Neimeyerland

 Welcome to Brasilia, a constructed Utopia, a "Utopia that was obviously doomed." (Madaleno, 278) 

This photo of Brasilia's inaguration portrays Neimeyer's grand vision for the city.  As a student described it, being in Brasilia is like living in Neimeyer's Sim City.  

The most prominent monument in all of Brasilia, the National Congress Building.  We are told that people work there, but saw no sign of it...

Finally a photo from Brasilia with people in it!

Icons weren't limited to buildings.  

The National Museum (guess the architect!) brought out the inner Warrior in everyone.  

Neimeyer conceptualized the plan of Brasilia as a plane (or bird, or butterfly...).  This initial sketch was displayed in the National Museum.  

Some of us took a trip out to the University.  A surprise rain storm kept us from returning to our hotel, but created beautiful curtain of mist under the walkway.  

A few students got an exclusive peek at the new World Cup staduim cup being built.  The rendering was very Brasilia, with a population of clones for fans.  

Students always have Bozeman in mind.  GO MSU!!!

11.Lima

Class Day 1

Finally doing away with Niemeyer's never never land (Brasilia), we flew into Lima, Peru. With a population between 8 and 9 million, we have now visited 5 of the 6 most populated cities in South America. An architect in town told us that Lima has the longest wave in the world. At first this seemed like just another we have the best, biggest, only true, ect., in South America/the world comment that we seem to hear often, but this one may just be true. The city lines coastal beaches (many of them rocky or polluted from on-going construction) and transitions between the two with green spaces.

Class day 1 in Lima began with taxiing to an active archeological dig. The pyramid (classmates...please feel welcome to add pictures) being painstakingly uncovered was in the heart of the city and claimed a city block.

Later we visited two museums chronicling the ancient cultures and societies of Peru. There is a lot of history here so I'll spare you the details. There are a couple of important things to think about though. We've all heard of the Inca's. They forcefully gained control over the largest empire in pre-Columbian America and, of course, built Macchu Pichu (which we are going to...tomorrow!). The empire achieved much, however, the reign of the Inca's only lasted a little under 100 years from 1438-1533. After that they were wiped out by disease and Spanish conquistadors.  

This storeroom contained at least dozens of these clay pots (referred to as spouts) resembling various animals, people, spirits, and...pots.

Possibly one of Jeremy's South American ancestors.

I'll explain later.

Yay! More Favellas

 Here, we looked at the urban plan to remove some of the favella so that the city can install infrastructure for the people in the favella.

 Here we can see that this favella was different than the ones we visited in Rio de Janiero. They were much more developed and seemed to be a lot more developed. They were less like a favella and more like a poor part of the city.

 A slaughter house that had chickens. It didn't smell very good either.

 The architect told us that the removal of the families in the favellas was generally accepted. This graffiti was a protest to the removals. Loosely translated it mean "what about those of us here god damn it."

Here are some of the socialized housing that the removed families are forced to live in. There are fairly large humanitarian and political debates about how to properly handle the situation of the favellas. We got into a few discussions ourselves about the proper way to handle the situation.

Group 1 News Stand Project

The class split into two groups to design a parametric news stand, to be located near the central metro station and Copacabana Beach. Our group defined news as the opportunity for self- empowerment through knowledge. The final presentations took place in StudioX.  

Kyle and Dan's hand drawings depicting the elevation, plan and section of the news stand.

Kelsey and Jeremy took on the task of conceptual diagraming.

Heidi with her game face on, ready to battle the harsh critics!!

The class was honored to have a Columbia's Studio X professor involved in our presentations/ critics.  

[inFO]RMal - Group 1 Newsstand

Map of interests and popular topics city-wide

Conceptual animation showing how interests in media topics may change over time (click image to view animation)

Our first idea of how the newsstands could link together and glow different colors based on where they are on the map

 Our final design of the newsstands is a portable wall with a circular canopy and bench for seating and discussion on one side. The other side has a large touchscreen where several people can view digital media which will update the map. As the map is updated, the stand will also change color. For example, if a newsstand is located near a sports bar on game day and the people at the bar use the stand to read sports articles, then the newsstand will slowly start glowing green because the color for sports topics is green.

The stands may be moved to events such as the Lapa Street Festival where the stands may direct foot traffic and create alcoves with seating

Newsstands at the beach will provide shade and mark main entrances to the beach

Stands at stadiums and sports bars may link together to create large TV screens for watching the game

Individual stands may sit next to existing newsstands that are scattered throughout the cities. This will provide the digital news in addition to physical copies

Stands placed in the favellas would keep near-by residents connected to the rest of the city and world-wide events

StudioMK27

 On our way to StudioMK27 we made a quick stop at a book store.  We were there when the store opened and they turned the revolving book shelves to create the entrance.

 We gather in StudioMK27's meeting room, where later Marcio Kogan will show us pictures and projects from his life as an architect and film director.

The firm has 18 architects that are currently working on 60 projects of various scales.  They outsource people to do some tasks such as renderings and construction documents.  Each project  starts with numerous hand sketches and is well developed before they take it into autocad.

Mi Casa, a furniture store designed by StudioMK27.

concrete exterior and exposed cladding

 We continued on to a home designed by the firm...

 The firm designed their own profile and had it extruded specifically for 

the wood screens that line the exterior of the house.

We concluded the day on the rooftop of one of the tallest buildings in 

Sau Paulo while enjoying coffee and juice from this lounge that overlooked the city.