Urban Farming São Paulo
Project Date | December 2, 2008
Brasil’s slum problem is well documented and known across an increasingly networked and informed world in all senses of globalization. Slums exist across the world, often completely disconnected from basic infrastructural services. Working under U-TT, the SLUM Lab is exploring multiple options in supporting the many challenges facing the neighborhood of Grotao, in Paraisopolis, Sao Paulo. Uniquely wedged near the central district of the city, bordering SP’s wealthiest neighborhood, the largest slum in Sao Paulo has its own well established identity which must be well connected to the city and all basic infrastructure in the most local, self-sustaining way possible.
The proposal to support the slum, or the brasilian favela, is a linear urban farm model intended to largely self-sustain local food necessity by creating agricultural space on available unused surfaces and air. The project’s intention is to design a system which is reactive to and has little physical impact on the existing ultra-high density favela, while providing an organic presence in the community. The system would be built following the existing structural syntax of the immediate area, and run by the faveladores with local NGO’s.
The system logic is primarily concerned with introducing a responsive network of infrastructural connections with agricultural production which extends throughout the neighborhood of Grotao. The system’s nascency is based on the nature of favela growth, of decentralized growth in high redundancy, subjected to a continual evolution of forms. The system attempts a new way of mapping existing resources and physical conditions of the site while drawing the most productive connections between the houses.
Adjustable Parameters in the decision-making brain
2 – weights of decisions for floating values vs. conditional values
8 – Target Averages of maintained connections to each resource (# connections to resource / total # connections)
1 – Distance threshold in length of span to next house
This system analyzes demographic data images and plots intelligent paths between the favela houses, making resource-sharing decisions based on characteristics such as:
roadside (connections to sewage/water/electricity)
drainage area (slopes where water flows)
link to water source
land slope (“risk areas” vs. more build-able slopes)
income (average household income – changes very often)
no road connection (no link to basic infrastructural services)
density of building (more structural connections available)
All Houses in Grotão
This system basically extends the existing columns of the built favela houses, and inserts its own columns where needed, in between neighboring walls, which would form an expanding rigid network structure across the neighborhood. The upper level provides an urban farm while networking infrastructural services.
