The Favela Bairro Project

CONSTRUCTING AN URBAN DESIGN CASE
The Favela Bairro Project: Mending the City Fabric
Wednesday October 4th, at 7pm. RMIT Bldg 50 in Orr Street
Speaker : Meaghan Dwyer, architect
A project with the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.

‘In every city there are qualities that are worth to be lived. These are the qualities that urban design must not steal.’ Wim Wenders

How is the city made and what are current urban design practices? Where do the opportunities for urban design lie, and how are they realised? This presentation outlines the development of a theoretical framework for the presentation of a detailed urban design case, and attempts to elaborate a particular case: The Favela-Bairro Project.

The population of Rio today is estimated to be over 11 million. It is thought that up to 20% of the cities inhabitants live in favelas, or spontaneous informal settlements. The Favela-Bairro Project is conceived as a tool to promote the urban and social integration of the favelas in an effort to reverse the process of urban decline that generally follows the growth of spontaneous low-income settlements in metropolitan areas of the developing countries. With carefully planned and reparative interventions, the favelas are inverted and returned to the city. Unlike past urban planning initiatives in Rio de Janeiro, the Favela-Bairro Project represents a modest practice of mending the city fabric.

This research was undertaken whilst a visiting Scholar at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, as part of the Master of Social Science - International Urban and Environmental Management, at RMIT University, Australia.

(Please not that this month's WORDS is to be held on Wednesday, not the usual Thursday)