Brazil: A Landscape of Urbanisms
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The fall of the last Emperor of Brazil in the late 19th century marked the beginning of a struggle for power. During this century of struggle, Brazil witnessed a heavy-handed republican regime, twenty years under military rule, and an initially tentative return to democratic rule in 1985. Throughout the last century Brazil grew to become the largest national economy in Latin America and the 5th largest in the world. In a recent cover story in the Economist, there was a prediction that the GNP of Brazil will eclipse that of Britain and France within the decade. The population of Brazil has shifted away from predominantly rural dwelling - by 2000 78% of the almost 200,000,000 population lived in urban areas. A cocktail of economic boom and unstable politics has produced a fascinating range of paradigms of urbanism.
We can begin to classify Brazilian urban paradigms according to high-intensive and low-intensive urbanism: Brasilia is the high modern city expressed through high formalism. Curitiba, a hot-bed of progressive policy and exploratory programs, demonstrates a strong set of ethics manifested in urban systems: decommissioned buses are transformed into traveling adult schools, youth recycling + gardens, efficient mass transit, a municipal flock of sheep that cut the city’s grass, a city-run recycling depot staffed by homeless and recovering alcoholics. Belo Horizonte’s recent food-as-a-right policy, has aligned the interests of farmers with consumers to create a system that ensures that every citizen is properly and healthfully fed.
In the large cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo, the disparity of wealth is clearly marked in the landscape with the poorest populations living in favelas- or slum communities on undesirable and unstable land. These organically evolved informal communities challenge our notions of land ownership and land tenure property lines; they defy organization and hierarchy as we know it in the Canadian city. In Brazil, attempts have been made to ameliorate the shortcomings of the favela: the Favela-Barrio project was a pilot-project funded by the Inter-American Development Bank to retroactively bring planning and infrastructure to an existing favela. What is interesting in this project is that it respected the organic form of the existing favela and granted it legitimacy.
Brazil has been a destination of post-WWII European intellectuals, architects, and landscape architects. Oscar Niemeyer and Lina Bo Bardi, Roberto Burle Marx, to name a few. Its broad multiculturalism has also fostered a concomitant flowering of music and the visual arts.
Methodology: The Brazil course will unfold over 3 phases: pre-trip, trip and post-trip.
Pre-Trip: (3 weeks) The students will participate in an intensive seminar 3 weeks before we leave for Brazil. In addition to training in Portuguese, students will explore the following topics: Brazil history, geography, politics, economy, art + culture, history of settlements / urban form, architectural movements, construction of identity + the projection of the other, construction of community, and prominent buildings and prominent architects in the cities we are going to visit. This pre-trip seminar will serve 2 purposes: it will give students a background to Brazil AND establish a set of interests / must-see sites / contacts / references for the trip. The output from this seminar will be a blog and a travel guide in the form of trading cards. In addition, at the end of the pre-trip seminar, students will have to declare their subject of individual research from a pre-established list.
The Trip: (3 weeks) The trip will occur in late May to mid June. Our itinerary will commence in Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paolo, which we will use as the hub for travel to the cities of Curtiba, Belo Horizonte, and Brazilia using bus service or air passes. In all of these locations we will organize tours to notable buildings, urban developments, and office visits with architects, and landscape architects. Time will be allotted for individual research, which will contribute to the post-trip project.
Post-Trip: (until June 25, 2010) Students will prepare a final report on their individual research topic.