent practices, such as manifestations and artistic events performed by multitude of collectives that take advantage of the space’s visibility.

Together, they imprint in the plaza a miscellaneous collection of cultural practices. The consequence of these constant appropriations is the formation of micro-territories - zones inside the plaza where each group ‘colonizes’ in a particular way. Several organized collectives also try to find their way inside the same space, some based on a specific location, others ‘orbiting’ around different corners, but all constant feeding Roosevelt with activities and using its open stage to manifest and perform.

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BENCHE USED AS STAGE FOR RAP BATTLES

DOG OWNERS SITTING ON ELEVATED GRASS EDGES

STAIRS USED AS BLEACHER SEATS

OCCUPATION OF THE UNDERGROUND TUNNEL

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SCENES AND SCENARIOS CENAS E CENÁRIOS

Having located Praça Roosevelt physically, historically, conceptually (Low, 2000) the following pages will illustrate in more detail where the main social relations (dialogues) and forms of appropriations (scenarios) unfold within the material environment provided by the plaza. Intermingling within the same spatial boundaries but separated in time and in ‘micro-territories’, each group of users has different time schedules, interests and modes of using the designed furnishings of the plaza - disputing, constructing and grounding their own personal experience within the public realm.

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MONDAY

TUESDAY

FRIDAY

SATURDAY

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WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

SUNDAY

Praça Roosevelt, as an intensively used public space, becomes the stage for an ever-going program of spontaneous activities every week, as illustrated in this diagram based on observations made on site. Mostly, the weekdays keep constant flows of neighbours, commuters, skaters, after-school students and regulars of the bars and theatres, that must be closed from 1am to 2am, a practical measure to ensure the maintenance of both leisure and residential uses. The closure of the bars, small night shops and theatres is what leads to emptying

of the square at night, slowly being re-filled in the morning with the first dog walkers and commuters restarting the users cycle. In the weekends all those uses are intensified and the evenings busier with all-nighters even after the bars close. Punctual events, performances and manifestations are also responsible for substantially increasing the number of uses in the square.

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‘We are surfers of the asphalt - Roosevelt is our beach in the city’ Felipe Morelli (28), one of the skaters interviewed

Skaters criss-cross Roosevelt’s flat cement floor in all directions possible, any time of the day. The centre of São Paulo has around 20.000 skater practitioners, part of a network of 384.000 skaters in the capital of São Paulo1. But they have arrived in Roosevelt much earlier, re-appropriating the concrete features of the ‘building-square’ to perform and train skate moves, turning it into a ‘skate plaza’ throughout the 80’s and 90’s. Successful professional skaters of Brazil have started their sportive trajectory there, increasing its visibility and transforming the place in a ‘pico’ – in English, a ‘peak,’ a hotspot - word they use to designate spaces of high concentration of skaters and related activities.

1 Confederação Brasileira de Skate (CBSk) http://www.cbsk.com.br/

‘I was one of the ‘Roosevelt Boys’ back then, when the structure of the plaza was not as clean and structured, but it was there that I started to develop my skate skills and follow a career that became strikingly successful until I ended up among the big names of world skating. I remember all the destroyed ground stones, the drug users, etc....who kept Roosevelt alive, moving and safe during this dark period were the skaters’ Rodrigo TX 2. Skaters were indeed a leading group on freely reinterpreting Roosevelt’s unmaintained materiality into a mullti-storey skatepark, writing on it a meaning where previously there was none (Borden, 2003). They developed a skate culture that has been enduring for more than two decades, having to overcome the square’s spatial changes and claim for their space after implementation of the second design. 2 Free transcript of an interview given to: www.redbull.com/skate

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Skater using access ramps as a recreational obstacle.

When the plaza was inaugurated, in 2012, it did not offer any specific facilities (such as ramps or rails) to the skaters still regularly frequenting Roosevelt to practice and meet. They started re-appropriating the recently installed urban furniture (benches, access ramps and handrails) as ‘skatable’ obstacles, raising complaints of non-skaters and neighbours, bothered to see the square being ‘wrecked’ and fearful of possible accidents and collisions with other users 3. For the skater class, however, there was no transgression as the plaza is also a place of their own. The more engaged practitioners, supported by the Brazilian Skate Confederation (CBSK), pledged at the municipality to proper conditions to skate and were granted after two years of negotiation. In 2014, the northern part of the square 3 Skate Park is Inaugurated on Roosevelt. Globo News (G1), 29/11/2014

(facing Consolação Street) was readapted to skate use with reinforced benches and the construction of new obstacles. The municipality efforts in zoning a strict ‘skate perimeter’ was not fully successful, as the multitude of skaters with different skill levels continued to perform around the entire plaza, so much that it is now ‘socially accepted’, despite the previously installed prohibition signs.

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[Rap battles] The ‘skate culture’ is much broader than just the sport in itself. It is a magnet to other young social groups such as hip-hop and slam poetry enthusiasts, who promotes regular ‘rhyme battles’ in the square. The collective Batalha da Roosevelt (Roosevelt’s Rap Battle) uses the plaza’s benches every Wednesday as a sort of ‘pulpit’ for the rappers to battle while others watch and cheer from the ground.

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[Slam Resistência] A well-known competition of ‘spoken-poetry’ also takes place on Roosevelt once a month - the Slam Resistência - in english, ‘Slam Resistance’. Competitors stand in the intermediate landing of the stairs facing Augusta Street, while being watched by a cheerful audience and judges sitting on the steps.

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Temporary dancefloor set up on Praça Roosevelt by Jazz na Rua

[Jazz Na Rua] No only hip-hop finds its stage on Roosevelt. The collective Jazz na Rua (Jazz on the Street) chooses public spaces around the city to promote free ‘Lindy Hop’ classes, in the form of an open ball. They provide the whole setting from the music to a pop-up dance floor - creating a joyful atmosphere that quickly invites those in the plaza to join, be it to watch or dance.

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[Festival das Lanternas] Larger scale events also frequently take place at Praça Roosevelt, like Festival das Lanternas (The Lanterns Festival). São Paulo has the largest Chinese community in Brasil 1 and Roosevelt was chosen to host the traditional celebration that closes the Chinese New Year. For an entire afternoon, the usual atmosphere of the plaza was transformed by the installation of coloured lanterns and demonstrations of Chinese culture, such as dance performances and food stands. 1 http://jcibrasilchina.org.br/

‘Connect Bixiga neighbourhood and Praça Roosevelt With the presence of our bodies In a carnival procession A big human-snake For a theatrical action Linking all the spaces and crossings In a choreography for the cultural territory The chosen stage for the apotheosis is Praça Roosevelt An urban inflorescence Nourished by Satyros, Parlapatões, clowns, simpletons The São Paulo School of Theatre,Teatro do Ator By the skaters, the bars, cafés and restaurants Two poles connected by the love for art The faith on the creative and political potential Of opening new ways Other interpretations, revealing different perspectives of urbanization Relations with the body And the human presence on the polis’ Opening line for the urban performance Tekohá, proposed by the theatre company Teatro Oficina. Inspired on Brazilian rhythms and religious rituals, the group and their followers invaded the plaza to demarcate it as a ‘sacred’ cultural territory (March, 2016).

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[Alternative uses of furnishings] The triangular shaped entrance to the underground parking, covered in smooth concrete, became part of the children’s improvised playground, being used as a slider.

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Many residents of the neighbourhood take their dogs to spend some energy at Roosevelt. They mark daily presence on Roosevelt at least twice a day, especially in the early morning and during the evening. Using social media and smartphones, the ‘dog-owners of Roosevelt’ created groups to post, chat and schedule activities together to take care of the sub-territory they dearly appropriated as the ‘dog’s paradise’. The large grass beds are located only a few meters away from the area ‘designed’ for dog use, not quite central as this one. It is common to see them gather to clean it up, remove empty glass bottles or anything that can hurt the dogs and even get the grass cut by themselves when the municipality does not provide the service in time.

246 INSIDE A MICROCOSMOS I DENDRO DO MICROCOSMO

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[Parque Augusta] Roosevelt’s high visibility has also been transforming it into a common set for manifestations related to urban activism, like in the case of the Augusta Park - a private piece of land with the most dense concentration of green present in the surroundings. Part of the plot, that in the past hosted a school and after its demolition became a parking lot, has been strongly claimed by neighbours and activists to be improved as a park and given back to the city. Until now, the private contractor that owns the land keeps the area closed and fenced, so Roosevelt became a nearby support to meetings, protests and acts of the collectives standing up for the park, mostly organized on weekends. In the picture, activists of Parque Augusta hung a flag on Roosevelt protesting against real estate speculation and the abandonment of the park.

