YEAR 2011-2012 2nd QUARTER

In the second semester we continue dealing with water issues but this time at a larger scale in order to study its relationship with the urban environment and its ability to structure and organize vast areas, not only to solve technical issues, but also adding character and establishing links between urban morphology and waterways. The water problem in Sao Paulo is crucial. Floods are frequent and affect large areas that have taken over enormous tracts of land that served as natural water cycle regulators. The riverbanks have been occupied by a intensive construction, which, added to the indiscriminate paving of natural wet areas have created a surface which can not absorb natural rainwater. Thus, all water runoff is not filtered through the ground and then gradually sent to the river, but it does so in a single blow, which means a huge increase in the water volume of the Tietê River, eventually ends up flooding urban areas, specially the poorest ones.

One of the last measures carried out by the government has a great impact on the cityscape: the construction of urban storm water ponds that can accommodate the excess of water. So far, 131 units have been planned of which 42 have been finally built. Most of the year, they are nothing more than huge hole in the center of the city. The studio MMBB in Sao Paulo has called attention to the need to abandon the purely technical point of view of these great engineering works and in this past year they have worked on a particular spot, the favela Paraisópolis. For them, these infrastructures must be conceived as an urban space, being part of the fabric and fitting the local scale of the city. The informal sectors of São Paulo are the ones that lack public space the most. MMBB Architects proposes redesigning the drainage system in order to create a system capable of structuring the periphery, a new network of public spaces which can strengthen social ties in the metropolis, restudying a new model of watershed that can serve as a playground, golf soccer field, skate parks or meeting places