From Highway to Public Park

CHANGE AGENTS>Interview

MINHOCÃO

From Highway To Public Park Paola Huijding in conversation with Brazilian architect Felipe Rodrigues on the Minhocão (the giant worm), a controversial elevated highway, which the neighbourhood calls a public park Before I answer your question I would like to empasise that in the urbanisation process of Brazilian cities, politics have always played an important role.

Throughout the twentieth century, Brazil experienced periods of development where the government sought to manipulate urban space to shape society. From 1964 to 1985, the country was under the rule of military leaders, and until 1990 there were no popular elections for President. However, beginning in the late 1970s, Brazil gradually returned to democratic rule. Since then, and in particularly after the dictatorship, social inclusion movements have been fighting the struggle to make a better city for the community safeguarding the right to the city for everyone.

Can you explain the building of this viaduct within the context of the urban development of the city centre of São Paulo?

Minhocão was originally born Presidente Costa e Silva Highway in honour of one of the generals who led Brazil during the military regime and who was also responsible for nominating the mayor Paulo Maluf – responsible for carrying out the plan – to his position at that time. The elevated road would be a shortcut between the east-west zones

of São Paulo and was part of a larger car-centred approach. It was envisioned based on a radio concentric road plan first partially implemented in the 1940s by the engineer and mayor Prestes Maia when the city had just 1.5 million people and each and every road led to downtown.

Three decades later – and when the population had increased four-fold – the strategy was still the same. Infrastructure, more specifically large avenues and roads, were executed with the best concrete (the same material that made the modern Brazilian architecture famous worldwide), which was the core of the developmental mindset and propagandist endeavour that the authoritarian regime was famous for. In this case, since the central lanes in São Paulo were too narrow to be enlarged, they were doubled vertically. Almost three kilometres long and flying nine metres above the ground, Minhocão was built impressively in less than a year, without public input and beyond inspection of any social sector; thus turning out to be the embryo of the corruption scandals that took Maluf to prison last year.

Amidst all the issues, the elevated road became as hated as it was desired by the citizens of this metropolis. Right after its completion in 1971,

The elevated road became as hated as it was desired by the citizens of this metropolis

Felipe SS Rodrigues

View from the Minhocão as a public space. In the background: two famous buildings of the Brazilian architecture’s legacy. On the left: Italy building (1965, architect Franz Heep) was the tallest in South America when built. On the right: Copan building (1966, architect Oscar Niemeyer) has 1,160 apartments and it’s one of the largest residential buildings in Brazil 72 | MY LIVEABLE CITY • Apr-Jun 2018

Top Left: The elevated road runs in the east-west direction and extends between residential buildings for a length of 3km.

Top Right: Dancers on the elevated highway, 9m above the ground Bottom Left & Right: Study made by architect Pitanga do Amparo in 1987 proposing a reorganisation of functions and spaces connecting the elevated structure to the buildings along it

the locals got together to take up the matter. The number of accidents during the early hours was so high that it turned nightmares into reality. Waking up with a start in the middle of the night finally came to an end in 1976 with the flow interruption between midnight and 5 a.m. In 1989 City Hall agreed to reduce noise and air pollution in the region, extending silence hours, still in force today, from 21:30 to 06:30 the next day. A ban on cars on Sundays and holidays came into effect in May 1990.

It is important to mention that in 1987 the meandering highway received approval for the first elevated park ever much before it created a worldwide buzz. Architect Pitanga do Amparo’s proposal considered mixed use conditions, connections between the existing buildings along with the public infrastructure and other urban facilities. The avant-garde design stamped on the cover of one of the city’s main newspapers spurred the mayor to look into the feasibility of the proposal in the urban planning department.

Unfortunately the project wasn’t carried forward.

Attempts to transform the Minhocão into a public park are not part of the High Line effect as many may imagine, but rather an attempt to realise an old ambition. While a few want to keep their private car track flowing, others want to see the structure pulled down and many have endorsed its transformation into a recreation area, which São Paulo lacks.

Due to the negative impact of traffic noise and air pollution, the highway is closed for motor traffic at certain time slots during the week. This measure gradually gave the opportunity to claim the viaduct as a public area for the neighbourhood. How did this movement start? And how has your initiative ‘Association Park Minhocão’ been contributing to this bottom-up movement?

Since the traffic was interrupted people started to walk their dogs and jog on the structure; skaters have an important role as pathfinders of areas that ordinary citizens are afraid to use. We cannot say that the intense occupation was immediate because there was much mourning and repulsion on the part of the residents who felt violated by the intruding structure that appeared almost instantaneously in front of their windows. But proof that the Minhocão is a necessary recreational structure lies in the inevitability of its use for leisure. Throughout the consolidated city centre there are only three parks that are far from the area under discussion, leaving the residents with no option other than occupying the underused space.

As we have seen, elevated parks are easily more justifiable in high-density areas and they are more likely to exist due to this very reason.

More recently, in 2013, professionals from Apr-Jun 2018 • MY LIVEABLE CITY | 73

CHANGE AGENTS>Interview “On the Minhocão: People YES, Cars NO”

all walks of life founded the Parque Minhocão Association. Architects, engineers, doctors, lawyers, artists and teachers relate to the multiple interfaces necessary to address the issue of this urban artefact. Based in an apartment from the 1950s with its windows facing directly towards the Minhocão – like all the neighbours, without private recreational areas – its goal is to concentrate initiatives paving a route that was already natural to Minhocão: its reuse as a leisure area for the locals. The group of volunteers participates in public decisions through democratic instruments, petitions, presence in public hearings and academic debates. The Association and society find resistance from conservative groups, which stand against any cultural manifestation outdoors Sometimes, the defense of the elevated park gets overshadowed with the defense of the right to the city.

