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On July 3rd, at the Embassy of Brazil in Rome, the presentation of the video-diary SAUDE! took place, accompanied by a conference coordinated by Lydia Pribisova who also cured the relationship with the Embassy.

The video, created by the new ISSU producion (Daniele Zacchi, Azzurra Muzzonigro  and Laura Cionci), describes the action created by Laboratorio Arti Civiche, coordinated by Professor Francesco Careri in São Francisco, within the project São Paulo Calling, curated by Stefano Boeri.

The images are a mix of designs, stories and emotions that are mixed in a dynamic and fresh way, giving to the public the opportunity to get immediately in touch with the development of an idea that takes shape through cooperation and understanding of common realities, though geographically distant.

The video-diary has wanted to be a tangible evidence, both of the project and of the direct experience, free of genre labels. We wanted to leave a thin trail of time to give maximum emphasis to the personal and collective feelings, trying to combine the overall emotion of the whole work, with a growing interest with respect to its development up to Geronimo’s cry surrounded by the community and their shirts "Coração". ...

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It's been an intense, alive and memorable day.

The fact of publicly projecting the video-diary SAUDE! at the Embassy of Brazil I think was an important step under several perspectives.

In the first place what was publicly presented was a team-work, the result of months of preparation, and the result of a relationship between 'Rome' and 'São Francisco' that went far from weakening over time.It stands as a proof the directness and freshness of the chat via Skype with São Francisco, which was attended by both the Secretaria and the liderança.We watched the video simultaneously and after we connected again to exchange impressions and questions.

We lived very intense moments, you could tell from the words coming from São Paulo that they understood the depth and the potential of the gesture we elaborated together. That the simple fact of wearing T-shirts with red hearts while walking through the spaces of São Francisco and drinking medicina caseragathered in a circle in the area where they wish to see the hospital built, was a gesture that would have repercussions in history of São Francisco, is something the liderança had understood immediately. What has left me amazed and a ...

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The project “CARNEVALMA” by Laura Cionci is spreading the message of the importance of the carnival mask -a mask that unmasks and declares, culturally used in the Uruguayan and Argentinian carnival, but has European roots- in expressing the needs of a community.

Like in Metropoliz the inhabitants were expressing their desire for a space, through the murga mask, the same way the community of Sao Francisco is sending a message of union, expressing a specific need of the local people. The performance aims at representing what will be fully expressed the next day through the public walk: the claim for an hospital.

Project CARNEVALMA: Laura Cionci

Tecnical Support: Azzurra Muzzonigro

Photos by: Daniele Zacchi

The walk crossed the different parts that compose the territory of São Francisco, from the occupations to the Promorar, from the Mutirao to the new predios and became the occasion to create attention among the population around the claim for health in a creative, ludic manner.

It ended in an area that the population had pointed out as a possible lot where to build the hospital. In that place ‘The First Cure’ a rite of traditional medicine took place, everybody stood in a circle and drank a homemade herbal remedy in coconut shells prepared by local inhabitants together with LAC. The ritual symbolized the first cure and stood as a site of hope for future transformation.

photos by: Daniele Zacchi

The spatial device to spread the call for an hospital in Sao Francisco would be for all the participants to wear a shirt with a red heart symbolizing health. The LAC team therefore organized a workshop involving the community, particularly women and children, to creatively paint 250 shirts with red hearts to be distributed to the people participating to the Jornada.

photos by: Daniele Zacchi

We met with the leader of São Francisco to share their story and their struggles and pull out some issues that are important to them.

The discussion was organised by subjects in relation to its relevance  to the main question investigated: the strength of the community and the transformation of space.

We asked the community to seek their own issues that are central to their collective strengthening and how this translates into spatial transformations.

Everyone’s opinion is unanimous that the current most important and most urgent struggle is the need for a hospital around São Francisco.

photos by: Daniele Zacchi

Q: Who are you and what did you bring to the São Paulo Calling exhibition?

A: I am an architect and part of the Laboratorio Arti Civiche (LAC), (http://www.articiviche.net), an interdisciplinary group of researchers, within the University of Roma Tre, investigating territories by creatively interacting with its citizens towards a common and collective transformation of the built environment.

When Stefano Boeri invited us to participate to São Paulo Calling, we decided to present the work that LAC has carried out in Metropoliz, in particular in response to a point of the Manifesto that says: "informal settlements are fast, sometimes faster than the ability of the public administration to plan its development". Metropoliz is presented in the exhibition as an occupation of the Blocchi Precari Metropolitani (Metropolitan Precarious Blocks), within the framework of the struggle of the housing movement, born in the total vacuum of public policies on housing and in response to speculation in real estate and land use.

The central question that we wanted to highlight about Metropoliz is the idea that a space created to give immediate solution to the social housing issue, can became an opportunity to experiment, through the transformation ...

