Tuesday, March 25th

09:00pm  to 12:30pm

“Recent Socio-economic transformations in São Paulo”

Professor Eduardo Marques

centrodametropole.org.br

The talk given by Prof. Marques demonstrated how recent shifts in economic policies have been changing the distribution of wealth among the social classes, and how this relates to the dynamics of the city’s geography. The lecture was rich in statistics, graphs and subtleties, but we are going to do our best to provide a very brief summary here.

Marques directs the  Centro de Estudos da Metrópole, a government-funded agency that collects data about the population of the city of São Paulo. The agency makes its data available to the government, private organizations, NGO’s and the general public. Part of their mission statement is to diffuse the knowledge they collect about the population back to society. We were quite impressed with the amount and efficacy of their data collection, which appears far better than U.S. cities’ censuses, for example.

Marques explained that the dynamics of inequality of wealth were formerly, but no longer, related to migration. Although there is no specific downtown location in São Paulo, the center is generally occupied by the upper classes, with the peripheries on the margins occupied by the poor and the working poor.

Although industrial activity remains high in São Paulo, in recent years there has been a decrease in industrial occupations and a rise in service-oriented labor. This is concurrent with the opening up of the local economy to a globalized one, and with economic restructuring that occurred in the 1990’s. During this period of restructuring, unemployment rose, particularly among the less-educated; the average wage decreased; and informal employment increased.

The nature of this economic restructuring is something that seemed familiar to the Brazilians, but was not entirely clear to us visitors. Marques explained that this restructuring has had an overall negative impact on almost all social groups, except for high professionals. However, it has not resulted in polarization, which he defined as the creation of a very elite, very wealthy superclass.

Interestingly, the income levels of the very poor are rising (1992-2006), and the gap between the very rich and the very poor is decreasing through an overall lowering of the salaries of the upper classes and the middle classes. According to the mood in the room, it seemed that our Brazilian colleagues saw this as a trend that everyone is just getting poorer. Marques argued that the recent decrease in poverty concentrated among the very poor is evidenced in the popularity of automobiles. Astonishingly, he claimed that 80,000 new license plates are registered DAILY in São Paulo, mostly in the poorer neighborhoods of the peripheries.

As for the state of  these peripheries, he explained that there are 10 million people living in the margins of São Paulo. Of these, 1.5 million live in “shanty towns,” 2 million in illegal favelas, and 500 thousand live in public housing. During this period of restructuring and opening up to the global economy, the government funded $2 billion to redevelop the southeast part of the metropolis for the World Trade Center, an area devoted primarily to foreign trade. To do so, a vast number of families living in favelas were displaced to the far periphery of the city (we are sorry we do not remember the exact figure). This appears typical of São Paulo patterns of development; to support the centers of wealth and push the poor to the farther reaches of the city, cut off from public transportation.

There is high density within these peripheries, and more people are living alone. Recent improvements in access to social services shows that fecundity has decreased overall in Brazil, and there has been an increase in average life-expectancy. Nonetheless, unemployment remains very high, with individuals remaining in a state of flux, in and out of informal and formal economies.

As for violence, homicides are located primarily within the peripheries of São Paulo. Of these, 70% occur between two people who live less than 500m apart from each other. This pattern of violence, high in the peripheries and low in the center, differs from Rio and other cities in Brazil. Marques explained that the high sense of insecurity among the upper classes, evidenced by bullet-proof vehicles, helicopters, heightened security and an overall sense of fear, contrasts with the actual crime rates in the upper class sections of São Paulo. Several of us in the visiting class also made this observation, putting into question the dynamics of a psychology of fear in the city.

Marques’s talk seemed surprisingly optimistic to many of the Brazilians in the room, who are frustrated with the recent economic restructuring and with the rising out-of-pocket costs of social services like healthcare, combined with lower salaries. Marques took the position that while these things are true, the data shows that life is improving in small ways for the very poor, although they continue to be pushed outside of the city center.

04:00pm

MASP tour

Paulo Portella Filho, educational service, MASP

The tour through the Museo de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) was given by Paulo Portella Filho, the organizer of the educational service at MASP. He focused on the MASP's architect, Lina Bo Bardi, her ideologies, and how the Museum uses/inhabits the building nowadays.

