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Micro-Revolutions
Escola São Paulo
16–24 July 2010
The workshop explored the radical rehabilitation of otherwise obsolete, residual and overlooked urban environments, communities and physical materials, employing computational design and digital fabrication. With the impetus provided by the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games, the organisers, sponsors and local micro-agencies sought ways in which sports culture could transform troubled urban environments. In response, the workshop designed and produced prototypes for informal outdoor sports facilities under the viaducts in the Glicério neighbourhood of São Paulo, to encourage grassroots sports participation.
The workshop colaborated with the Garrido Boxing Academy, which is a free sports venue under the viaducts, founded by Garrido, a former boxing champion, who through the Academy has given inhabitants of the city new opportunities. Some local drug addicts have been attracted to the excitement of athletic activity, and the academy has become a space for self-motivated transformation, more effective than imposed drug rehab programmes. The intense, studio-based workshop consisted of extensive parametric modelling tutorials, computernumerically controlled fabrication, as well as lectures by both Brazilian and international architects and specialists. Inspired by the Campana Brothers and Greg Lynn’s recycled toy fabrications, ‘found-objects’ will be computationally re-designed for new uses in this microsports revolution.
Directors
Anne Save de Beaurecueil and Franklin Lee use computation to generate environmentally responsive geometries for architecture and urban design projects, primarily in Brazil and China. They previously taught at the Pratt Institute in New York, hold Master’s degrees from Columbia University and
have published, exhibited and lectured on their work
worldwide.