{"id":18941,"date":"2014-11-07T11:19:52","date_gmt":"2014-11-07T14:19:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=18941"},"modified":"2014-11-14T19:45:49","modified_gmt":"2014-11-14T22:45:49","slug":"when-are-cities-finished-a-debate-between-architects-photographers-favela-residents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=18941","title":{"rendered":"When Are Cities Finished?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Saturday November 1, photographer Mauro Restiffe<\/a>, architect and urbanist Manoel Ribeiro and\u00a0architect Pedro \u00c9vora\u00a0delivered engaging presentations on the subject “When are cities finished?” for the Travessias 3 art festival<\/a> in Complexo da Mar\u00e9<\/a>. The presentations, which took place at the Mar\u00e9 Art Center, were followed by a debate that was moderated by\u00a0Jorge Barbosa from Observat\u00f3rio de\u00a0Favelas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0debate addressed specifically\u00a0the\u00a0transformations affecting Mar\u00e9 and Rio. It was the penultimate debate featured in the three-month long art festival program, that included workshops and other activities<\/a> and will end on November 16.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Photographing the\u00a0Mar\u00e9 Complex of favelas<\/h3>\n

Mauro Restiffe’s presentation focused on S\u00e3o Paulo, Taipei and Istanbul landscapes and shapes. His work captures modernist interiors as well as daily life portraits. In Bras\u00edlia (2003) and Washington D.C (2008), Mauro snapped unconventional shots of the respective presidential election ceremonies of Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva and Barack Obama. Rigorous composition, gray shades and intense grain are his trademarks. His presentation showcased an artistic quest that linked his\u00a0past productions with more recent photographs of Bologna’s streets at night, interiors of work-in-progress museums and Mar\u00e9\u2019s becos<\/i>\u00a0(alleyways).<\/p>\n

For Travessias 3, Mauro Restiffe spent a week exploring the neighborhood of Mar\u00e9, specifically the\u00a0Nova Holanda<\/a> favela.\u00a0\u201c[I am] very happy about the outcome,\u201d Mauro said\u00a0about his \u201cdirect and unfiltered\u201d photographic experience both in the making and exhibiting of Mar\u00e9\u2019s \u201cunrestricted complexity.\u201d<\/p>\n

His photographic works will be on show until the end of the Travessias exhibition, on November 16.<\/p>\n

Cities as works in progress<\/h3>\n

In a city planning crash course, architect and urbanist Manoel Ribeiro\u00a0shed light on the first steps of today\u2019s speedy urbanism. From Roman square-based foundations to theaters and hot springs, Ribeiro gave examples of the\u00a0wealthy and powerful separating themselves from the rest of society. Speaking of China’s 3-square meter\u00a0family houses and\u00a0Detroit’s failed project of production-based city models, Ribeiro\u00a0questioned contemporary ultra-urbanism, where a fixation on constant economic growth meets inconsistently with the planet\u2019s limited resources.<\/p>\n

\u201cArtists and poets cannot abandon the utopia\u00a0of fairer and safer cities for everyone,” he concluded. “[Cities that are] more equal and ready\u2013yet unfinished\u2013in fulfilling the role assigned by human civilization.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cyborg city<\/h3>\n

At\u00a0Travessias for the second time,\u00a0Pedro \u00c9vora\u00a0is the architect who leads workshops to build an ever-growing miniature of Mar\u00e9, Modelo Vivo<\/i><\/a>\u00a0(Live Model).<\/p>\n

\u00c9vora\u00a0mentioned the ancient city of Sumerian Ur<\/a> to point to the contradiction of setting limits, allowing for a growth space which will then be met, surpassed, and set again. Bras\u00edlia’s challenges, he argued, show how people’s will\u00a0surpasses the strictest of plans. He\u00a0strongly believes in the \u201cvitality of peripheries\u201d: the informal overcoming\u00a0the formal.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Cities are] a repository of inanimate things, yet an organism at the same\u00a0time,\u201d said \u00c9vora, looking for a word to define the ever-changing urban landscape.\u201cIt\u2019s a cyborg!\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n

