1404: A Place in Heaven/A Place in Hell. Tactical Operations in Sao Paulo's Informal Sector
Department of Landscape Architecture
Studio Option
8 credits
Tuesday 2:00 - 6:00
Thursday 2:00 - 6:00
Instructor(s)
Christian Werthmann, Fernando de Mello Franco, Byron Stigge
Course Description
Informal urbanism is the dominant mode of development in the fastest growing cities of the world. Today, we live in an age where over 30% of our urban world population lives in slums. The total of one billion slum dwellers is supposed to double by 2030. With the world going into a major recession, informal urbanism will expand even more than projected. Despite these facts, the majority of our design profession does not work, and more importantly does not know how to work in these areas.
Cantinho do Ceu ("A Place in Heaven") is an informal city in the South of Sao Paulo; it houses 70,000 slum dwellers out of the 1.5 million in the metropolis. Cantinho is of strategic importance for Sao Paulo. It sits at the largest water reservoir of the metropolis which it pollutes heavily. Despite its poor infrastructure, sanitation and economic problems, Cantinho is a vibrant city. Its several kilometer long waterfront is undeveloped and has high potential.
As finite masterplanning has failed, the studio will pursue tactical operations unfolding over periods of time. Investigations will range from the watershed scale to the individual housing unit. A special focus will be placed on the deep integration of public space with alternative infrastructure propelling current favela upgrading practices to more contemporary principals of ecological urbanism. Cantinho is a real project by our sponsor, the Sao Paulo Housing Agency which will fund our site visit in the first week of March. The studio is open to all departments and will be consulted by an international team of specialists ranging from environmental engineers to artists. The results of the studio will be published in a book, presented and exhibited at the Museu da Casa Brasileira in Sao Paulo.
Instructor Team and Studio Mentors
The expertise of the instructor team extends over three disciplines: landscape architecture (full-time), architecture (three visits + field trip) and environmental engineering (two visits + field trip). The part time instructors will be available for consultations by e-mail and skype. The instructor team will be complemented by a group of 22 studio mentors. These are experts in various disciplines and take great interest in the topic and progress of the studio. As a group they represent an immense body of knowledge and have agreed to be accessible for consultation. Matching the interdisciplinary composition of the instructor team the studio is open to all departments. Students should be prepared to develop detailed physical designs on the landscape, urban and architectural scale.
Site
Cantinho do Ceu is a 150 ha city occupying one half of a peninsula at the Billings water reservoir about 30 km south of historic Sao Paulo. To its west, Cantinho do Ceu is separated through a powerline corridor from Beira Mar, a similar sized favela (the Brazilian name for slum). Cantinho do Ceu was founded around 1970 when developers illegally staked out land and sold the parcels to poor people who could not afford apartments in Sao Paulo. The city quickly grew and houses today around 70,000 out of the 1.5 million favela dwellers of Sao Paulo. Cantinho do Ceu is densely populated. It is as crowded as Manhattan island, with the difference that Cantinho do Ceu's inhabitants are housed in two to three story buildings. Cantinho do Ceu has massive infrastructural problems. Electricity and potable water is pirated; untreated sewage flows directly into the reservoir; the town has only three access points by road. With the exception of one large new school and several churches, other necessary infrastructure like hospitals, daycare centers, nursing homes and recreational amenities are non-existent. Public open space is reduced to narrow unpaved streets and unbuildable steep slopes. Like in many Brazilian favelas, security is compromised and drug trafficking is a common problem.
Despite all these predicaments, Cantinho do Ceu is a lively city with commercial activities, bars and an energetic street life. Among the many favelas in Sao Paulo it is not the worst. Its layout is modestly effective (due to the "developers" parceling efforts) and some dwellers achieved already relative wealth (cars, garages and satellite dishes). With its scenic location along the lake, the city has great development potential. Its most valuable asset is a seven kilometer long waterfront with commanding views that is only partially accessible and not much used.
The Municipal Project
Cantinho do Ceu is on the list of cities to be upgraded by the Sao Paulo Housing Agency (SEHAB). The project is part of an effort to reclaim the Billings reservoir as an important water resource of the metropolis. Currently the water quality of the lake is so impacted by pollution of informal cities and industries in its watershed that swimming is impossible due to the presence of E. coli and other contaminants. When children fall into the lake they develop rashes and stomach aches. Besides its failure to be a recreational asset, the Billings reservoir is seriously compromised as a water resource for Sao Paulo. Sao Paulo hopes to better the water quality of the reservoir and the lives of the people in the whole watershed through an urban rehabilitation program modeled after the successful Guarapiranga reservoir program nearby. Through funds of the City, the State of Sao Paulo and the Federal Government the Sao Paulo Housing Agency plans to upgrade over 80 favelas in Sao Paulo, one of them being Cantinho do Ceu. There the city will embark on a four year construction project. Streets will be paved and houses connected to electricity, potable water and sewage lines. Endangered dwellings in erosion prone slopes will be demolished with families relocated in replacement housing. Funds are set aside for the development of a waterfront with recreational value.