Friday evenings are busy on Roosevelt – after-work drinks and crowded bars start to announce the coming weekend. All-nighters hang out on the plaza until dawn because that the last metro stops around 1 am - so many of the young groups, who come from outside the centre, wait until the next day to catch the morning carriage that will bring them back home. At the right side of the square, bars and theatre groups agitate the scene along with other smallscale commercial activities. The street becomes an open

air ‘foyer’ that starts buzzing when the sun comes down. There, you can have a beer or a snack outside the bars or along the sidewalk - a habit of assiduous frequenters, fellow actors, artists, writers, students, activists and other personages mostly meeting the creative profile. The stairs to go up the plaza facing that side are more than just an access – they become bleacher seats to those who bring their own drinks, meet friends and chat while watching the streets to be filled up with people.

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Spontaneous circus gathering along the ‘reb ribbon’, on a Wednesday evening

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Acrobatic performance during Noite da Rose (Rose’s Night)

[Circus nights and Noite da Rose] If the weather is favourable, every Wednesday evening after 7pm is known as the circus night’ at Praça Roosevelt. Independent jugglers, experts or amateurs, come from all over the city and among the assiduous are the artists from Ouvidor 63 [SEE PAGES 49-50]. There are no collectives behind the organization or any previous arrangements for the event – people simply show up. Practitioners bring different juggling objects, colourful hula hoops, contact balls, fire torches and musical instruments. In a matter of a few hours they are fifty, exchanging juggling

‘props’, learning new tricks from each other or simply showing off. The stage of Roosevelt becomes an open training field to practice and put to test circus skills. More formally authorized circus venues also take place on Roosevelt, as it is the case of Noite da Rose - a variety spectacle organized by an itinerant circus company that every two or three months choose the plaza as their open air stage.

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Buraco da Minhoca overrun by people during an event in 2015

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Colourful tissues, paintings and graffitis marked the period when art and culture ‘colonized’ the tunel

[Buraco da Minhoca] But not everything is happening just on top of the plaza. The tunnel that works as an underground link to Minhocão, nicknamed ‘Buraco da Minhoca’ - the ‘wormhole’ during the closure times of the viaduct became a place of opportunities to artists and cultural agitators. The collective Yopará, on the run for almost 10 years, started organizing poetry readings and theatre performances underneath it every week. Other groups, unpretentiously, also started bringing musical instruments, portable sound systems, friends and drinks to celebrate inside this sort of improvised ‘acoustic shell’.

Those occupations became a magnet to other collectives, who decorated and seized the asphalted and dodgy car tunnel turning it into a free-entrance ‘night club’. The agitations were successful enough to quickly take bigger proportions, accommodating more than 300 people at once. The visibility led the parties to be prohibited by the municipality for alleged ‘security reasons’. Nowadays the tunnel’s accesses, when not used by cars, remain closed by high gates to prevent further ‘invasions’. Despite inactive since 2015, Buraco da Minhoca is a recurrent memory for many of Roosevelt’s weekend regulars, that nostalgically dream of being able to re-live the experience.

254 SCENES AND SCENARIOS I CENAS E CENÁRIOS

Police imposes their presence by circulating with the patrol car around the plaza

Practices and manifestations on the plaza are under heavy police surveillance by both the military police and the civil guards. They usually approach the most 'noisy’ groups when requested by the mainly (high) middle-class neighbours whose windows face the square, perturbed with the overload of users especially at night and on weekends. They are advised to intervene and/or impede practices and events not formally authorized or that extrapolates the nuisance legislations.

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An exaggerated number of police cars drawn on top of the plaza, depicting the user’s discomfort by the presence of surveillance vehicles Author of the mental map: Cláudio Cezar Xavier, 43 y/o, Inhabitant of República

meet girls

art

cultural

chill

movement proportions

space bars

plants

interesting take

expressive groups big money

diversity freedom

benches skaters

run

products

dogs

theatres

interact

stylish leisure

interactions

possibility

people

chat place

accessibility

clean lawn

casual talk

trees create good atmosphere

256 SCENES AND SCENARIOS I CENAS E CENĂ RIOS

walk liberty

Roosevelt

bottles

consumption

concrete

drugs

prices circulation

police far

bathrooms

cars conservative

garbage need

noisy playground busy

neighbours

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repressions

The previous ensemble of social and cultural processes are both positive and negative living experiences associated to the built environment of Roosevelt. As forms of ‘mediated co-presence’ - be it of pleasure and leisure or conflict and control - they unveil the contestation, power relations and symbolisms embodied by this public space and given by the different users.

258 SCENES AND SCENARIOS I CENAS E CENĂ RIOS

Author of the mental map: Vagner da Silva, 15 y/o Municipality of Barueri, RMSP

Author of the mental map: Mariana Maia Ribeiro, 17 y/o, Municipality of Suzano (RMSP)

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Roosevelt’s varied social geography is expressed by the distinct origins and backgrounds of its users, that spares no effort to migrate from all parts of São Paulo and its metropolitan region (RMSP) to reach the plaza. These drawings, produced on March/2016, represent journeys to reach Roosevelt traced by two teenagers that live in the metropolitan region and come to the plaza on weekends. The trajectory from their homes in the periphery to the central area can take around 2 hours by public transport.

260 SCENES AND SCENARIOS I CENAS E CENÁRIOS

EDUARDO BEN-HUR, 26

PIRITUBA, SUBP

hang out, go to the bars

RUBENS ADRIANO, 39

CELENE, 56

visit the centre, leisure (2x month) THALES MENDES, 23

walk the dog, jogging

CLÁUDIO CÉZAR, 43

FÁBIO ALVES, 31

LEONTTER RECHE, 22

SÀO MIGUEL PAULISTA, SUBP

drink with friends, relax (3-4x month)

REPÚBLICA, DIST walk the dog, go to the bars

BELA VISTA, DIST

‘cultural and political interactions’

KETELEM LORRAINE, 14

VAGNER DA SILVA, 20

SÉ, DIST

BARUERI, RMSP

SANTIAGO BRAVO, 24

CARLOS EDUARDO, 42

SÉ, DIST

BELA VISTA, DIST

PAULO DE CAMPOS, 66

DIEGO SANTIAGO, 32

CONSOLAÇÃO, DIST

COTIA, RMSP

JOSÉ MYERCIN, 23

THAÍS SANTIAGO, 29

meet guys and friends, party

juggling, meet friends, play music

jogging, sunbath, attend events

CONSOLAÇÃO, DIST skate, weekend leisure LYGIA SABBAG, 34

CONSOLAÇÃO, DIST walk the dog, be outside ADAM PAULUS, 24

STA CECÍLIA, DIST meet friends, skate

1 Administratively, the city of São Paulo has several levels of subdivision. The municipality is divided into 31 subprefectures (SUBP), each divided into 96 districts (DIST). The districts, locally, may encompass one or more neighbourhoods. The Metropolitan Region (Região Metropolitana de São Paulo - RMSP) consists of 39 municipalities, including the state capital (Prefeitura Municipal de São Paulo, 2013)

CONSOLAÇÃO, DIST

VILA GUILHERME, SUBP

have fun, play music (1x week)

Because it attracts users from all zones of São Paulo, the plaza has acquired a metropolitan influence that grows over time, consolidating it as a place of diversity and extending its importance far beyond its own borders. 1

RIO CLARO, SP

‘meet my girlfriend’ (1x week)

LAPA, SUBP

In the map, the origins of 26 users interviewed and the main reasons why they come to Praça Roosevelt. As seen, many of them come from districts and subprefectures outside the city centre and from other municipalities of the metropolitan region in conurbation with the capital 1.