When we entered the building, we first went downstairs to the part of the museum below ground level. It is hidden underneath a lawn. When you approach the museum there's no hint that a block is constructed below ground level. Rather, the building seems to fly high above ground because the first floor is eliminated. Behind the building (if you can say so) there's a lawn that abruptly ends with a concrete wall precipitously falling down to a highway. The highway comes out of a tunnel that is situated below MASP and the Trianon park. Due to this specific location, on the brink to a lower part of town, it was possible to build windows into the floors below ground level facing the city.

In the "underground" spaces there's a wall of windows to one side. Until recently, however, windows were mostly covered by stores and offices which were installed in in front of them. The broad view on the city, therefore, has suffered a lot. Also, the whitewashed walls have been covered with plaster boards in order to manage easily the installation of art works. The ceiling is interrupted by improperly hung light beams and the floor was substitued with a new tiles, very different from the original ones. These are only a few details that Paulo Portell Filho pointed out which have a irritating effects on Lina Bo Bardi's architecture. He mentions the controversial renovation between 1996 and 2001, in which these changes have been taken place. All of these changes don't seem to him supportive of Bo Bardi's intentions.

Lina Bo Bardi was born in 1914 in Italy and immigrated to Brazil in 1946. She was part of the communist movement in Italy until her immigration. In 1951 she realized her first building, the "glass house" in Morumbi. Paulo Portell Filho said that she used to work on site. She didn't have a studio but worked on the construction site in order to be part of the development of the building. Another anecdote Paulo Portell Filho mentioned is that she asked the construction worker at MASP to bring along plants from their home to plant in MASP's garden. Hearing these stories, it seems all the more annoying that the present MASP board of directors doesn't promote the attitude of Lina Bo Bardi's architectural vision.

After seeing the first floor shortly, we went directly upstairs with an elevator (which seemed a strange transfer). Even though the lighting in the museum was strikingly displeasing, the atmosphere created by children lingering around the paintings was very exhilarating. Since the museum has an elaborate educational service, the whole building was full of children. They were sitting around in circles with their instructors trying to mimic the painting's figures.

While the lack of the first floor is a generous gesture to the open/public space, the interior of the floating second and third floor seems depressingly claustrophobic. The whole glass facade is hidden and the distinctly shaped building looses successively all of its character. Diffuse light shines on dark blue painted, loosely installed walls. Only through guessing you can surmise that the ceiling is built in an unusual tent-like shape. Paulo Portella Filho explained that Lina Bo Bardi also designed the exhibition layout. Due to the desperate light situation, however, the interior architecture gets flattened. Another idea that got neglected totally by the direction board is the glass panels. Lina Bo Bardi planned to put all paintings on vertical glass panels so that you can see paintings "touching" each other throughout the entire space. None of these wonderful ideas were perceivable for us at that moment. Nonetheless it was worth to see the building and get introduced to Lina Bo Bardi's thrilling architectural concept.

06:00pm

Galeria Vermelho- Eduardo Brandao and Eliana Finkelstein

http://www.galeriavermelho.com.br

Hector Zamora

 presents his work at the gallery

http://www.lsd.com.mx/

We visited with Eduardo Brandão and Eliana Finkelstein at the Galeria Vermelho, the gallery that represents Ana Maria Tavares. The gallery attempts to serve not only as an exhibition space, but as a place for discussion and art-making within the community with a café, bookstore, storage space and semi-studio space. They also support the creation of works that extend outside of the gallery space.

Eduardo took us on a tour of the space, noting details about the site and the architectural modifications. I admit that I was not interested in this narrative and paid no attention.

Artist-in-residence Hector Zamora spoke about the project he is working on for the gallery, a kind of architectural model for artist studios and apartments. Although I was uninterested in this project, he showed us some interesting past works, including “Paracaidista” (2004). This was an add-on habitation to a museum in Mexico City, based on the informal and improvised structures of shanty towns across the world. The structure ballooned like a parasitic growth on the exterior walls of the museum. See more at his website: lsd.com.mx