Cities are\u00a0cyborg creatures, constantly growing and shedding skins. Rio, for example, seems to have found a \u201cvocation as a city of events,\u201d a stage of episodic happenings; yet Pedro warned against the \u201cdangers of a mono-use city.\u201d Cities can live or die from tourism<\/a>: tourism can fundamentally compromise\u00a0a city’s function. The city can get locked, crystallized in form and use, only \u201cready to be photographed or bought, stripped of any interaction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Contesting this, \u00c9vora\u00a0calls for an end of planning and instead for anarchic, collective actions which decide where cities should go or when they should end. Modelo vivo<\/i>, the model of Rio de Janeiro starting from Mar\u00e9, also served as a no-plan experimentation. When exhibited in S\u00e3o Paulo, visitors were asked to \u201cmix it up with care\u201d; they were free to manipulate the parts<\/a> how they wished or revert to the original. What would city planning look like if everyone gave directions and no one set walls?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The importance of understanding favelas<\/h3>\n

Observat\u00f3rio de Favelas<\/a> founder Jorge Barbosa opened the debate with a thought-provoking statement: \u201cHuman beings are unfinished subjects, cities should be unfinished like ourselves.\u201d However, this call for dreams and desires is marked by conflicts. He continued \u201cThe formal city finds itself ready, finished, done; peripheries are inventing forms and functions. [Formal] cities are meant to last forever; [informal] cities are re-inventing<\/a>, re-constructing themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00c9vora\u00a0described\u00a0favelas as places with \u201csustainability<\/a>, vitality, that are\u00a0represented more by potentialities than the things they lack.\u201d\u00a0In terms of energy crisis and limited resources, favelas were also described as most resilient because of their history of resistance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Restiffe\u00a0praised favelas for their \u201clevel of organization\u201d and good structure,\u00a0concluding they are\u00a0\u201cvery efficient regardless of all their\u00a0deficiencies\u201d and that \u201cthere\u2019s a lot to learn from them<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ribeiro\u00a0defined favelas as\u00a0\u201c[an] urbanistic expression of Brazilian social debt.\u201d He rejected the\u00a0market\u2019s \u201cinvisible hand\u201d as a feasible planner: \u201cFavelas are nuclei of resistance against the centrifugal forces of market which want to throw away the poorer periphery,\u201d he said. \u201cFavelas, if well understood, are spaces of enrichment of urban culture<\/a>. If misunderstood, they are spaces to be removed<\/a> and gentrified<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The audience joined in the debate by asking about the right to the city<\/a>, the militarization of the favelas and the fundamental challenges favelas face in being recognized by society.<\/p>\n

Resident\u00a0Jos\u00e9 Francesco, originally from\u00a0Minas Gerais and Mar\u00e9 resident since 1985, pointed out that “favela residents are great shapers of ideas, strong men and brave women, who built all this world that we inhabit today. It is\u00a0our right to stay, as we are\u00a0discussing and achieving more and more.\u201d He defined his personal feelings of security in Mar\u00e9, a \u201csecurity that starts with culture and education.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jos\u00e9<\/a>
\nWelcoming Jos\u00e9’s comments, Ribeiro\u00a0concluded the event by remarking on\u00a0the\u00a0limits\u00a0of planning, the need for diversity, and the need\u00a0for popular ingenuity. Restiffe\u00a0promised to come back to photograph Mar\u00e9 again and \u00c9vora\u00a0raised the stakes inciting the audience to challenge market forces and mitigate the effects of gentrification.<\/p>\n

Barbosa’s concluding words were powerful:\u00a0\u201cLet\u2019s make a masterpiece that shall be greater than the human, it will be a city that is\u00a0black, beautiful, generous, diverse in gender and sexual orientation, a city filled with\u00a0our human manifestations, that fits all of us, but not the ferocity of capitalism.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Saturday November 1, photographer Mauro Restiffe, architect and urbanist Manoel Ribeiro and\u00a0architect Pedro \u00c9vora\u00a0delivered engaging presentations on the subject “When are cities finished?” for the Travessias 3 art festival in Complexo da Mar\u00e9. The […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":18955,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1288,1290,1333,1268,1271,329,1329],"tags":[1448,396,756,258,280,504,842,221,65,37,281,523,152,270,1008,1462],"writer":[1398],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18941","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-highlight","8":"category-civilsociety","9":"category-event-reports","10":"category-favelaculture","11":"category-favelaqualities","12":"category-solutions","13":"category-by-international-observers","14":"tag-favelasareassets","15":"tag-art","16":"tag-community-organizing","17":"tag-community-solution","18":"tag-complexo-da-mare","19":"tag-culture","20":"tag-debate","21":"tag-favela-culture","22":"tag-gentrification","23":"tag-north-zone","24":"tag-nova-holanda","25":"tag-observatorio-de-favelas","26":"tag-participation","27":"tag-resistance","28":"tag-right-to-the-city","29":"tag-travessias","30":"writer-andrea-cangialosi"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18941"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=18941"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=18941"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=18941"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=18941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}