Bem-vindo a Santa Marta #000

My name is Livia Minoja and I arrived in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, three months ago, to make an internship about urban projects developing Rio de Janeiro’s communities. I got a scholarship – Poli-no-profit – from my school in Milan (Politecnico di Milano), where I study architecture at the Faculty of Architettura e Società, to come here. Thanks also the help of two tutors (Salvatore Porcaro > www.cityrom.it and Gennaro Postiglione > www.lablog.org.uk).

I took part to the urban design team directed by Jorge Mario Jauregui, that is involved in the projects promoted by local government (Prefeitura do Rio), in order to improve an integration between “favelas” and the rest of the city.

Basically the purpose of these interventions is to improve life of inhabitants thanks to the insertion, in the informal tissue, of community, educational, sport and work centres, as well as infrastructure to connect favelas with formal city and to improve mobility of inhabitants inside the complex of favelas itself. My work has been focused especially in the complex of “favelas” of Manguinhos and Alemão, situated in the “Zona Norde” of Rio: big masterplans (including new sustainable housing area, social services and equipment, cableway and train-stations) have been developed. This experience permitted me to understand the political programs that the city is promoting, and the answer that architecture and urbanism is offering to the numerous poor areas of the city.

My personal research is starting from the analysis of a case study, favela of Santa Marta, with the objective of understanding the present reality (with social, cultural, political, physical and infrastructural aspects), trying to comprehend why the community is at present strongly reacting against government programs of urbanization, and then propose a possible plan of intervention.