Permeable Borders

The project is situated in Rio de Janeiro, a city fragmented by inequality and exclusion. The urban development, guided by the interest of the market and elitist policies, forged a territory of polarized communities. The project advocates for an alternative development process that can promote the integration and empowerment of vulnerable groups.

The multidimensional analysis clarified contextual demands, local opportunities and highlighted critical locations for permeability strategies to take place: activating the fragments, permeating the borders and integrating in-between zones\nThe proposed strategic plan is an assemblage of four context-specific strategies: Social empowerment, Ecological capacitation, Public space and Housing. These are articulated by a palette of independent, yet supplementary actions, that exhibit opportunities for an alternative development process in the city.\nEach action, is strategically located in the built environment to address specific conditions – elaborating on spatial, functional and institutional possibilities that can increase the integration and the adaptive capacity of the vulnerable contexts.\nThe design, conceived as an open project, is not stagnant nor does it intend to provide a definitive solution. Instead, it exhibits strategic locations and opportunities that can be shaped by local communities and institutions according to their own identities, conditions and demands. The flexibility of the process augments the resilience of the actions to withstand temporal uncertainties - political, economic or ecological.\nCompiled into an action book, the project is an instrument to support local collaborators in developing spaces of potentiality, thus stimulating the dialogue between top-down and bottom-up approaches in the co-production of urban space.