Architects for a Better World

This trailer is about a movie to be released in November which will deal about sustainable architecture. Architect/mayor/governor Jaime Lerner of Curitiba, Paraná State (Brazil) will also appear in the movie.

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Architect/Mayor/Governor Jaime Lerner of Curitiba, Brazil (2/2)

The transformation of Curitiba was initiated with the realisation of a car free city centre as an icon for the city of the human scale. It was a controversial plan because there where no precedents in Brazil. Though IPPUC initially thought of a trial period of two months, this was brought back to one month to one week because of the expected protests. Eventually the planning institute could convince the local entrepreneurs to accept a trial period of only one weekend. Prior to this weekend the street in question, Rua Quinze de Novembro, got totally refurbished, streetlights and kiosks were placed and tens of thousands of flowers were planted, an investment with which Jaime Lerner as a director of the planning institute took a big risk with which he put his career in jeopardy. The test however was successful and when the local automobile club announced a protest the following Monday, schoolchildren were mobilized for a street drawing project to stop this protest. This way, the first pedestrian zone in Brazil was a fact within 72 hours.

Actions like this are typical for the way Lerner operates, and are typed by him as ‘Acupuntura Urbana’ – Urban Acupuncture. This is a strategic intervention with quick results that generates enthusiasm and support for further developments. In other words, momentum is generated. This working method made Lerner popular during his career as an architect, but was blamed on him as being populist in is career as a politician. As a politician, he could replace binary political thinking with complementary architectural thinking. Politics became design with the idea that the same dynamics, processes, limitations and systems influence both politics and architecture. With this approach it became possible to get maximum effect with limited resources. This got compensated by mobilizing the population, which became an alternative architectural resource.

“…The city is not the problem, it is the solution…” – Jaime Lerner

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Architect/Mayor/Governor Jaime Lerner of Curitiba, Brazil (1/2)

Architect Jaime Lerner (1937) played a central role in the development of Curitiba. As a student he was involved in the first ideas about an alternative plan for Curitiba and after his graduation as an architect in 1964 he got involved in the founding of the Instituto de Persquisa e Planejamento Urbano de Curitiba (IPPUC – Institute of Urban Planning and Research of Curitiba). After his first successes as director of the IPPUC Lerner was appointed by the military regime as mayor (prefeito) of Curitiba (1971-1975), aged 33 years old. In 1979 a second term followed (1979-1984) and in 1988 he ran for the third time, now in a democratic Brazil. He announced his candidacy 12 days before the elections and got elected for his third and last term as a mayor of Curitiba (1989-1992). In this position Lerner had the opportunity to implement and refine the reforms that he himself had suggested in the masterplan before. After being a mayor Lerner was elected in 1994 as a governor of the state of Paraná, and got re-elected in 1998. Since 2002 he is active as an architect again and he advices the United Nations in the reconstruction of Kabul and New Orleans, for which Curitiba is taken as a reference.

Abraham Maslow said: “…If you just have a hammer, you’ll approach every problem as a nail …”. Lerner looked further than the usual architectural toolbox and regarded architecture as a materialized system. In his words: “…If you present the solution as a bus, than it is a bus. If it is presented as a system however, people will understand…” Lerner considered architecture not to be product based, but service based.

Photo: Lerner (Center) at the inauguration of the Bus Express System in 1974.
Reference: www.jaimelerner.com
Book: Acupuntura Urbana

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Sustainable History of Curitiba, Brazil (3/3)

In the development of Curitiba, also the management of green areas and water resources were important aspects, next to infrastructure. In 1971 a start was made with the construction of squares and parcs, by buying bits of land, surrounding them with walls and planting trees, until it was realized that this solution was too expensive. Around that time, Brazilian federal government founded the construction of canals in cities for the drainage of water. Water management in Brazilian cities basically means constructing a concrete canal like an open sewer on the lowest point of the city. Because the sewage usually do not have enough capacity, or are absent totally, it can happen during the short but severe showers that rapid rivers form in the streets that flow to the lowest points of the cities and that result in floodings. In São Paulo in particular, where rain water can not absorbed in the soil because of all the asphalt and concrete, this is a common phenomena.