TATIANA PENTEADO, 23

skate, meet friends

skate, sunbath, ‘see and be seen’

relax after work (2-3x a month)

COTIA, RMSP

skate, meet friends (3x month) EVAN GIBB, 40

CONSOLAÇÃO, DIST walk the dog, meet neighbours ANDREA BOLLER, 36

REPÚBLICA, DIST

walk the dog, read, contemplate

FELIPE MORELLI, 28

CAIRÉ RÊGO, 28

SANTO AMARO, SUBP

REPÚBLICA, DIST

skate, meet friends (1x week) LUÍZA, 43

JABAQUARA, SUBP ‘get in touch with different cultures’ (1x week) MARIANA MAIA, 17

SUZANO, RMSP

hang out, meet friends (1x month)

meet girlfriend, go to the bars VANA DOS SANTOS, 45

SAPOPEMBA, SUBP meet different people (3x month) DELISON SOARES, 22

FERRAZ DE VASCONCELOS, RMSP

‘break the routine’ (1-2 x month)

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262 SCENES AND SCENARIOS I CENAS E CENÁRIOS

Despite its metropolitan character, Roosevelt is administered under quite local lenses. Willing to approximate civil society into the management of public spaces, the municipality of São Paulo created a system of ‘management committees’ (comitês gestores). Citizens can vote for a representative body that will be in charge of ‘articulating artistic movements, business owners, institutions, neighbourhood associations and skaters to formulate guidelines to regulate the use of the square’s installations and facilities’ 1. The managing committee of Praça Roosevelt (Comitê Gestor da Praça Roosevelt) is elected every two years and formed by twelve counsellors, being six from different secretaries inside the municipality (Subprefeitura da Sé) and six from the civil society (including members of AMACON, the neighbourhood association of Consolação neighbourhood). Candidates can only apply to be counsellors if they are residents of the districts inside the Sub-Prefecture of Sé and linked to an official entity, association or institution. This condition is therefore implicitly excluding the possibilities of free willing citizens to join the committee and makes a rather middle-class-restricted affair. The meetings happen at the headquarters of the Subprefeitura da Sé once a month, and are not open to the general public. The decisions taken by the board are communicated afterwards via social media or broadcast in official publications of the municipality 2. Those two last measures especially impact the system, that becomes a rather unattractive and bureaucratic structure, tending to centralize the power of voice for the aims of specific categories. Currently, no representative member of the skaters, for instance, are present in the committees, not being able to participate in the discussions and decisions, although they are doubtlessly the most prominent users of the square. 1 Report published by Secretaria Executiva de Comunicação 29/03/2014 http://www.capital.sp.gov.br/portal/noticia 2 Interview with Ray Monteiro, one of the committee counsellors

Therefore, in practice, this attempt of civil governance does not function as described and the administrative decisions fall into quite local lenses, causing a scale clash and an overlap of social frictions due to the broad range of incomers that go on a pilgrimage from outside the central frontiers to the centre aiming to experience Roosevelt. The closure of the gate to access the Minhocão tunnel at night and the prohibition of any live music around the plaza are examples of how those actions often culminate in measures of spatial regulation social control. The committee did not yet manage to come to an official agreement and build a collective regulatory document regarding the uses and schedules. The punctual decisions taken and the unsolved issues awaiting to be discussed give way to many interpretations of what one can and cannot do in a territory that is constantly being altered by different users and modes of appropriation. Concentrating people from all over the city that come to enjoy the plaza, the reaction of the neighbouring residents is divided into two opposite attitudes: either they are enthusiastic about the whole scenery and become part of it, or they are perturbed for having their tranquillity taken down or menaced. This perpetuous contrast is what ends up causing the bigger discussions about the future of Roosevelt, leading to those measures of control and restrictions of use (Abbud, 2014).

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264 SCENES AND SCENARIOS I CENAS E CENÁRIOS

‘The city square, then, b the profane and the sacr the open and the closed, In serving for circulatio bringing people together form-based scenario out of a thousa

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brings about the meeting of red, the dry and the humid, , the high and the low, etc. on, exchange, providing air, r, [...] it also functions as a f which we may experience and potential combinationsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Wunenburger, 2003

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PLAYS & PERFORMANCES

ESPETÁCULOS & PERFORMANCES

Praça Roosevelt addresses in many ways to an urban stage. As a theatrical survey, the square’s architectural presence has been adopted over time, accommodating a multitude of social and cultural performances. On the other hand, a second layer of architectural installations found a supportive stage in the square’s built environment, coming and going to arrange different plays. Here, architecture might indeed become more action than form (Gate, 2005:53) with a series of temporary ‘sets’ and actions pieced together for specific performatical uses. Because it is a plaza, the scenes are set upon a ‘provided environment’, a fully designed public space offered to the city. In that case, the architecture becomes - a series of inter-plays created by the ever-changing actions of bodies in space.

Roosevelt attracted various independent groups that create a sort of agenda of activities to the square, putting into practice a number of creative experiments, be it by weekly scheduled actions, aleatory encounters on specific spots of the plaza or that each time settling upon new ones. Most of them have social media as online platform and Roosevelt as the ‘offline’ base camp to broadcast their urban, political and aesthetic agendas, described more in detail on the following spreads.

268 SCENES AND SCENARIOS I CENAS E CENÁRIOS

Roosevelt is currently an open field hosting independent groups that imagine and put into practice a number of creative experiments, be it by weekly scheduled actions, aleatory encounters on specific spots of the plaza or that each time settling upon new ones. Most of them have social media as the online platform, and Roosevelt as the ‘offline’ base-camp groups to broadcast their urban, political and aesthetic agendas.

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270 SCENES AND SCENARIOS I CENAS E CENĂ RIOS

[Roosevelt by a skater] Skaters visualize the city as a hardwareâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, something they can manipulate to their enjoyment, transform ing urban space and using for unintended purposes (Borden, 2003:11). Therefore, representation of the plaza for those coming to practice skate gains a rather particular scenography, where the furnishings are converted into obstacles to be postponed under the eyes of the audience. The mental map illustrates the presence of various microterritories and micro-architectures that play a significant

role in how it accommodates, encourages, limits or constrains specific cultural practices, such as skating. As in a theatre, this complete architectural scenery has a clear and significant impact on the performance, while at the same time it is not deterministic and monitoring a certain flexibility (Heynen, 2013).

Mental map author: Vagner da Silva, 20 y/o, inhabitant of Barueri >

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The square’s materiality, the actors and their interactions, along with a multitude of (un)planned activities - when combined - result in an overlap of continuous scenes and ‘choreographies’ that give Praça Roosevelt a sense of place.

274 IMAGINARY OF THE CITY I IMAGINÁRIO DA CIDADE

Praça Roosevelt, as here-by presented, depicts ‘the experience of an urban plaza with multiple, simultaneous scenes that both surrounds and is surrounded by audience, […] juxtaposed fictional narratives, improvisation and real situations, proposing a paradigm for public space in a modern, collective society’ (Gate, 2005).

who do not have Praça Roosevelt as part of their quotidian lives experience it as a play field to break free from their everyday rules and regulations, a space of ‘transgression’, an opportunity to encounter the uncommon, the stranger - but once ‘the play is over’, they return to a reality that is detached from the boundaries of the plaza.

The plaza’s successful performance as a common stage when confronted to its controversial management systems and the general clashes of interests illustrates how both the materiality and the use/management of the square have been highly contested in its past and present. In itself subject of multiple frictions and accommodating conflicting uses where each struggles for their own space, Roosevelt exemplifies the nature of public space as a place of contestation, an area in which society negotiates its multiple possible futures.

Those user-based relationships also have an impact in time. They go from ‘ritualistic’ time frames (as in walk the dog religiously twice a day) to occasional forms of participation whenever there is an event or political manifestation, which results in a series of ordinary encounters broken by effusive moments of artistic performances or acts of protest.

The disputes that come into play are also responsible for arising antagonists and protagonists. For those living closer, the relationship with the plaza is as productive as it is problematic - it is easier for neighbours to develop a sense of complicity and care towards a space of public interest, but when that relationship treats the space as an expansion of their own private realms (a sort of ‘immediate backyard’), the overall dialogue with the other users from the rest of the city is damaged. On the other hand, those

With no plot written or previous rehearsals, those spontaneous processes are hard to predict, control and guide - making it difficult to create pre established regulations, as there is no such thing as an artificially maintained cultural scenario (Abbud, 2014). The stage of the plaza can be seen as ‘a field of action and a basis for action, both ‘actual’ and ‘potential’ ’ (Lefebvre, 1991) - a superposition of users and meanings that is not likely to reach a sort of public space ‘nirvana state’ (where total harmony prevails) what makes co-inhabiting the biggest challenge in reaching possible understandings of how to collectively construct (or imagine) a city.

