Category Archives: Heritage

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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Fontes do Ipiranga

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O Jardim Botânico de São Paulo, no parque estadual Fontes do Ipiranga, abriu o Córrego Pirarungaua (afluente do riacho do Ipiranga), que havia muito tempo estava tampado. Foram instalados um leito de concreto com algumas quedas, taludes verdes e um deque suspenso para pedestres. Assim a cidade recuperou um elemento natural de importância histórica e ecológica em uma das maiores áreas verdes da região metropolitana.

Projeto: Arq. Paulo Ganzeli


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São Paulo 1943

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Promotional documentary of São Paulo, made in the United States in 1943.

The short film describes the ‘fastest growing city on earth’ as a booming industrial center with cultural, ethnic and historical variety. In these days, the Paulista wanted everything ‘faster, better and more’, while Brazil under Vargas was being characterized as ‘orderly and progressive’.

As matter of fact, the city that is currently serving as an example for urban inequality, segregation, informality and decadence, seems pretty tidy and fair in the nineteen forties. Or perhaps this film is, as one would say in Brazil, ‘até bom demais’ (too good to be true).

Eric and Mario, thanks for the tip.