I added a summary of projects I have worked on in Brazil to Google Maps.
Click the “merten´s projects in brazil” button on the right, or click here.
Category Archives: English
BR-3
The margins of the Tietê river are probably among the darkest and most deserted spaces of São Paulo. Trapped between 16 lanes of the Marginal expressway and a the highly polluted water, and mostly shaped as a cast concrete gutter, the Tietê riverbanks are no place to stay. Exept for a few months in the year 2006.
The BR-3 play by Teatro da Vertigem, directed by Antônio Araújo, temporarily shed light on this transitorial space. Most of the audiênce saw the flyeovers from below and the Tietê water at short distance for the first time in their lives, and perhaps also for the last time. Just for a moment the river became a scenery through which the spectators moved continuously on a boat. The actors also moved from one embankment to another, to floating scenery rafts and around the audience in small boats and canoes.
After São Paulo, the play was performed for some time at Guanabara bay, Rio de Janeiro.
Read More:
Teatro da Vertigem
www.teatrodavertigem.com.br
Teatro da Vertigem and other temporary interventions in São Paulo, at the Venice Bienale.
Article at Vitruvius (english and portuguese)
www.vitruvius.com.br/arquitextos/arq077/arq077_02.asp
Praça Roosevelt – cleaning up
Since the end of last year the square with its concrete structures is awaiting demolition. As the demolition job is still stuck in legal and political processes, the secretary responsible for the area was obliged to open the space again to the public and clean the place up, until further decisions are made. After the elections in the end of this month we´ll probably see a next chapter in the short yet turbulent life of Praça Roosevelt. The removal of the walls revealed the spatial qualities of the original design. Nevertheless it is almost certain that the brutalist concrete structure will be demolished to make place for a new uncovered terraced layout, but who knows…
Photographic survey on October 21 2008
Cheong Gye Cheon river restoration
Documentary about the Cheong Gye Cheon river restoration project in the centre of Seoul, South Korea.
The river regained its symbolic value and leisure function in Seoul´s daily life. A 380 billion Won revitalization project took over two years to demolish the concrete expressway that covered the polluted stream from the 1970´s and to depollute the water along the 5.8 km tract.
Duration 20 minutes.
Cheong Gye spring
Location
Exibir mapa ampliado
Experiment city
As usual the Germans are way ahead when it comes to ecological projects and temporary use of urban voids and abandoned buildings. This website bundles a number of these projects, research and contacts in Berlin, as well as a few international examples in – what a coincidence – São Paulo: They mention the Coopamare recycling program; reuse of factories by the cultural intstitutions SESC Pompéia and SESC Belenzinho; and Teatro da Vertigem, a theatre group that performed a play in 2006 on boats and riverbanks of the polluted Tietê river.
Various urban researchers and artistic projects are associated to the site, such as Urban Dialogues and Berliner Unterwelten.
Short documentary about Kuhlhaus Gleisdreieck