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From the moment cultural actions bring consequences to the landscape - for example, when something is inserted, modified or taken away from the built environment - a process of reaction is established in the imaginary of each inhabitant. The Buraco da Minhoca tunnel, for instance, will never be seen as a mono functional simple car tunnel again by those who participated in one of the successful events organized while it was still opened. This way such cultural practices slip into ‘rehearsals’ where alternative public spaces are being tested and demonstrated in situ. Imagining and testing such ‘alternatives’ to the status quo of the city, they become indeed instances and scenes of a proto urbanism that is, an urbanism yet to come. ‘It refers to the impressions and emotions of the individuals […] that according to their own reading of the city attributes meanings to the diverse urban elements, be they functional or symbolic. The perception of the urban landscape is, therefore, resultant of the imaginary of each individual, that points the concrete elements - obtained from the daily and the direct experience with the city and the repertoire built by the living memories’ (De Marchi, 2008: 74). As approached by Polise de Marchi, the image of the city is associated to the interventions and actions designed for a space or realized on a space (be them artistic, architectonic, performances, manifestations, etc). They

become legitimate forms of interfering on the environment - as, by definition, they are projected and executed upon a landscape. Without materially changing the urban settings, many of the described practices imprint their own micro processes and living experiences, raising flags or creates their own fantasies on the plaza - that be them banal, joyful, absurd or tragic, work as catalyzers in the creation of personal and collective imaginaries of the square, translating the aims, wishes and mental idealizations of the citizens towards their own perception of what is actually an ideal public space.

BLOCO FLUVIAL DO PEIXE SECO CARNAVAL PARADE

SP NA RUA

ONE NIGHT FESTIVAL

PARQUE AUGUSTA

CLAIMED PARK, CURRENTLY CLOSED

TEATRO OFICINA

INSURGENT THEATRE COMPANY

AVENIDA PAULISTA

PRODUCTION OF CULTURE

PRODUÇÃO DE CULTURA AVENUE CLOSED FOR CARS ON SUNDAYS

P.117

0 KM

1 KM

EPILOGUE: URBAN CULTURE OF THE CITY

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URBAN CULTURES AND THE CITY I CULTURAS URBANAS E DA CIDADE 281

The presented case studies are spatial and temporal fragments of a broad network of emancipatory practices with clear urban agendas. Performing together, selforganized citizens of various natures have been leaving their traces in spaces around São Paulo, creating an inspiring catalogue of initiatives that mirror possible uses and wills to actively engage in the production of the city. By tracing out those operations, this work developed a theory of lived space (Low, 2000:129) to help understand the spatial practices that stray from the disciplines and constraints of urban planning but, at the same time, have the potential to be important allies for their own evolution. In the book On the Plaza (2000), Setha Low points out three main ‘typologies’ used by those civil society groups to

intervene on space – (1) manifestations, (2) latent protests and (3) ritual protests - present in the previous case studies as examples of legitimate praxis that have been multiplying in other spaces of São Paulo. Manifestations are performed as public demonstrations when space is appropriated or seized by marginal or outcast groups to express discontentment and disagreement. Latent Protests are ongoing public contestations of the symbolic furnishings, design, surrounding business and buildings of the public space. Lastly, the ritual protests emerge in the form of theatrical performances, parties and carnival parades that temporarily invert the social structure, functions or hegemonic meanings of space not necessarily changing its furnishings in a material way.

282 EPILOGUE I EPILOGUO

(1) Citizens partially blocking the street and climbing over the walls of Park Augusta to claim for its opening and proper requalification

(2) Largo da Batata is a public space in São Paulo that, in 2014, underwent a redesign project devoid of identity and proper urban furnishings. In response, architects, artists and local residents gathered to instal self-made sitting spaces and more vegetation in attempt to make ‘improvised’ comfort zones that were quickly integrated by other users. Their direct actions are a way to question the modes in which public space is being produced in the city nowadays

URBAN CULTURES AND THE CITY I CULTURAS URBANAS E DA CIDADE 283

(3) The carnival parade ‘Bloco Fluvial do Peixe Seco’ [SEE RO NETWORK OF COLLECTIVES, P. 270] in a journey along the canalized Tamanduateí River. The symbolic ritual to follow the hidden rivers also partially blocks streets and take its participants through urban paths that are normally not accessible by foot

(2) (3).Terreyro Coreográfico (Choreographic Terrain) is a project led by the theatre company Teatro Oficina and partners under the Jaceguay viaduct, an extension of Minhocão. They contest the left over space by transforming it into a terrain for visual expressions and bodily performances

284 EPILOGUE I EPILOGO

Citizens enjoying the car-free Avenida Paulista on a Sunday

Those are remarkable examples to illustrate expanding actions ‘little in the way of financial resources, but with a large amount of social and cultural capital, a high degree of energy and commitment and great willingness to improvise’ (Oswalt, Overmeyer & Misselwitz, 2009).

Recently, some remarkable autonomous practices have gained space and voice inside the ‘institutional’ urban planning and the cultural agenda of the São Paul, such as ‘Avenida Paulista Aberta’ (Open Paulista Avenue) and the event ‘SP na Rua’ (short for ‘São Paulo on the Street’).

In more conventional discourses and practices of urbanism, however, these ways of claiming and agitating space are often casualized - as they are mostly inborn as emotional responses towards the urban environment, with a more ephemeral character and without clear organizational structures and hierarchies. In the end, they are mostly considered as merely ‘temporal uses’ of the city. Formatwise, despite straying from the ‘status quo’ of the dominant instances of city making, their success in reaching high degrees of popular recognition and support have been slowly taking them outside the margins.

Avenida Paulista is one of the most iconic and bustling avenues of central São Paulo. In 2015, collectives like Sampapé and Minha Sampa [SEE CONSTELLATION PAGE 289-290] triggered civil society into pressuring local authorities for more leisure spaces and less car-based policies. After several months of meetings, social media agitation and punctual events to raise public awareness, the organized groups managed to negotiate with the municipality and achieve the closure of Paulista for cars every Sunday from 10am to 6pm. Like Minhocão, it became another important piece of infrastructure of the city to be reconverted into a temporary public space.

URBAN CULTURES AND THE CITY I CULTURAS URBANAS E DA CIDADE 285

São Bento Street in Sé being filled up with people, music and art during SP na Rua

The event SP na Rua was inspired by the various openair parties spontaneously organized around the centre by independent collectives [SEE CONSTELLATION PAGE 289-290] such as VoodooHop, Free Beats, Nos Trilhos, Calefação Tropicaos and Anhangabaroots - acknowledged and included in the city’s cultural calendar as ‘instances of cultural agitation’. Yearly, the municipality launches an open call to offer financial help and legal support for all collectives willing to participate in each edition. Once accepted, they are free to set up their own scenarios and sound systems around several public spaces of the old centre (Sé and República) for a full night. Since those collectives are quite popular, the event attracts hundreds of people to areas of the centre that are usually vacated after with the closure of commercial and business activities at the end of the working hours [PROTO-URBANISMS].

Those two instances shed light on the ways ‘formal’ urban planning can incorporate informal processes on their agenda and how autonomous practices manage to work in parallel with the public power in the pursuit of their desired practices – both towards the common goal of reactivating urban spaces.

286 EPILOGUE I EPILOGO

‘As collective expressions of energy, they can not be devalorized for being merely temporary, as they proved to be quite effective in terms of speed of execution, putting ideas into action and things into place to actually make an action happen, - differing from the ‘over-plannings that allow little or no space for appropriations, negotiation, improvisation or initiative’ Tonkiss, 2013

URBAN CULTURES AND THE CITY I CULTURAS URBANAS E DA CIDADE 287

The hopeful vision that the acting forces of the urban environment can be able to negotiate and collaborate with each other, shifting the mindset of the planning strategies, also opens possibilities to expand the actors responsible for shaping the city. The next spread displays a ‘constellation’ of collectives that have been acting upon the city of São Paulo, playing a remarkable role as ‘initiators’ of social-spatial processes. Some are more anchored and act on a specific spot or preferred territory (such as the case of Parque Augusta, [SEE SPREAD 247-248]), whilst others are intentionally ‘satelliting’, each time orbiting and exploring different sites of the city to act, as performed by Bloco Fluvial do Peixe Seco when choosing each year a different hidden river of São Paulo to guide the path of their carnival parades. Identified by their personalized logos and varied activism performances, the 64 collectives were mapped during fieldwork in São Paulo. Their popularity and influence on social media is measured by the size of each logo, representing the number of ‘likes’ 1 accounted on the collective’s Facebook page. 1 The Facebook Like button is a feature that allows users on this social media platform to show their support for specific comments, pictures, wall posts, statuses or fan pages, also permitting appreciation of content without making written comments. (Source: Internet Acronyms and Lingo: http:// whatis.techtarget.com/glossary/Internet-Acronyms-Lingo)

The way these collectives act is grounded by proposing activities and events in network, elaborating and organizing forms of collective and participative action, exchanging information, sharing claims, documenting activities and making them available, in a flux of real-time communication through social media platforms. Although some of the tools are digital and virtual, the real space of the occupation and the conviviality remains primarily material and physic (Abbud, 2014). The cultural interventions of those collectives arise in multiple forms, scales, proposes and natures of provision, working as powerful tools in which urban reality (and materiality) is made perceivable and recognizable (De Marchi, 2008). By doing so, they open interesting perspectives for the possible future of cities and their public spaces. Inside the dynamic nature in the contemporary metropolis of São Paulo, acknowledging and documenting the multitude of those ‘acting forces’ permits that alternative ideas of urban transformation can be developed and exposed.