Also, in 2013 the curatorship of the 10th São Paulo Architecture Biennial brought the exhibition on the New York High Line to the apartment, with the purpose of enlightening those who had less imagination or who were aware of the proposal, but didn’t have a chance to visit. That exhibition threw light on the topic and approached the residents who saw the Association as an anchor to all the issues related to the structure.

How do the inhabitants of the neighbourhood use the Minhocão as a public space? In fact, when it’s closed for motor traffic it’s still a viaduct without any leisure or green infrastructure. What does the neighbourhood aim to achieve by occupying the space?

True, the structure does not provide shading or green area among other things, but the absence of 74 | MY LIVEABLE CITY • Apr-Jun 2018

these elements does not limit its popularity with the visiting public. The reason is the lack of any other public space, its flatness, believe it or not, attracts and allows skaters, bikers and runners to enjoy their sport. This blank canvas has been the backdrop for birthday parties, artistic demonstrations, outdoor theatre, dance, yoga and gymnastics classes, marathons and other activities. It is not uncommon to see parents teaching their children to ride a bicycle for the first time or to fly a kite here.

Many people confuse the interest in maintaining the structure with the idea that it should remain as it is. It is important to state that we do not advocate that the structure be kept as it is. By no means do we defend the fantasy of the precariousness so common among the younger generation of architects in Brazil who sometimes confuse a pencil with the microphone and replace design by engaging in discourse. Unfortunately, the municipality has failed to organise ideas and contests; the local architecture schools, a few feet away from the structure, have given little attention to this subject than the foreign schools.

More recently, vertical gardens have been installed on the ‘blind walls’ of surrounding buildings, which have certainly boosted urban biodiversity – at night it is possible to hear the cicadas and have the best view of Oscar Niemeyer’s iconic Copan at the same time. The ‘blind walls’ also turned into huge supports for graffiti containing messages of artistic and social freedom.

These curious transformations have been able to avoid all the bureaucratic obstacles that the city faces on the ground. Political inaccuracy has been a hindrance to the spontaneous development witnessed on the structure.

The current administration of the

The structure does not provide shading or green area among other things, but the absence of these elements does not limit its popularity with the visiting public

MinhocĂŁo being used during a Marathon day

Apr-Jun 2018 • MY LIVEABLE CITY | 75

CHANGE AGENTS>Interview municipality of São Paulo has asked architect Jaime Lerner to give his vision of the redevelopment of the Minhocão.

How do you collaborate with the local government as well as Jaime Lerner in this particular study?

Unfortunately, this was yet another opportunity thrown out by the municipality. Secovi, the largest real estate market trade union in Latin America, financed the hiring of the architect, and former mayor of Curitiba, Jaime Lerner. Lerner’s work was not to design but to advise the mayor on urban affairs, especially downtown. Regardless of whether the interest of the real estate market in this assignment was shady or not, as many criticised, Mayor João Dória had with him perhaps one of the most internationally celebrated urban planners. The media brought information that Lerner had proposed connecting some buildings to the Minhocão, creating stairs and elevators to increase vertical permeability, a bike path and even an ‘urban beach’ with pool and sand and underneath that rooms for classes, exhibitions and cultural events – not very different from what Amparo had proposed in 1987.

The reality is that neither the city hall nor the architect expressed themselves on the proposal, giving us the impression that the newspapers dug the minutes of an internal meeting. Despite our willingness to participate in the process, everything was discussed behind closed doors, there was no public input, not even the Association was contacted to share the experience accumulated on the topic. In the end, it was all a big rumour.

Redevelopment is not the only possibility that has been discussed in the last decade. While some want to see it repurposed as an urban park, others want to see it torn down. You are an architect and initiator of the Association Park Minhocão and you also live in front of the viaduct. Wouldn’t it be easy to get rid of the problem instead of trying to make something out of it?

That’s an important question. Some people do consider the choice between transforming it into an elevated park or demolishing the structure. But I don’t think that the preogrative of any individual.

Our own zeitgeist on urbanity influences the current urban conception when we are talking about the contemporary city. If you believe that the city can be fixed or can be returned to a previous condition in time you are probably following an out-dated urban agenda of the last century.

I agree with Bernard Tschumi’s philosophy.

He recognises a constant opposition in urban arguments between those who view architecture and our cities as places of experience 76 | MY LIVEABLE CITY • Apr-Jun 2018

and experiment, as exciting reflections of contemporary society – those who like the unknown, who deconstruct and self-destruct – and those who see the origin of architecture as refamiliarisation, contextualisation and insertion.

According to Tschumi, the ordinary public always tends to be close to traditionalists. To the public eye, architecture is about comfort, about shelter, about bricks and mortar – in the case of a park: lake with carp, trees and winding paths. However, for those who don’t think of architecture as only a comfort, but also as a tool for the advancement of society and its development, the device of conflict and contradiction can be an indispensable tool.

Architecture in the megalopolis can be much more about finding unknown solutions to problems than about reassuring and comforting solutions of the established community.

Luckily, the option of having the elevated park has become the destiny of the structure. In February, the mayor sanctioned the law, created and approved by the city council, which foresees the gradual and definitive transformation of the structure into an urban park within two years. With this measure we inaugurate a new chapter in the life of Minhocão.

Interestingly, the new parks in the centre of São Paulo are the result of popular crusades. They have not been planned by the city administration, but they have been initiated by the strong needs of the local inhabitants even when they are located on big, precious and private land, as is the case of two other parks (Parque Augusta and Parque do Bixiga). The private ownership of land in these two particular cases were’nt an impediment to start a process of transforming these areas into public parks. Certainly, neither of these two brand new demands would have taken shape without the former experience of the Parque Minhocão that made the unthinkable possible and literally drew blood from a stone.