Category Archives: English

Cine Paulistano

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Cine Paulistano offers alternative cinema, exhibitions and other cultural activities for free or at low prices. It will therefore stimulate cultural life in downtown São Paulo and help revitalize this area. The project transforms the ground floor of a building from the 1940´s – currently in use as a parking garage – into a cultural center, equipped with a movie theater of 75 seats, a café and a flexible exhibition space.
The typical paulistan sidewalk tiles continue inside the building, making the cultural center an extension of public space and emphasizing the accessibility for all social classes. The 35mm projector is placed in an air-conditioned glass cube to give the visitor insight in the handling and projection method of celluloid film.

Architecture:   Fernando Serapião, Vinicius Andrade, Marcelo Morettin and Merten Nefs
Cultural management:   Via Gutenberg
Consultants:   TRÍADE (cost calculations); Silvia Helena (zoning laws and land use)
Graphic arts:   Loroverz (graffiti)
Location:   Largo do Arouche, São Paulo
Net floor area:   1.029 square meters
Status:   financing and sponsoring

Suez Canal

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Various attempts were made to excavate a canal linking the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, from around 1850 BC by pharaoh Senuserett III, until it was finally completed by the Persian conqueror Dario I in 500 BC. In the following centuries it was destroyed, abandoned and rebuilt several times. The modern Suez Canal, from Port Said to Suez, was built by Ferdinand de Lesseps between 1859 and 1869, as ordered by Napoleon. In the end of the 19th century the British took control of the canal until it was restored to Egypt in the 1950´s. Also in the 20th century the canal was the scene of many conflicts, mainly between Arabs and Israelis. In one of these conflicts the canal was blocked by the Egyptians, trapping 14 cargo ships in the strait for over 8 years.

The intense traffic through the Suez Canal, bypassing the African continent, brings commerce and maritime activity into the heart of the Sinai desert. Irrigation works stimulated the development of cities and agrarian settlements along the canal. Due to the high salinity of the Red Sea water, which pours slowly through the strait into the Mediterranean, and the construction of the Aswan dam in the Nile, the eastern Mediterranean has been suffering from invasion by Red Sea maritime species.

There are plans to deepen the canal to accommodate supertankers until 22 meters draft, improving bulk transport that is now being offloaded to smaller vessels and reloaded at the other end of the canal. Environmentalists are against these plans as they worsen the invasion by foreign species in the Mediterranean.

Read more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal

Suez salt production

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GTA SP 2013

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Brazilian cartoonist Luís Shiavon spent 4 years adapting the computer game Grand Theft Auto (GTA) to São Paulo. In this parodic version of the game, famous for urban violence, he included streets of São Paulo in 3 dimensions with grafitti by contemporary grafitti artists, people such as George W. Bush, agents and vehicles of the Polícia Militar, volkswagen beetles, and a sound track by Brazilian Dj´s. No touristic cliches of the city are used in the model, such as museums and famous avenues, which makes it more difficult to recognize São Paulo, but all the better to experience the dark and funny side of the metropolis.

The game can be purchased at the art gallery Choque Cultural, Pinheiros, São Paulo.

Read more: Folha de São Paulo (images with text in portuguese)

Also see: Turkish version of GTA, in Instanbul

Gaza density

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Urban density in Gaza (left) and Israel (right)

The Gaza strip, a narrow corridor of 6-12 km width and an area of 360 square km, is one of the densest territories on earth. If it were recognized as a sovereign country it would by fourth in population density worldwide, after Monaco, Singapore and Gibraltar. The list follows with already much lower densities such as the Vatican and Bahrein.

Population per square kilometer: (countries)

Monaco 16.754
Singapore 6.336
Gibraltar 4.654
Gaza Strip 4.118
The Vatican 1.866
Bahrein 1.454

Source: Wikipedia

In this list, all small territories were established as strategic sovereign countries within an existing country as a result of superior economic or political power, except Gaza. While in these countries the population density increased because of growing wealth and influence within fixed geographic boundaries, in Gaza the high population density was reached by compression of the Arab population in the areas known as Palestinian Territories.

During the 2008/2009 offensive of Israel against the Gaza strip, controlled by Hamas, what has happened demographically to this narrow strip of land with 1.4 million inhabitants, whose borders have been closed and which has been sealed off from the Mediterranean Sea? Where did all those people go after their houses and enterprises were bombed?
If built structures have disappeared, if no new building materials are entering the territory and if the current fertility rate is maintained in Gaza, the parts of the urban area that have not been destroyed must now be even more dense than they used to be.

Population per square kilometer: (cities)

Amsterdam 3.400 (2000)
Haifa (Israel) 3.500 (2000)
Gaza City 16.450 (2005)
Tel Aviv 5.050 (2000)
São Paulo 9.000 (2005)

Source: Demographia – World Urban Areas


Palestinians gather around a crater left by an Israeli missile in farmland at Jabaliya refugee camp (photograph by UPPA/The Independent)

Note by the editor: The question, whether airstrikes and bombings of this kind, in high-density civilian areas, are a responsible and civilized practice, falls outside the scope of this website.