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On a beautiful and warm Sunday morning in January, during the first weekend of the Sao Paulo Calling-project, Anna Dieztsch from DBBA, Joseph Grima from Abitare and me as the SEHAB urban planning coordinator came together to discuss together with the population the urban plan for São Francisco. It promised to get interesting: The podium discussion was led by myself, an urban planner with European background; Anna, a Brazilian architect, living and working for many years in New York, and Joseph Grima, an anglo-italian editor.

In 2010, SEHAB decided to elaborate an urban plan that would finally turn the punctual interventions by the public authorities of the last 30 years into a neighborhood. The plan was finalized within a six month period by the SEHAB urban design team, together with the team of Habi Leste (architects, engineers and social workers), responsible for the coordination of the slum-upgrading program in the Eastern part of the city, and with the participation of the local population and planning offices such as SMDU, SP Urbanismo, SP Trans, SVMA, amongst others. SEHAB is currently working on the implementation of the first phase of construction, together with Davis Brody Bond Aedes (DBBA).

The event ...

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On that January morning I woke up, got into my car and once again drove to the Eastern part of the city.

It was a sunny Saturday morning and the traffic was calm. So, I decided to go back in time and make an evaluation of the last years of this journey.

Many images started to be processed forming part of a history, and even before this film could reach an end, I arrived in São Francisco.

Near Rio Claro field, I saw many food stalls, handcrafts and a big stage from which we would be listening to good Brazilian pop songs later on.

Everything was well organized. Even the children were in their new uniform waiting for the soccer game.

At Promorar Rio Claro, Posagre was ready for SP Calling opening ceremony.

A large group of people was looking forward to the lectures and statements in order to exchange knowledge and experience.

Some discussion panels had the participation of leaderships of the respective areas, experts and guests.

Suddenly a community leader used the opportunity to talk about the transformation San Francisco has being going through in the last 30 years. According ...

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There are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the relationship that the Municipal Housing Secretariat has been constructing with leaders of community organizations in São Francisco. The São Paulo Calling - Jornada da Habitação held on January 28th and 29th offered multiple evidence of an increasingly mature relationship between these agents, prevailing respect,tolerance, and joint search for solutions to matters of public and collective interest.

The first element to be highlighted as an expression of cooperation among them is the presence of a significant group of community leaders in all the preparatory activities and during the Jornada, ranging from activities that have entertaining and recreational nature to the discussions around the central themes of informal settlement upgrading in the city of São Paulo.

Guigui, Carminha, Luizão, Rose and Jerônimo, among others, have taken turns to represent their community at the time of the exhibition opening, in the discussions, and in the workshop with students from FAU Mackenzie, but also in the soccer competition and in the presentation of musical groups. Besides this, they asked Francesco Carreri for changes in the script of the minhada do ‘descobrimento’ (walk for the ‘discover’) of an important part of the neighborhood. ...

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"Hospital! Hospital! "And" Labyrinth! Labyrinth! "These are two slogans that guide us. They are words shouted joyfully by children leading a lenghty parade of people in the ascents and declines of Sao Francisco, dressed in white t-shirts decorated with hand-painted red hearts, under a relentless sun. The parade is formed by the comunidade of São Francisco, a "favela" of 35,000 people east of Sao Paulo that Sehab - Secreteria Municipal de Habitação -is transforming into a "town". This is the first Jornada de Habitação from the exhibition "São Paulo Calling", curated by Stefano Boeri, that in the coming months will bring more days like this in different areas of the city. The walk takes a different path than the one established and previously negotiated, even in areas where perhaps we should not have appeared without due notice. This causes a certain tension but then it flows smoothly through to the end. people looked first surprised, then they listened and finally found themselves agreeing: for the inhabitants it would be very important for a hospital to be built in São Francisco, given that today it takes almost an hour to reach the nearest hospital. Here, today, the claim for the house ...

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If we describe the way in which politics and architecture have experienced the birth, growth and explosion of the phenomenon of informal settlements (favelas, slums, bidonville, townships), if we reconstruct this history, we should speak of indifference and condemnation.
Since the end of the Second World War a lapse in memory, in attention, has created a paradoxical situation where, for at least 40 years, architecture and politics have argued to the historic city, the new city of trustees , the city of urban sprawl, but they were unable to face what was happening: anywhere a city based on the principle of survival was born, a city pushed to make maximum use of space, with minimal investments and costs in materials and technologies.
An unplanned city but made by a lot of rules. This informal city is now home for 33% of urban inhabitants of the globe.
A few months ago the population living in cities exceeded 50% of that living in the entire planet. This means that today we have 3 ½ billion urban people, a billion and half of whom live in informal settlements. For 2050, the urban population will be 75% of the entire population of the

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