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289

290 EPILOGUE I EPÍLOGO

‘[…] the concept of interim or ‘makeshift’ city highlights a mode of urban practice that works in the cracks between formal planning, speculative investment and local possibilities. It also uses this concept more critically to contrast the temporary or provisory with the cataclysmic investment cycles and distorted timeframes of urban development as usual’ Tonkiss, 2013

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How the manifestations of those collectives materialize in time is an important aspect to understand their impact on the larger frame of the city. They can happen in the form of spontaneous gatherings, ‘pop-up’ events lasting a few hours (i.e parties, workshops, theatre plays and flashmobs1), planned events of bigger proportions during several days (such as independent festivals) or as the more permanent seizure of abandoned structures, a seen in artistic occupations like Ouvidor 63. The following year-based graphic gathers the rhythmic interaction of some of the events and collectives described throughout the research, with the frequencies in which they emerge (i.e daily, weekly, monthly). The black strikes mark notable independent festivals organized with and without governmental support such as Baixo Centro [see spread 175-176], Cocidade 2 and Festival Praça da Nascente 3; mingled with events and holidays from the cultural calendar of São Paulo (Carnival and Virada Cultural 4). Looking at each of the three case studies, these dynamics unfold differently. Ouvidor 63 works on a double time frame - the already established occupation as a more continuous and steady use of the building and the punctual events organized inside, with the presence of outsiders, as more short and supply ways to open up to the city.

1 A large public gathering at which people perform an unusual or seemingly random act and then disperse, typically organized by means of the Internet or social media (Oxford English Dictionaries Online). 2 Cocidade (‘Co-city’) is an independent festival that once a year promotes the encounter of various movements linked to collaborative urban practices and cultural occupations on public spaces of São Paulo. 3 Organized by the collective ‘Ocupe e Abrace’, Festival Praça da Nascente aims to promote the ‘cultural and environmental’ revitalization of Praça Homero Silva, an underused public space in the neighbourhood of Pompéia (R7 Notícias, 19.10.14). The festival started in 2013 and happens every 4 months, counting with the collaboration of cultural collectives, local artists and neighbours. 4 Virada Cultural is a 24-hour cultural festival that began in 2005 and occurs annually in São Paulo. Events include various live music concerts, films, plays, art exhibits and other cultural activities and performances, organized, produced and financed by the Municipal Secretary of Culture.

For Minhocão, temporariness is crucial as its time frame is highly strict, allowing cultural appropriations to happen only at its opening hours on evenings and weekends. Nevertheless, when closed for traffic, those events and demonstrations take place in different ‘rhythms of use’. Praça Roosevelt is the only among the three with a rather open time frame, as citizens are free to use the plaza at all times of the day for different activities. Yet, also the management boards and security services are in constant search to impose certain time schedules for installing more regulated use-sequences. By occupying the city in their own timeframes along the year(s), these sequential mobilizations and their different modalities unveil ‘on and off patterns of cultural agitation’ – hereby seen as cyclic processes of formation and dissolution that ‘toggle’ 5 spaces for a certain amount of time, inviting to temporarily participate in ‘new’ urban realities and to explore space in critical ways, setting in motion dynamic processes that activate the city’s cultural life thought its occupied spaces. This notion also resonates in Krystallia Kamvasinou’s essay on temporary interventions and long-term legacies (2015:1-21). Based on successful case studies in London, she highlights that those interventions put ‘temporariness under question, and so the traditional mainstream depiction of bottom-up in opposition to top-down action. These trends are contextualized within the dynamics of recession that has triggered new types of creative conversations between parties traditionally considered in opposition, and may contribute to reframing urban development as an incremental, organic and collaborative process’.

5 Switch from one effect, feature, state or function to another; manipulate in a particular way to open or close a circuit – like in a light switch. (adapted from Oxford and Merriam Webster Dictionaries)

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Reporting to the previous illustration, vacant spaces can be figuratively considered as black ‘empty’ boxes. The urban movements are the actors capable of sensing potential and initiating spatial changes. They act like social ‘power supplies’ that ‘enlighten’ those non-lieux by providing cultural outputs for their reactivation.

is mostly attained through money gatherings inside the collective members, independent crowdfundings, private sponsors or public money. Ventures can range from totally costless (like Roosevelt’s Rap Battles, that basically needs only a spatial support) to fully financed projects like SP na Rua.

In order to materialize those urban experiences, three main ‘keys’ are part of the process to make them feasible:

3. Legal support - actions authorized or nonauthorized? – it is the assigned formal permission from the local government or responsible bodies for the actions to take place in a certain space. The bureaucratic and lengthy processes of urban policy-making in dealing with spontaneous occupations and civil claims prevent most collectives to request any permission for their actions, culminating in the proliferation of minor audacities and insurgent actions, as seen when Bloco Peixe Seco blocks a street to perform or the collective A Batata Precisa de Você inserts self-made furniture on a public square.

1. Spatial support - where and how will it be? - is the choice of place, its materiality and overall adaptions and furnishings that enable the happenings, like assembling tents, decorating, setting up a sound system, etc. Regarding the material qualities of space, actions can take place in completely vacant and meaningless spaces (like the building of Ouvidor 63) or in fully designed spaces, such as Praça Roosevelt – all in their own way supporting and contouring certain interventions. 2. Financial support - how much will it cost? – The budget available or needed to buy or produce the necessary ‘props’ (furniture, costumes, objects) for actions to be realized. It

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â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The act of making in public provokes a rupture on the daily life of citizens, thus leading to a reflection on the situation exposed by the action. If such making takes place on a regular basis and produces immediate solutions, it bears the potential to become a self-generated collective action, that is to say, something that spontaneously aggregates people, considering that the prototyping of urban solutions brings quick and visible improvements to the spaceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Sobral, 2014

296 EPILOGUE I EPÍLOGO

In a fast-paced and densely developed metropolis like São Paulo, not only the urban policy-making but the standard practices of urbanism have never managed to fully reach the track of society’s changes and the evolving range of users and claims. The ‘instances and scenes’ shown throughout this research surface as ‘informal investments’ [PROTO-URBANISMS] in response to the crisis in that model. They are emerging forms of creative collaboration from citizens which, in a certain way, are actors engaged in sharing the responsibility to ‘handle the city’.

The cultural practices that hybridize, reframe and invent territories became crucial agencies in solving complex problems and reactivating forgotten and problematic spaces of the city. For some, they result in urban ‘micro-plannings’ arising from the base, from the perception and attempts to solve local needs (Castanheira, 2015). These ‘microplannings’, addressed here rather as ‘proto-urbanisms’, are means of speculating about how things could be, making reality more malleable and tangible to imagine and increasing the odds of achieving desirable futures (Dunne & Rabi, 2013).

Socially, they change the way people mentally frame urban spaces and collectively experience it with their bodies. Spatially, they turn the urban environment into a (political) ‘device’ - in the sense of using space to negotiate, achieve particular effects or put ideas into practice - inventing, contriving or adapting it to fulfill everyday needs or support insurgent claims. In addition, ‘the experimentation and reversibility afforded by temporary use practices can encourage a multilayered approach to land use and increase the likelihood that a vacant space will eventually find permanent use’ 1 (Evidence Matters, 2014).

Besides revising and renovating the social life of spaces, this library of provisional uses presents strong provocations for architects, urban planners, local governments and institutions. Unquestionably, they challenge urbanism for finding other ways to interpret space and integrate emancipatory practices into the implementation of projects, meaning the built forms or pieces of architecture that have to accommodate inclusive uses.

