Urban-Think Tank was selected as one of five architectural offices to develop a vision for the future of mobility in cities. The team focused on São Paulo, looking critically at existing infrastructure and transportation patterns to re-imagine its future.

Urban Parangolé liberates the spaces of the contemporary city, engaging all possibilities of the three-dimensional field of mobility.  Through the strata area, flexible territory is introduced enabling São Paulo to support a spectrum of innovative programs and typologies accessible for self-determination. The city is now porous. New possibilities emerge and permeate the existing fabric, allowing for the productive utilization of all spaces in new capacities. Urban Parangolé ultimately proposes the creation of networked villages that stitch together a fragmented city at a human scale.

In the last century rapid urbanization throughout São Paulo’s greater metropolitan region has resulted in a population of close to twenty million people. Even though this makes São Paulo one of the most vibrant cities in South America, it also creates a condition in which the established, rigid systems of mobility are no longer effective.

Since the 1930s government investment has focused on the growth of extensive automobile infrastructure, a trend that has diminished investment in alternative modes of mass transit, and resulted in current issues of congestion and infrastructure limitations. This is a key component of the larger, asymmetrical urbanization process. Population density in parts of the central region of the city have diminished, while the urbanization of peripheral areas, especially in the sprawling gated communities and favelas, has exploded. As a consequence, the majority of people within São Paulo face both social and territorial immobility. Innovative new modes and pathways of notion are needed to make São Paulo an accessible and inclusive city for all of its inhabitants.

Location: São Paulo, Brazil; Exhibition in Istanbul, Turkey

Design: work completed while at Urban-Think Tank & The U-TT Chair ETH Zurich, Project Architect - Research and Design Lead