[Rua Quinze de Novembro after the reconstruction]

In Curitba a radical stop was put to this practise by constructing parcs that would also functionate as water buffers. This way, 28 water rich nature parks came into existence of about 5000 acres in total, with rich ecosystems and biodiversity. This meant about 51m2 of green space per inhabitant, which is more than the WHO standard of 12m2. Before the implementation of the masterplan there was only 0,5m2 of parc available per inhabitant in Curitiba. In the parcs, the graslands are maintained by the 30 sheep of the municipal sheperd. The parcs have also a meaning for society as a number of parcs are thematic and dedicated to the diverse ethnical and migrant groups in Curitiba. The city dwellers themselves participated in the construction of the parcs as well by planting about 300.000 plants and trees.

[The municipal sheep of Curitiba]

Also in other fields inhabitants and government collaborate actively in Curibiba. In the slums, where the dump trucks cannot enter, inhabitants get a sack of food in exchange for every bag of waste they bring in. The schools play an important role in the relation between the civilians and the municipality as the kids have teached the city how to recycle. And by supplying meals in the schools it is stimulated to attend classes. As a consequence, juvenile delinquency and begging was put to a halt. This way Curitiba has developed itself through time as a sustainable city, a dynamic concept that is still in process.

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Curitiba: The new Brazil

This nice video explains the Curitiba bus system in 4 minutes.

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Sustainable History of Curitiba, Brazil (2/3)

In anticipation to traffic congestion and mono cultural development (sprawl) the bus system played a mayor role in the master plan of Curitiba. In this plan, the significance of the bus system was bigger than that of public transportation only. The centrally positioned bus lanes, with one way streets on both sides, were designed to be main axes radiating out of the city center. These axes form the core of the transportation system concept and also define the development of the urban fabric. The domestic areas have a higher density in the vicinity of the axes, and a lower density in the areas between the axes, and demographic variety is being stimulated.

In retrospective the bus system can be compared to a surface metro system. Passengers don’t have to wait longer then one minute for a bus, in every bus there is place for 270 persons and boarding can take place within 20 seconds. Passengers pay before entering the glass tube shaped terminal, so there are no delays because of payment problems at the drivers seat. As a consequence, 20.000 people can be transported on a single bus line in one hour. For the disabled passengers, the platform floor and the bus floor are brought to the same level, and there is a wheelchair elevator at hand. Every bus ticket is also a city lottery ticket as the use of public transport is being stimulated.

So by optimizing the existing bus system her economic advantages – an important aspect in a third world country – could be combined with the functional advantages of a metro system, like speed and efficiency. As a result, the bus system has been realized for only 1% of the budget of a metro system, or 5% of the budget for a light rail, or 10% of the budget of a streetcar, and has been realized much faster. Also the absence of lengthy undergrounds strolls and the aspect of social security are advantages in relation to an underground metro system.

The successful transport concept has been copied to a number of cities like São Paulo, Los Angeles (Orange Line), Seoul and Bogotá (TransMilenio). Although Curitiba has the biggest percentage of cars per inhabitant after Brasilia, about 75% of the population uses public transport. This is more than 2 million passengers a day, more than the daily use of the New York City metro. As a result, Curitiba uses 20% less fuel in relation to other big Brazilian cities.

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Sustainable History of Curitiba, Brazil (1/3)

Curitiba, capital of Paraná State, can be seen as an exponent for collaborative design. As an agricultural market and a regional centre of trade, Curitiba experienced explosive expansion as a result of industrialisation in the second half of the 20th century. The city increased by about 900 people per week for a period of 40 years, from 300.000 inhabitants in 1950 to 2,1 million inhabitants in 1990, an increase that took Paris about 250 years. The urge to canalise growth was recognised in Curitiba already in the early 60’s, contrary to for example São Paulo. During the mandate of mayor Ivo Arzua Pereira (1962-1967) this process was initiated.

[Rua Quinze de Novembro in 1971, just before the transformation of Curitiba]

Initially the masterplan to prevent traffic congestion provided in the construction of a fly over on top of the central shopping street, Rua Quinze de Novembro, and the demolition of existing historic buildings in order to widen the roads. Of similar solutions there are plenty of examples in São Paulo, which resulted in unordered, undefined and socially unsafe urban spaces. Therefore it is no surprise that the plan was protested against, especially by a group of architecture students of the Universidade Federal do Paraná. The group came with an alternative plan, with the preservation of the historic centre of the city as a starting point. From this group a number of now graduated architects got an advising role in 1965, and from this group the Instituto de Persquisa e Planejamento Urbano de Curitiba (IPPUC, Bureau of Research and Urban Development) was formed. The IPPUC designed a new masterplan for Curitiba, which was presented in 1970.

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