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Heliópolis. Living Stories extends the research on the transformation and adaptation of existing buildings started with the Sao Paulo Calling Moscow research. Three built social housing projects within Heliópolis were examined through a series of interviews with their inhabitants with the intention of understanding the processes that are triggered when new social housing blocks are inserted into the tissue of the existing favela. The project is born from the conviction that the different processes, physical and social, positive and negative can be highlighted to make evident both the ways that people think of their (new) surroundings and also how they adapt to them and adapt them to their own and changing needs. While some of these processes of transformation refer to physical transformations and are easier to observe – the increase or adaptation of housing for extra space or different uses, the occupation of public space for personal use, the compartmentalization of public space including fences, etc. – others refer to complex and at times hidden social transformations that are either consequences of the spatial changes or have a subsequent spatial effect – for example, processes of segregation between inhabitants of the new blocks and those that stay in the ...

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