Conflicts
The upgrading program is now in its second year of construction and struggles with many problems. Cantinho do Ceu is an extremely contested site for the metropolis. From the perspective of resource management and environmental advocacy, the urbanization of the Billings watershed was a catastrophe. Large areas of Atlantic rainforest in the watershed were lost. Its cleaning effect diminished. Illegal urbanization contaminated the reservoir to a degree of uselessness. For the environmental agency, the city of Cantinho do Ceu is the most blatant symbol for this degradation. If it were to the environmentalists, Cantinho do Ceu would be razed and replaced with rainforest seedlings.
In contrast, the mission of the Sao Paulo Housing Agency is to provide decent housing for its ten million inhabitants. Their interest is to develop Cantinho do Ceu into a livable city. These two missions are on a colliding path with the inhabitants of Cantinho do Ceu caught in the middle. Furthermore, old legislation written for a non-urbanized watershed, creates serious hindrances for the improvement of the existing urbanization. The housing agency walks a fine line between city build-out, legal correctness and resource protection. They chose to involve the Graduate School of Design to receive ideas of how to reconcile the diverging interests. These are some of the major conflicts in detail:
50 m Setback - Per environmental legislation a 50m zone free of urbanization has to be created from the reservoir's edge. The law was invoked to allow the development of an ecological zone along water bodies. In the case of Cantinho do Ceu hundreds of houses needed to be demolished along the seven kilometer shoreline of an artificial water body. Its inhabitants would have been to be relocated in replacement housing somewhere else on the peninsula. Obviously the plan meets resistance in the population. The agency currently seeks for alternatives. In the moment a compromise is offered to the environmental agency: not all houses in the 50m wide zone have to be removed, when one of the most erosion prone areas in Cantinho do Ceu will be cleared from urbanization. The new plan has the advantage that less houses in Cantinho do Ceu will have to be removed. A new ecological park in the cleared area is meant to satisfy the demands of the environmentalists. However the inhabitants of the areas to be cleared are unhappy and show resistance.
Sewage - Per current law no sewage can be treated inside the watershed of the Billings reservoir. The law was made before the watershed was urbanized and before sewage treatment was considered to be an effective solution. It is planned to collect the sewage of Cantinho do Ceu and pump it over 70km to the next large sewage treatment plant. The disadvantages are clear. Pumps have to keep running day and night to convey the sewage of 70,000 persons. Much of it will be lost through leaky pipes on the way and contaminate the ground water below. Water will be lost from the watershed.
Stormwater - all stormwater leaving the favela should be cleaned before entering the reservoir. It is expected that Cantinho do Cue's stormwater will carry various types of contaminants ranging from nitrogen and phosphorus from households to heavy metals from cars and commercial operations. The agency is currently seeking for alternative cleaning methods like treatment wetlands and bioswales. Their experience is very limited with these systems. If no viable alternative can be found, polluted stormwater will still contaminate the reservoir and the housing agency will be held responsible.
Triggered by these conflicts, SEHAB wants to enter a new era of favela upgrading where ecology and sustainability play a bigger role. The agency wants to leave resource wasting solutions of traditional engineering behind and is very much interested in a more integrated approach where alternative infrastructure is socially beneficial implemented. The conflicted site of Cantinho do Cue is considered to be the ideal testing ground for this new approach.
Studio Process
Although the studio is set in the context of a real project, the studio is not limited by its boundaries. It is actually expected that students will develop new experimental ideas that go beyond the usual notions of favela upgrading.
The first phase of the studio is characterized by a familiarization process paralleled by design exercises. The familiarization phase will include the general study of (1) the city, (2) the water reservoir and (3) the metropolis. Students will study the proposals of SEHAB and critique them. In a parallel process students will develop program and tactical design ideas. Students will have to define their study and research agenda. They can work as individuals or in small groups. Investigations can range from the watershed scale to the individual housing unit. The goal is to develop a thicket of ideas. As diverse topics as the provision of replacement housing, alternative wastewater treatment or recreational infrastructure can be pursued. In a concept workshop students will get direct feedback from a representative of the Housing Agency. The first phase ends with a concept pin-up.
The second phase starts with the field trip to Sao Paulo in the first week of March. One important part of the trip will be meeting the community. There students will make contacts with key members of Cantinho do Ceu and ask detailed questions. In a consecutive workshop they will present their concepts to the Housing Agency and local experts. Once students are back in Cambridge they have time to digest their impressions and further refine their tactical concepts. The second phase will end in a midterm review.
