Combining Mass Housing and Urban Agriculture: A sitopian way of thinking

The evolution of human civilization, entwined with food, traces our development from hunters to settlers and now to a globalized food network. Carolyn Steel's 'sitopia' theory underscores the connection between place and sustenance. Brazil, a key player in the global food industry, paradoxically grapples with high inequality despite abundant...

Architecture and Safety: Safe social housing for the inhabitants of the periphery of São Paulo

In São Paulo, Brazil, the urbanization of workers without education or a steady income has caused a large demand for social housing, with 800,000 families forced to live in settlements and slums without a legal basis. At the same time, the crime rates of the past decades brought forth a standard of ‘enclavement’ of urban blocks, with fences...

Solar Analysis on Buildings of Favelas in São Paulo to Estimate PV Potential

In the Global South, large urban spaces resulted in the duality between the so-called ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ cities. It is the case of São Paulo, a twenty-two-million people metropolis and a financial hub in Latin America. Albeit a vast literature addresses the social-spatial segregation emerging from this dual built environment, the scarcity...

The lost and hidden water of São Paulo: The strategic value of landscape-based green-blue infrastructure

The explosive growth of the city of São Paulo starting in the 1940s resulted in vast expansion with little attention to the characteristics of the natural landscape. This resulted in extreme modification of the water system, including canalization, piping and covering of streams. Due to these modifications and the related urban structure, São...

Counteracting Socio-spatial Segregation through Architectural Verwandlung

One of the places where the phenomenon of socio-spatial segregation is most evident and tangible is the city of São Paulo in Brazil, which is also known as “the city of walls.” I developed an architectural concept based on philosopher Elias Canetti’s concept of Verwandlung that relates the social and mental levels of segregation with the spatial...

Integrated Integrative Infrastructure: The local dimension of metropolitan mobility systems in São Paulo: An exploration of the planning and design of sustainable nodes of mobility and their impact on local spatial qualities

Research: (1) Exploring the role of infrastructure in transforming the metropolitan region of São Paulo into a sustainable metropolitan environment by utilizing the existing infrastructure as a backbone for future economic, environmental and social development. (2) Exploring the opportunity of infrastructure as a key strategy for the inclusion...

(Un)planned: How City and Large Infrastructure Meet

This research wants to show how by the historical overlapping of two thoroughly planned paradigms – ‘city’ and ‘highway’ – an unplanned mismatch could come into existence at the intersection of ring roads and city streets. Through a physical analysis of this mismatch and the planned and unplanned reactions in the cases of Amsterdam A10 West and...