EnLUDe 1 (Environmentally-Led Urban Design)

São Paulo, Brazil, 2004-06

PROJECT
Research-by-design into an environmentally-led urban design on a large brownfield site earmarked for development by the city of São Paulo: Barra Funda.

PARTICIPANTS
R_E_D and the Laboratorio de Conforto Ambiental e Efficiencia Energetica (LCAEE), Faculdade de Arquitectura et Urbanismo, University of São Paulo.

OBJECTIVE
To lay the groundwork for a transferable, environmentally-led urban design methodology.

Where the pace and negative impact of urbanisation is most dramatic, environmental sustainability remains a future goal – after economic prosperity and social stability, but there are clear connections between resource efficiency, reduced environmental impact and social and economic benefits. The lack, not of clear environmental targets, but of clear ways of achieving them in very different urban contexts, led our team to test design strategies to help those tasked with delivering the 'triple bottom line' of urban sustainability deliver environmental as well social and economic improvements.

Our laboratory was a 70 hectare site in Barra Funda, an area classified by the São Paulo city government as one of the sites for their “Operações Urbanas” – a process whereby parts of the city are selected for a substantial intervention and change of physical, social and economic configuration through public/private partnership. The Barra Funda intervention failed to provoke/generate significant improvements in the area, and the LCAEE chose it as a site for new approaches to urban regeneration.