In the final third phase students will further refine their concepts and bring their design operations to a detailed and realistic level. The third phase ends with a final review.
Book and Exhibition
It is planned to publish a bilingual book with the work of all students. The book will be assembled after the final review and published by SEHAB. We also plan to organize an exhibition at the Museu Casa Brasileira in Sao Paulo. The work of the students will be presented alongside with the GSD show "Dirty Work" curated by Christian Werthmann and John Beardsley. Funds will be set aside for two students to attend the opening.
Design Methodology
Since imperative planning models have obviously failed in the Billings watershed (otherwise the site would be still rainforest), imperative planning will be replaced by tactical design. Tactical design can be found in military operations, economy activities or medical care and are a natural part of our everyday activities (sport, career, cooking, etc). Tactical operations can be described as a set of actions unfolding over time to achieve a certain goal. Several tactics can be pursued at once to create substantial change.
Landscape Tactics - Tactical thinking was always part of the landscape architecture profession. Landscape architects had to apply tactical strategies in order to successfully operate with living organism and systems that are subject to constant change and great indeterminacy. In the last decade tactical thinking became quite prominent when society was faced with tasks that could not be solved with one strike. Brownfield remediation, large parks or complicated projects in the urban periphery required strategies that unfold over time and can survive uncertainty. Eventually the term Landscape Urbanism was used to describe the tactical activities of landscape architects in the increasingly complex field of today's urbanism.
Tactical Design for the Informal - In the context of informal urbanism tactical thinking will come in handy. The client of the project, the inhabitants of Cantinho do Ceu, is less than traditional. Cantinho do Ceu's dwellers are used to self-organize their city, independently construct their dwellings and use public space to their discretion. There are many needs inside the city (better education, economy, access, medical care and security) and a lot of pressure from the outside to clean up the city and the reservoir. We expect that students will develop tactics that target these problems. The tactics for these problems might originate from a cultural observation or a particularity of the site or a new technology. Several targets might be woven together.
To give an example: the cleaning of the reservoir could be coupled with the creation of jobs. This combination could result in a tactic based on the exploration of stormwater treatment wetlands that filter polluted stormwater and whose biomass could serve as the raw material for fabrics. The harvested biomass might give rise to a modest local industry employing workers who in turn maintain the stormwater treatment wetlands. The resulting design is the detailed development of a waterfront based on the maximization of wetlands that can be easily harvested, and the strategic location of a factory with a store. Several tactics like this example could be woven together and form the basis of a design that can be carefully developed within the specifics of the land.
Tactical Site Design - Based on the previous example it has to be stressed, that the studio's goal is to arrive at site specific designs. Students have to design in great detail how their chosen tactics will physically restructure the city or their chosen sites. Thereby we will use all the latest technologies of representation and design exploration available to us (digital models, animations, GIS, etc).
Successful Tactics - With the availability of local experts, the field trip and the community meetings the studio will have sufficient feedback loops to check the feasibility of the chosen tactics. However certain themes of tactical success are already known. All tactics that involve income generation will have a great chance to succeed. Tactics that involve the long term oversight of an outside organization are frail and bound to fail. Tactics that feed on the desires and culture of the local population are more successful than tactics that import outside values. For example the passion of favela dwellers for sports has led to the design of successful sport plazas. Tactical thinking looks for openings and opportunities. It ties together disconnected strings of information. To facilitate this creative thought process the participants will run through various exercises and will be made intimately familiar with the desires, needs and culture of the inhabitants of Cantinho do Ceu.
Themes
Although the intention was to run a studio about new forms of favela upgrading without much preconceptions, instructors developed in the preparation phase of this studio a set of themes that will dominate the discussion.
Landscape and Public Space- The studio uses landscape and public space as the particular lens through which to examine and develop Cantinho do Ceu. Its sensitive location on the reservoir, its minor connection to urban landscape infrastructure, such as public transportation, sewers, water supply, or storm water management; its environmental, public health, and security problems; its lack of public facilities for economic, cultural, or recreational activities ask for a landscape based approach. The main focus of the studio is not the construction of housing; favela dwellers are actually quite capable to construct their own houses, but less so their public space. Therefore landscape is conceived both as the primary problem and as the main opportunity for intervention and improvement.
It has to be stressed that a landscape based approach in a city is inseparable from architectural interventions; students from the architecture department are quite needed in this studio. There are plenty of opportunities to develop architecture deeply embedded in a landscape based framework such as replacement housing, schools, hospitals, sewage treatment plants, hotels, community centers or recreational structures.