Culture and art, in that process, work as resources. They are the collective ability to find clever ways in which to enjoy and make the spatial experience profitable, the actions and strategies to rethink possible (re)appropriations, intrinsically originating from bottom-up practices. 1 Quarterly publication on evidence-based policymaking. Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R), U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

For Luís Felipe Abbud 2, researcher and architect from São Paulo, ‘architects and planners are frequently stereotyped as the masterminds with the brilliant ideas’, those who draw beautiful forms that can solve the problems of humanity. This image is fading to disappear. On its place is piecemeal arising a generation of professionals searching to incorporate self-managed practices and networking technologies to invent new modes of thinking and acting for architecture, together with collectives of different natures’. 2 Interview to the online journal Portal Aprendiz, 31.07.2014.

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Perhaps, cultural production of the city discussed here could be seen as stepping-stones for long-term improvements or more institutionalized on-site actions grounded in new alliances between engaged citizens, governmental institutions and design professionals. As became clear, there are surely lessons to be learnt from these ‘cultural agitations’. Despite punctual and temporal, they conceivably work as mediative channels to recognize and experience other urbanities that were not present or proposed before. Hence, the designer’s position is also one of mediation, as it is the professional between the wills of society and the institutionalized machineries controlling urban production. A challenge or possible role for designers, if that can be envisioned by critically observing urban movements, is that of interceding these collaborations. Thus, steering those two forces (‘top-down’ institutions and ‘bottom- up’ urban movements) into the right direction - by recognizing, optimizing and balancing their potential - could lead to fairer levels of city co-production. Other Brazilian scholar, the urbanist Renato Cymbalista, is quite positive about the fact that São Paulo ‘is facing a reconstruction in the contours of the discipline of Urbanism. It lives a moment is of radical redefinition of the possibilities and challenges that involve the production and occupation of urban spaces, as well as the public action over them’ (interview, 2016).

Collective constructions resonate a sense of empowerment in the communities and groups involved. The act of donating individual energy into collective efforts bonds one to the physical space they voluntarily chose to be part of, and it surely has positive effects both physically (to the urban environment) and psychologically (to the urban dweller). The space becomes a stage for the pursuit of an ideal and vital to achieve a state of true democracy, not to mention its capacity in gathering different people to exchange in convivial ways. The cultural occupation of urban space demonstrates the quest for popular participation in the production of the urban environment. A revolutionary union of everyday life through political engagement and spatial awareness, through play and freedom, rather than the acquiescent acceptance of mainstream consumer culture (Beaven, 2012). Probably, it is about seizing the city’s potentialities at its fullest, having equal access to all its facilities, experiencing less ‘furtive’ and more ‘festive’ (public) spaces. The reinvention of the space by occupying acts came to (de)construct imposed orders. Successfully, they have shown that a healthy city environment must prioritize the culture embedded in its landscape, setting production before consumption, collectivity before self-centrism and vox populi as a rule and not an option.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY I BIBLIOGRAFIA 299 CITED INTERVIEWS, 2016 February, 13th: February, 26th: March, 07th: March,15th: March, 23th:

Athos Comolatti - Founder of Associação Parque Minhocão Laura Sobral - Architect and Urbanist from the collective A Batata Precisa de Você Felipe Morozini - Visual artist and member of Associação Parque Minhocão Carlinhos de Moraes - Artist residing in the second floor of Ouvidor 63 Marcos de Oliveira Costa - Architect and Urbanist at Borelli & Merigo, office responsible for the execution of Praça Roosevelt’s redesign in 2012.

READINGS Alex, Sun (2008). Projeto da Praça: convívio e exclusão no espaço público. Editora SENAC, São Paulo. 287 p. Abbud, L. F. (2010). Respeitável Público: Projeto de Reativação da Praça Franklin Roosevelt na Cidade de São Paulo. Final Graduation Paper, FAUUSP. São Paulo. Retrieved from http://www.fau.usp.br/disciplinas/tfg/tfg_online/tr/102/a075.html Abbud, L. (2014). Praça Roosevelt: a criatividade como ferramenta de ocupação do espaço público. Portal Aprendiz. Retrieved from http://portal.aprendiz.uol.com.br/2014/07/31/praca-roosevelt-a-criatividade-como-ferramenta-deocupacao-do-espaco-publico/ Andrea P; Letizia V. et al. (2002). Requalificação de cortiço: o projeto da Rua do Ouvidor, 63. Annablume, São Paulo. p.53. Andres, L. (2013). Differential spaces, power hierarchy and collaborative planning: A critique of the role of temporary uses in shaping and making places. Urban Studies, 50(4), 759-775. Retrieved from http://usj.sagepub.com/content/ early/2012/08/10/0042098012455719 Artigas, R.; Castro, A.; Mello, J. (2008). Caminhos do Elevado: memória e projetos. São Paulo. Secretaria Municipal de Planejamento - Sempla, Departamento de Estatística e Produção de Informação – Dipro, Imprensa Oficial do Estado de São Paulo. Bastos J. ; De Marchi P. ; Lima L. ; Mercante C. ; Perez, J; Kon S. & Duarte F. (Ed) (2008). A(des)construção do caos. Editora Perspectiva, São Paulo, v. 01, p. 217-249. Barbosa, E. R. Q. (2012). Minhocão Multiple Interpretations. Vitruvius Online Journal. Arquitextos, year 13, n.147.03. São Paulo. Retrieved from http://www.vitruvius.com.br/revistas/read/arquitextos/13.147/4455/en. Beaven, K (2012). Performance Art 101: The Angry Space, politics and activism. Retrieved from http://www.tate.org.uk/ context-comment/blogs/performance-art-101-angry-space-politics-and-activism. Bomfim, V.C. (2004). O Centro Histórico de São Paulo : a vacância imobiliária, as ocupações e os processos de reabilitação urbana. Cadernos Metropole, 12(2nd semester), pp.27–48. Calliari, M. (2012). Praça Roosevelt: Um espaço emblemático da relação de São Paulo com seus espaços públicos. Vitruvius Online Journal. Arquitextos, year 13, 147.03: 13. São Paulo. Castanheira, E. B. (2015). Práticas criativas e territórios emergentes : o hibridismo do/nos elevados. Master thesis, Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie, São Paulo. p128 . De Cauter, L. & Dehaene M. (2008). Heterotopia and the City: Public Space in a Postcivil Society. Routledge, 360 p. Ferreira, J. C. M.(2009). Praça Roosevelt: possibilidades e limites de uso do espaço público. Dissertation. Universidade de São Paulo. Frúgoli Jr, F. J. (2006). Centralidade em São Paulo: trajetórias, conflitos e negociações na metrópole. EdUSP. 225p.

300 Lima, C. (1996). A natureza na Cidade. Phd Dissertation, FAUUSP. São Paulo. Lima, C. (1994). Procurando a natureza do centro de São Paulo. Publication from Associação Viva o Centro,São Paulo López et al ; Alan M.; Alan S. (Ed.)(2015). Making Room: Cultural Production in Occupied Spaces. Other Forms, Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. 177p. Low, S. (2000). On the plaza: The politics of public space and culture. University of Texas Press. 274pp. Low, S. (2014). Spatializing Culture: An Engaged Anthropological Approach to Space and Place. J. J., Gieseking, W., Mangold, C., Katz, S., Low, & S., Saegert (Eds). The People, Place, and Space Reader, 34-38. Retrieved from http:// peopleplacespace.org/files/2014/06/Low-Spatializing-Culture.pdf Kamvasinou, K. (2015). Temporary intervention and long-term legacy: lessons from London case studies. Journal of Urban Design: 1-21. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13574809.2015.1071654 Lerchs, Lucas (2016). Ouvidor 63: la culture comme vecteur d’occupation. UCL, LOCI - Architecture Saint Luc Bruxelles. 98p. Manzini, E., & Coad, R. (2015). Design, When Everybody Designs: An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation. MIT Press. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt17kk7sv Mumford, L. (1961). The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects. Harcourt, Brace & World. 657p. Mcguill, J. A. (2010). The Culver Viaduct. Urban Omnibus Online Journal. Retrieved from http://urbanomnibus.net McGill, J. A. (2010). Underline: Opportunism in the Spaces of Urban Infrastructure. Marche, G. (2012). Expressivism and resistance: graffiti as an infra political form of protest against the War on Terror. Revue française d’études américaines: 1. p.78-96. Moore, Alan W. (2015) Art and Squatting in the City from Below. Autonomedia. 374.p. J. J., Gieseking, W., Mangold, C., Katz, S., Low, & S., Saegert (Eds) (2014) Spatializing Culture: An Engaged Anthropological Approach to Space and Place. The People, Place, and Space Reader : 34-38. Prefeitura de São Paulo, (2014) Plano Diretor Estratégico do Município de São Paulo, Lei nº 16.050, de 31 de julho de 2014, p. 248. Philipp O; Klaus O. & Philipp M; Schwarz T. & Rugare S. (eds).(2009). Patterns of the Unplanned. Pop Up City. Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative, 7p. Polletta, F. (1999). Free Spaces in Collective Action. Theory and Society 28.1: 1-38. Retrieved from https://www.scribd. com/document/217102345/Free-spaces-in-collective-action-FRANCESCA-POLLETTA Polletta, F. & James, J. (2001). Collective Identity and Social Movements. Annual Review of Sociology 27: 283-305. Retrieved from http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.soc.27.1.283?journalCode=soc Read, G. (2005). Theatre of Public Space: Architectural Experimentation in the Théâtre de l’espace (Theatre of space), Paris 1937. Journal of Architectural Education, 58(4), 53-62. Rosa, M. L. (2011). Microplanejamento: práticas urbanas criativas. São Paulo: Editora Cultura. Sobral, L. (2014). Public and Collective Making. Transnational Dialogues 2014 Journal. Retrieved from https://euroalter. com/2014/public-and-collective-making

