Archiprix International 2001
Universidade Estadual Paulista "Julio Mesquita Filho"-UNESP, Faculdade de Arquitectura, Artes e Comunicacao - Sao Paulo, Brazil
Daniel Mattosinho de Carvalho Alvite
Tutors: Claudio S. Amaral, Marta Enokibara, Paulo Masseram
Based on behavioral theories, B. F. Skiner and M. M. Ponty illustrate the analysis on the behavior of man in the space where he is inserted. Through the study of urban behaviors, passer-bys with individual needs, both objectified or discovering, act directly at the objective issue. Venders need to feed their families and as an informal business, illegality is imposed. São Paulo downtown, with its great number of users, superposed services, subway entrances, buildings and galleries present everything an urban area needs for objective passer-bys to slip through the gaps among the several architectures that structure the space. The spatial unreality is learned and imposed referentially to a sole occupation, turning the behavioral phenomena into an experience rendered banal by acceptance and unnoticed use. Customs are modified with simple architecture interventions that directly alter the course of the objectives. The spatial truth is found in known forms of behaviors that are performed with daily skill and improvements, based on objects and empirical situations. The street population takes over places that structure the urban and comfort their nights, where corners and constructive leftovers between the tunnel and the avenue, pillars and viaducts, several non-solved projectual situations become spaces destined to beggars, deviating all architectural purpose and valuing instead the product of social survival. The urban caves, ruins of great road constructions. The urban objects change from their inaugurations. Anarchy of the spatial destiny, inversion of the exclusion value. The concretization of our city offers and imposes the necessities that modify the 'considerable' human relations in a system aware of the abuse and exploration. The superposition of classes becomes more and more crushing and the falsity and omission articulate important spaces of the city of São Paulo. In the patio of 'Colégio dos Jesuítas', a historical center in São Paulo, the place of the first edification which originated the foundation of the metropolis. Today, this building, in its forth reconstruction, displays a social falsity that is demarcated by the plateau in which it is inserted, leaving beggars and street people in the lowest share whereas cars of politicians are parked in the patio, high part of this historical architectonic complex, also valued for the existence of other constructions, such as the 'Marquesa de Santos' Museum, house number one, the current treasury departments and the civil court. The place is already known for its agglomerations of sellers and permanence of beggars, where survival is a daily struggle, only direct and sympathetic attitudes are valued. In the search for the threshold confront of social classes, the necessity of bringing street people to the place arises, with activities of direct benefit. Buried in the plateau slope, the project offers social assistance services, from buying recycled material to regular medical service, free labor workshops and community restaurants. In the high part, the approximation of these limits in the museum of popular culture is exposed, assuming the role of decodificator of reality. Great openings aggregate and separate visual limits from social, historical and current contrasts. Through cracks in the slope, suspended walkways conform an air square that connects the 'Parque Don Pedro' Metropolitan bus terminal to the access to 'SÉ' subway station. Thus, the construction of this landscape of limits is the purpose of reflection about the social differences, where its superposition will deflagrate the contrasts of a negligent society.