Alternative Infrastructure - In traditional favela upgrading projects urban and landscape design is often cosmetically laid over traditional engineering technologies as a result of the disassociation of civil engineering and design. Civil engineers oversee the installation of urban infrastructure like potable water, sewage lines, transportation structures, electricity, erosion and drainage control. The upgrade of non-formal cities with basic services is viewed as the highest priority and typically performed by civil engineers and not designers.
Cantinho do Ceu is facing some of the more traditional engineering solutions. It is planned to pump sewage to far away locations, to import electricity from great distances and to transport garbage to distant landfills. There is a proposal to handle drainage through a wide stormwater trench that surrounds the whole peninsula. Obviously there is an opportunity to upgrade informal cities with less resource wasting infrastructure. Thus the studio will seek the deep integration of modern civil engineering and design by inserting alternative infrastructures that are oriented on closed-loop thinking, income production and benefits such as recreation, education or food production.
It is expected that students will intimately familiarize themselves with alternative technologies of their interest in the first phase of the studio as part of their tactic investigation. A team of environmental engineering experts will support the students in their individual pursuits. The results of last year's spring semester seminar GSD6445 Green Infrastructure in the Non-formal City will serve as a starting point.
Water - will be a dominant topic for the studio as the most contested issue on site. In Cantinho do Ceu topics like the import of potable water and export of sewage, the rainfall and drainage patterns, stormwater and erosion problems, the irrigation of agriculture and the economic and recreational value of the reservoir have to be studied. The reservoir itself will be studied in its history, utility, contamination and recreational, ecological and cultural value. We will investigate the watershed of the reservoir and its future development. Modern water management technologies such as sewage treatment wetlands, cleaning walls, retention basins, living machines, etc. can be tested for their applicability in non-formal conditions. Several studio mentors and instructors have extensive experience in alternative water management and can give students realistic technical input on their design explorations.
Stigmatization - Favelas are considered to be blemishes in the urban fabric. For most Brazilians favelas are forbidden territory; blind spots in the city map. Outsiders rarely venture into those areas, because of actual and perceived dangers. Brazilian papers are full of crime stories in favelas. For citizens who have never set foot in a favela, it is hard to separate fact from myth. To give an example: informal cities are held responsible for the majority of pollution even though industry and middle class produce higher rates. In this climate it is often overlooked that the majority of favela dwellers are hard-working people who try to climb up the social ladder. Visitors of favelas are often surprised how well structured some of the settlements are. Especially Cantinho do Ceu surprises many visitors with its fairly consistent street layout, many tidy houses and commercial strip that houses even pet food stores. There are many types of informal cities at different stages of development that cannot be lumped together under one term. For informal cities that are on their way of improvement, the stigmatization can be the last great hurdle to achieve full integration. Especially Cantinho do Ceu has the potential to grow into a very successful city through its scenic location on the reservoir. There is potential for tourism and recreational infrastructure; but even with perfect infrastructure in place not many citizens from the formal city of Sao Paulo would venture there. The overcoming of the stigmatization effect is one of the great unsolved problems of favela upgrading. The studio participants will be challenged to invent creative tactics to mitigate this problem such as the invention of innovative program elements that will equally draw people from Sao Paulo as from Cantinho do Ceu.
Informal Urbanism as a Model - informal cities are also stigmatized in design circles; they are typically seen as minor cities that need major work. It is often overlooked that much can be learnt from informal urbanism. The established favelas in Sao Paulo are vibrant and full of people that intensively use the small amount of open space that exists. Without any planning, they consist of an accretion of small scale neighborhoods where people know each other well. Their morphology, not unlike medieval towns, is shaped by the small movements of pedestrians resulting in narrow alleyways, stairs and foot paths, - an intimacy and resourcefulness the formal city has lost. Often there are not many proper streets, rendering car use unattractive since there is not much space to drive or to park. Many favelas can be effectively served by innovative public transportation (like cable cars in Medellin) due to their high population density. Informal cities are flexible in build-out and use. Informal urbanism has its own economy in "mixed zones" where living and working can occur in the same building. This flexibility can be also noticed in the internal build-out: informal cities grow vertically by adding living space on top of the house. Therefore this studio will not treat informal cities as urbanistic malfunctions but will try to work with its potentials.
Poetry - besides all the problems and contested issues there is great poetry in Cantinho do Ceu; the young population, the dense city draped over the undulating hills, the lake, its light and reflections, the vistas over the reservoir. It is a goal of the studio that the designs, even when they have to deal with hard core issues like sewage, replacement housing, garbage, transportation etc. advance and bring to light this poetry, - otherwise the work of the designer has failed and is better done by civil engineers. In this quest, the participants of the studio have to explore how the inhabitants of the city understand poetry, beauty and attractiveness; an understanding which not necessarily coincides with their own.