3 CHAPTER 3: PRECEDENTS
3.2.1.1 Background
The Manguinhos Complex is located in the North of Rio De Janeiro, between two distinct areas, one being a conglomerate of about ten favelas, separated by a railway line from the neighboring industrial plants. The issues facing the community include crime, overcrowding, and lack of public space. The project is commissioned to Metrópolis Porjectos Urbanos in 2005 by the City of Rio De Janeiro. The main objective of the project was to integrate the favelas with the rest of the city by adding to existing potential, rather than to intervene in the slums through removal for an upgrade.
The approach to the Manguinhos Complex project which has resulted in a large public space offering a series of activities for the public, was the product of a collaboration of professionals from different fields as well as a well-directed engagement of the community. Although the strategy was that of a bottom-up approach, the architect was able to both hear and respond to the immediate needs expressed by the community as well as the implied needs, and make this the basis of his response. MPU outlines their approach to the project as having taken the following steps towards its realisation.
Alternative stakeholder engagement processes 3.2.2
Critical to the success of the large-scale intervention was the process that aimed to address a series of smaller and more detailed community systems and networks.
• A series of initial site visits to better understand the topography of the site, as well as other site specific characteristics.
• Community engagement to understand the user needs, both expressed and latent, using the Freudian method of free association and fluctuant attention.
Community interaction was sustained throughout the project through the following stages:
53 1. Defining the programme
2. Follow up on execution of works (using community skills) 3. Involvement in the development staff
• Urban party elaboration: this consolidated the two aforementioned stages and establishes the design criteria.
Removing physical and psychological barriers 3.2.3
In response to the fact that the biggest hindrances for interaction between the formal and informal communities or economies are physical and psychological in nature, MPU sought to remove the barrier and create an alternate boundary space for interaction. The resulting intervention was to raise the railway line that had created a physical and psychological barrier, excluding one from the other.
Public Space as a connecting device
The centrality of this intervention between two neighbourhoods provides an opportunity for social interaction. This project highlights the fact that mutually beneficial interventions, such as public space, used as devices to create or strengthen connections between the formal and the informal. The basis of interaction need not be based on a unilateral dependency.
Providing a structural framework
The built form of the intervention becomes a structural frame under which a variety of activities and uses can emerge, both formal and informal in nature. Activities planned for include bicycle paths, athletic fields and scenic walkways, each of which can become catalytic to other modes of community interaction. The framework intervention allows the sensitive local social networks to remain largely untouched, yet provide an opportunity for them to expand.
54 Figure 27 Manguinhos, Precinct Design Framework Source:
https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2010/smallscalebigchange/proj ects/manginhos_complex.html
Figure 28 Manguinhos, Public Space beneath raised railway. Source:
https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2010/smallscalebigchange/projects/manginhos_complex.html
55 In many instances, most critical detail of inclusive architectural interventions are dependent on response to larger contextual determinants, as discussed above.
Provisions such as circulatory connections and public spaces afforded by re- imagined urban plans that respond sensitively to context, leveraging power on which inclusive architecture can be built such as that which supports informal trader work practices. This precedent exemplifies an alternative top-down approach where adapted informality can meet needs expressed from the bottom up.
Figure 29 Manguinhos, District and railway border between formal and informal neighbors.
Source:https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2010/smallscalebigchange/projects/manginhos_
complex.html
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Elemental Social Housing: Incremental Architecture 3.3
Elemental social housing was developed by an interdisciplinary team of professionals, which included architects, social workers, engineers, and contractors.
The project team commissioned provided about 100 social housing units at a budget of $7,500 per unit for land, infrastructure, and building.
Approach:
3.3.1
The “half a house” intervention process necessitated a consideration of immediate and future needs and a platform for the future, which would allow each family to invest in themselves.
The following principles guided the process of development:
1) proximity to the city: building social housing close to the city for opportunity to improve networks, which are of great value to the urban poor;
2) sub-communities within the large development: creating clusters with collectively shared space;
3) developing harmoniously over time;
4) using local skill and resources: equipping families to better build their own houses, as is common practice in the area; and
5) the ability to expand and adapt: designing with the final expanded house scenario in mind.
Incremental Growth 3.3.2
The resulting intervention was the ‘half a house’ model, a variation on the existing traditional row house. Each unit was developed as half a built segment, with the other half inbuilt. The units were developed with a basic comprehensive structural framework, of the most important elements of a house, which included the most important plumbing fittings, an access stair, and door openings as a service core, but excluded additional bathroom and kitchen fittings. This modular framework would leave the incremental growth of the building to be the responsibility of the family which inhabited the house. The result would be a block of houses that were framed in the same way for an aesthetic unity, yet would still be adaptable and allowed to evolve over time according to user occupation.
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Providing opportunity to formalise 3.3.3
The key to providing a sustainable and value-adding intervention both socially and economically understood the nature of the problem in terms further than the immediate need. The reality was that to consider holistically, the needs of the people would mean consideration that families on state grant wanted to move into the middle class, at a realistic pace over time. The acute needs were twofold. Firstly, a financial instrument by which they could build wealth: the house as a growing asset.
Secondly, they needed the stability provided by a formal housing which would provide the additional benefits of strengthening family networks.
Figure 30 Elemental Social Housing. Source: www.archdaily.com
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Conclusion 3.4
Most notably, the discourse pertaining to strategies for inclusion involves the role of the designer in interpreting the needs presented by key stakeholders, using the Freudian method of free association and fluctuant attention. Where this has applied in the precedent presented, the result has been a sustainable intervention that considers present and future needs, as cited in the elemental social housing project.
What is also important to note is that the most successful intervention examples connecting the formal with the informal, present themselves as the provision of a framing structure. The framing structure is somewhat ‘incomplete’, but is designed with the end user in mind. The details and final programming of the complete building structure are not necessarily decided, but rather guided by the designer and adapted by the user over time.
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