BIBLIOGRAPHY I BIBLIOGRAFIA 301 Temporary Urbanism: Alternative Approaches to Vacant Land. (2014). Evidence Matters, Winter Issue. Retrieved from https://www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/em/winter14/highlight4.html Tonkiss, F. (2014). Cities by Design: The Social Life of Urban Form. Wiley. 224pp. Tonkiss, F. (2013). Austerity urbanism and the makeshift city. City, 17(3), pp. 312-324. Retrieved from http://www. tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13604813.2013.795332?journalCode=ccit20 Yamashita, K. Y. (2013). Praça Roosevelt, Centro de São Paulo: intervenções urbanas e práticas culturais contemporâneas. Dissertation, Universidade de São Paulo. Vasudevan, A. (2014). The makeshift city: Towards a global geography of squatting. Progress In Human Geography, 39(3), pp. 338-359. Wunenburger, J. (2003). Public space: The Urban Imaginary. Retrieved from http://www.publicspace.org/en/text-library/ eng/a019-the-urban-imaginary Wisnik, G. (2015). O ativismo urbano e o valor de uso do espaço público. Ilustríssima, Folha de S. Paulo. Retrieved from http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/ilustrissima/2015/11/1705535-o-ativismo-urbano-e-o-valor-de-uso-do-espaco-publico.shtml WEBSITES Blog Quando a Cidade era Mais Gentil - https://quandoacidade.wordpress.com/ Companhia de Engenharia de Tráfego (CETESP) - http://www.cetsp.com.br/ Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary - http://www.merriam-webster.com/ O Estado de São Paulo (Estadão / Jornal da Trade)- http://www.estadao.com.br/ Folha de São Paulo - http://m.folha.uol.com.br/ Folha de São Paulo, Acervo (Online Archive) - http://acervo.folha.uol.com.br/ Freegan.Info - http://freegan.info/ Governo do Estado de São Paulo - http://www.capital.sp.gov.br/ Google Maps - http://googlemaps.com. Magazine Veja São Paulo - http://vejasp.abril.com.br/ Online Archive of Parlapatões Theatre Company - http://parlapablog.blogspot.be/2011_10_02_archive.html Ocupa Ouvidor 63 - https://www.facebook.com/ocupaouvidor63revitalizacao/ Oxford University Press. Online Dictionary - http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/ Portal da Secretaria Municipal de Cultura de São Paulo - http://www.prefeitura.sp.gov.br/cidade/secretarias/cultura/ Portal SP Cultura, Online Platform for Cultural Mapping of Secretaria Municipal de Cultura - http://spcultura.prefeitura.sp.gov.br/ São Paulo Antiga - http://www.saopauloantiga.com.br/ Secretaria da Cultura do Estado de São Paulo - http://www.cultura.sp.gov.br CARTOGRAPHY

Most of the layers are downloaded from the GIS-database of Prefeitura São Paulo. Gis data Prefeitura São Paulo - http://geosampa.prefeitura.sp.gov.br/PaginasPublicas/_SBC.aspx General layers: Mapa Base, Camadas (Equipamentos,Cultura, Habitação / Edificação, Infra estrutura Urbana, Sistema Viário)

Historical Maps based on: Henry, B. J. (1881). Planta da Cidade de São Paulo, Companhia Cantareira e Esgotos. Author Unknown (drawn on 1922). São Paulo: Chácaras, Sítios e Fazendas ao redor do centro que desapareceram com o tempo.

302 Lima e Silva, M da F. (1847). Mappa da Cidade de São Paulo e seus subúrbios Cococi, A.M., Fructuoso, L. (1905). Planta geral da Cidade São Paulo Cococi, A.M., Fructuoso, L. (1913). Planta geral da Cidade São Paulo Directoria de Obras e Vinção da Prefeitura Municipal (1916). Planta da Cidade de São Paulo Sara Brasil (1930). Mappa Topográphico do Municipio de São Paulo

IMAGES All unreferenced pictures are taken by the authors during the fieldwork of February and March 2016.

Ouvidor 63 [up, p.35] Duarte, Benedito Junqueira (1954). Acervo da Casa da Imagem, São Paulo. Retrieved from https:// quandoacidade.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/o-teatro-portatil/ [up, p.37] Author Unknown (undated). Webpage of Escritório de Arquitetura SPBR. Retrieved from http-//www.spbr.arq. br/pt/wp-content/uploads/1998/09/51_web.jpg [down, p.37] Andrea P; Letizia V. et al, 2002 [up, p.38] View retrieved from Google Earth, 2016. [down left, p.38] Author Unknown (undated). Collective Androides Andróginos, São Paulo. Retrieved from http:// osandroidesandrogi.wixsite.com/retratosdeumacena [down right, p.38] Guerra, Amanda (2014). SerHurbano Collective, Rio de Janeiro. Web. Retrieved from http://serhurbano. com.br/ocupacoes-intervencoes [down left, p.38] Author unknown (undated). Facebook page Ocupa Ouvidor 63. Retrieved from https://www.facebook. com/ocupaouvidor63revitalizacao [left, p.42] Author Unknown.(2008). Revista da Folha: Prédio da CDHU, Rua do Ouvidor 63. Retrieved from: http://www1. folha.uol.com.br/revista/rf2610200808.htm [p.46, 47, 48, 49] Drawings based on LERCHS, 2016 [p.96 and 97] Authors unknown. (2014, 2015, 2016). Facebook Page of Ocupa Ouvidor 63. Retrieved from https://www. facebook.com/ocupaouvidor63revitalizacao/

Minhocão [up, p.113 and 114] Authors unknown (undated). Website São Paulo Antiga. Retrieved from http://www.saopauloantiga. com.br/sao-paulo-em-1971/ [down, p.114] Rosa A; Joana M; & Castro A. C. (Ed).(2008) Caminhos do elevado Memória e projetos. Imprensa Oficial do Estado de São Paulo - Sempla, 1ª edição. São Paulo. [up, p.115] Author unknown. Acervo Fotográfico Arquivo Histórico de São Paulo (AHSP). Retrieved from www. arquivohistorico.sp.gov.br

