UNE BUILDING
São Paulo, Brazil
by Isabel Duprat
This building is located on a very busy corner of São Paulo, with intense bus traffic, two-way lanes, traffic lights, lots of lamp posts and wires, a crosswalk, a street arriving in front of the building and mutilated trees. In addition to all this, it was necessary to resolve the accesses to the building itself, accessibility, stairs, ramps, entry and exit of automobiles, the parking of motorcycles and trucks for loading and unloading, the venting of generators, the energy company boxes, having to deal with some slabs of the underground that surfaced and, if there was any space left, to make a garden. Why is São Paulo so sloppy? I do not share the idea that this tormented aesthetic is part of city life nor that this concern is justified by the counterpart of its thriving cultural and financial movement, its cosmopolitan face. I have already heard many speeches glamorizing this chaos, which after all is simply more comfortable and just makes it clear that our level of demand with the public space is falling as we get used to ugliness, neglect and bad living.
That said, the landscaping project was in fact about solving an equation. And it is often so. With so many adverse elements competing in that space, giving the expected dignity to the external area of this commercial building, designed by Gui Mattos, and still making for one to stay in, which was my goal, became the puzzle to be unveiled.
The architectural design was already very advanced when I started my participation, which greatly restricted the possibilities.
Initially, the designed pedestrian circulation previewed a ramp occupying the entire frontal free area of the building, in addition to steps, with small flowerbeds side by side and a generous space for cars to enter and exit. The landscaping project repositioned the ramp with an equally accessible angle, making it the only pedestrian access and eliminating the unnecessary steps. This optimization enabled the creation of a larger, less fragmented garden, which was opened onto the street, in the shape of a small square, removing the feeling of confinement and turbulence at the entrance to the building. An L-shaped concrete wall guaranteed the depth of soil for planting while fulfilling the function of a bench. We suggested that the generators' air vents should be taken over by the architecture, and an area was made available for food trucks, upon request.
The very narrow side street with a tall building at the front and a too limited sidewalk were calling for some refreshment. As I had done in other projects for the same client, someone who cares about the relationship between the building and the street and which is clearly not common, it was possible to make a strip of land 5 m wide along the entire length of the lot to turn to the street and that, added to the narrow sidewalk, gave us 6.2 m. My first proposal was to create a wider sidewalk interspersed with benches and plants, with trees replacing the existing arecas, quite awkward for the tiny space. I used the same permeable floor that I chose for the entire outdoor pedestrian area of the building, with pieces of 60x20 cm. The Municipality, however, did not approve. I couldn't understand their argument, as they wanted for a so timid place more flowerbeds instead of a good tree-lined sidewalk that would provide a generous walk with seating points. We were only able to get small spaces with benches along the sidewalk and the planting of trees between the “flowerbeds” with the “resistance” arecas. It is not easy to interact with public spaces, not even for a good cause.
Next to the side of the building, I took advantage of the wooden logs closing, made by the architecture to hide the garage, by planting climbing plants that would become entangled forming a green blind.
For the circulation of vehicles, I specified a permeable monolithic floor, marking in this access with numerous conflicting points the space of the cars. The floors, both monolithic and prefabricated parts of the pedestrian areas as well as the concrete of the benches, were specified in very close shades of gray, as neutral as possible to subtract the noise from this place, softening these elements.
The planters in the ground floor span lost their original triangular shapes and were replaced by two large concrete rectangles with benches giving continuity to the elements of the external area, including through vegetation. It was necessary to eliminate some planters planned in this area that would not receive enough lighting to provide a good development of the plants. Surrounding this floor, in a large garden I planted white bougainvilleas leaning towards the neighborhood. In the narrow planter on the side of the side street, I used monstera slipping its long roots to find the vines that come from below. Plants licking the facade, like yellow jasmine, soften the building's faces.
On the roof a planter surrounds the entire perimeter. Under the stairs that give access to the garage and the main hall, a difficult area for planting due to its insolation conditions and small depth of soil, another garden visually joins the plants on the ground level, making a green cord, including the function of hiding the buildings in the neighborhood. It is a difficult task to give unity to all planters.
Looking at the building today, with its own life, welcoming its users, the trees a little more grown, the benches, the comfortable ramp for daily access, everything seems so simple, almost obvious. If, on the one hand, this perception is very welcome because it tells us that everything is right, on the other hand it hides all the difficult path that is hidden and that I have described here. In order to achieve simple solutions, we often need a lot of parchment paper and graphite to discover them and make them viable. On a larger or smaller scale this happens countless times in our work for many reasons. I think this is the merit of this project.
I think that in the end we managed to somehow bring to this building a small garden to be in.
Intervention área 2000 m²
Project and execution 2013 - 2016