BIBLIOGRAPHY I BIBLIOGRAFIA 303 [down, p.115] Author unknown (1990’s). Personal Archive Coletivo Yopará. March, 2016. São Paulo [up left, p.116] Gomes, Rivaldo (2015). Website UOL Notícias, Jornal Estado de São Paulo. Retrieved from http://noticias. uol.com.br/ultimas-noticias/agencia-estado/2015/07/17/haddad-retira-sem-teto-de-nova-ciclovia-sob-o-minhocao.htm [down left, p.116] Author Unkown (2015). Festival Baixo Centro. Retrieved from http://baixocentro.org [down right, p.116] Hartmann, Sarah (2016). Personal Archive. February, 2016. São Paulo. [ps.125, 125] 01. Hartmann, Sarah (2016). Personal Archive. February, 2016. São Paulo. 03. Hartmann, Sarah (2016). Personal Archive. February, 2016. São Paulo. 04. Mazucante, Leonardo (2015). Everyday Mogi. Retrieved from http://everydaymogi.tumblr.compost/ 111809637225/dia-de-domingo-leonardo-mazucante [right, p.139] Andrade, Paula (undated). Facebook group of Associação Parque Minhocão. Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/groups/157092577826500/photos/ [p.141] Hartmann, Sarah (2016). Personal Archive. February, 2016. São Paulo. [up, p.142] Ballas, Valéria (2015). Flea Market at Minhocão. Online Portal Jundiaqui, São Paulo. Retrieved from http:// www.jundiaqui.com.br/?p=34409 [down, p.142] Carvalho, Fernanda (2015). Diário do Grande ABC. Retrieved from http://www.dgabc.com.br/ Noticia/1483798/bombeiros-veem-risco-em-eventos-no-minhocao [right, p.145] Author unknown (undated). Folha de São Paulo: Fotografia. Retrieved from http://fotografia.folha.uol.com. br/galerias/21944-feira-livre-s-a [left, p.146] Author unknown (1980’s). Website São Paulo Antiga. Retrieved from http://www.saopauloantiga.com.br/ propagandas-do-minhocao/ [down right, p.147] Author unknown (2014). Coletivo Vídeo Guerrilha. Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/videoguerrilha/photos?ref=page_internal [p.149] Movimento 90º (undated). Corredor Verde. Online page of Movimento 90º. Retrieved from http://movimento90. com/corredor-verde/ [p.156] Hartmann, Sarah (2016). Personal Archive. February, 2016. São Paulo. [p.157] Author unknown (2014). Posted by Gigi Barreto, Escritório de Arte Rio. Retrieved from http://www.escritoriodearterio.com.br/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/piscina-6.jpg [p.158] Morozini, Felipe (2015). Posted by Revista casa e Jardim. Retrieved from http://revistacasaejardim.globo.com/ Casa-e-Jardim/Decoracao/Moveis/noticia/2015/09/artista-monta-salas-de-estar-e-jantar-no-minhocao.html [p.162] Amparo, Pitanga do (1987). Published in the magazine Obra: Planejamento & Construção. Archive of Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo de São Paulo (FAUUSP). March, 2016 [p.163] Frentes Arquitetura (2006). O Novo Elevado: Prêmio Prestes Maia de Urbanismo, São Paulo. Retrieved from http://www.frentes.com.br/job.php?idjob=0028 [p.165] Miguel, Ciro (undated). Posted by Lilian Pacce. November, 2014. Retrieved from https://s3.amazonaws.com/ lilianpacce/media/2014/11/211114-parque-suspenso-minhocao-2.jpg

304 [left up, p.167] Authors unknown (2014). Posted on the facebook page of Santa Cecilia sem Minhocão. August, 2014. São Paulo. Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/semminhocao/photos [left down, p.167] Knapp, Eduardo (undated). Folha Press. Posted on the facebook page of Movimento Desmonte do Minhocão. May, 2015. São Paulo. Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/movimentodesmontedominhocao/photos [p.174] Mapa colaborativo do festival Baixo Centro (2013). Retrieved from: https://www.facebook.com/baixocentro [p.175] Author Unknown. (2013). Festival Baixo Centro Retrieved from: http://www.sampacriativa.org.br/festivalbaixocentro-as-ruas-sao-para-dancar/ [ps. 177 -180] Photos are courtesy of Leonardo Eichinger. [p.183] Tito, Fábio (2014). G1 News Portal. Retrieved from http://g1.globo.com/sao-paulo/noticia/2014/02/artistas-criammuseu-de-grafite-em-avenida-na-zona-norte-de-sp.html

Praça Roosevelt [p. 199- 202] Authors Unknown (1950’s). Published in the article of Marchi, Carlos F (2015). Retrieved from http://ipiu.org. br/pesquisas/espacos-publicos/praca-roosevelt-as-relacoes-entre-espaco-publico-e-sociedade/ [p. 208, map 01] Chácaras, Sítios e Fazendas, drawn on 1922 [p. 208, map 02] Henry, B. J, 1881 [p. 209, map 03] (Cococi, A.M., Fructuoso, L, 1905) [p. 209] map 04 (Cococi, A.M., Fructuoso, L, 1913) [p. 210] map 05 (Sara Brasil,1930) [p. 210] Author Unknown (1960’s). Blog Cine Bijou Memória. Retrieved from http://bijoucinememoria.blogspot.be/ [left p. 211] Author Unknown (1950’s). Published in the article of Marchi, Carlos F (2015). Retrieved from http://ipiu.org.br/ pesquisas/espacos-publicos/praca-roosevelt-as-relacoes-entre-espaco-publico-e-sociedade/ [right, p. 211] Geoportal (2011). Aerial view of Consolação. Retrieved from https://quandoacidade.wordpress. com/2011/12/06/sobrevoando-o-centro/ [left, p. 212] Author Unknown (1968). Posted by Carlos Cunha (2013). Retrieved from: http://www.slideshare.net/ mackenzista2/obras-praa-roosevelt-1968-1970-23585323 [right, p. 212] Revista Acrópole, 380, 1970, p.12. In: Yamashita, 2013:44 [left p. 213] Author Unknown (1950’s). Published in the article of Marchi, Carlos F (2015). Retrieved from http://ipiu.org.br/ pesquisas/espacos-publicos/praca-roosevelt-as-relacoes-entre-espaco-publico-e-sociedade/ [right p. 213] View retrieved from Google Earth, 2016.

[p.217] Revista Manchete (1970). Posted on the blog Quando a cidade era mais gentil (2013). Retrieved from https:// quandoacidade.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/mais-o-que/ [up p. 219] Author Unknown (undated). Posted on the blog Quando a cidade era mais gentil (2013). Retrieved from https://quandoacidade.wordpress.com/category/construcoes-icone/page/15/

BIBLIOGRAPHY I BIBLIOGRAFIA 305 [down left, p. 219] Author Unknown (1980). Archive of SP Urbanismo. In: Yamashita, 2013:44 [down right, p. 219] Author Unknown (undated). Neighbourhood blog of Praça Roosevelt. https://panoptico.wordpress. com/2008/05/30/por-que-construimos-pracas/ [p. 220] Soares, Maira (2009). Poster on Flickr. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/mairasoares/4069801520/in/ album-72157608712220170/ [p. 221] Author Unknown (2014). Published at Veja São Paulo, Blog Dirceu Alves Jr. Retrieved from: http://vejasp.abril. com.br/blogs/dirceu-alves-jr/files/2014/03/pra%C3%A7aroose.jpg [p. 238] Carvalho, Michael (2016). Facebook Page of Batalha da Roosevelt. Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/ BatalhaDaRoosevelt/photos/a.1482434088696686.1073741831.1423488537924575/1506589676281127/?type=3&theatre [p. 239] Coletivo Slam Resistência (2016). Facebook Page of Slam Resistência. Retrieved from https://www.facebook. com/slamresistencia/photos/a.737429123006476.1073741827.737426116340110/1078521672230551/?type=3&theatre [p. 251] Andryh, Kaue (2015). Noite da Rose, Catraca Livre. Retrieved from https://catracalivre.com.br/sp/agenda/gratis/ noite-da-rose-transforma-praca-roosevelt-em-circo-a-ceu-aberto/ [p. 252] Author Unknown (2014). Facebook page of Buraco da Minhoca. Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/ Buraco-da-minhoca-240801296089491/photos [p. 253] Paixão, Marcelo. (2014). Buraco da Minhoca, Catraca Livre. Retrieved from https://catracalivre.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/buraco_da_minhoca.jpg

Chapter 02 [p. 278-279, cover photo] Silva, Vicente P. (2016). Facebook Page of Bloco Fluvial do Peixe Seco. Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/blocofluvial/photos [p. 285] SP na Rua (2014). Website ‘I Hate Flash’. Retrieved from https://ihateflash.net/set/sp-na-rua

Icons The Noun Project (2016). Till Teenck, Creative Stall, Montana Rucobo, Arthur Shlain, Oliviu Stoian, Tracy Hudak, Daniel Gamage, Mauricio Amador, fms_design, Juan Pablo Bravo, Jennifer Morrow, Myly, Magicon, Sergey Demushkin, Daniel Gamage, Cor Tiemens, Kid A, Good Fridayss. Retrieved from https://thenounproject.com. Gerd Arntz Web Archive (2016). Retrieved from http://www.gerdarntz.org/isotype