Editorial | Designing coexistence

Abstract

Before presenting the fourth edition of V!RUS journal, we want to thank our readers for their welcome to the journal's issue number 03 of June 2010 on the theme "System". It was read so far in 220 cities in 41 countries, according to the map below generated by our counter, which constitutes for us a great honor and an enormous stimulus.

Source: Google Analytics

The theme of V!RUS 04, Designing coexistence, is based on the perception that, nowadays and further and further, the data of the problem presented to all those who are called upon to intervene in the cities, either planners, politicians, architects, designers, artists, social animators or scholars from various fields, are changing. It is no longer only about designing and producing physical spaces that eventually will constitute places of living or expulsion, in various scales, for populations that we think we know by heart. Above all, it is about understanding that the essence of society is altered through various phenomena such as migration, access to information, enhancement of local cultures, respect and encouragement for minorities, among many others, and that as the city is formed by these people, designing the city means designing conditions for their differences to coexist. And with dignity and shine!

This subject has been occupying a central place in discussions at Nomads.usp since some time ago, allowing the Center to remark new connections between its research works. V!RUS 04 is a search for interlocutors that Nomads.usp extends beyond its walls, wanting to listen to them in a debate that will hopefully continue to expand. Therefore, we have opened the floor to any external researcher who was interested in discussing with us, but we also invited some researchers and social actors to express their views on the subject. The result is in the pages that we offer here to reading and delight with its twenty-five texts, thirteen videos, three audios, two architectural projects and dozens of photos.

This issue counts with 47 external collaborators out of Nomads.usp, considering authors of both submitted and invited texts. They are from 8 different countries – Germany, Spain, England, Mozambique, Palestine, Portugal, Sweden and Brazil – and transit through various knowedge areas as performing arts, cultural animation, social sciences, design, computer science, education, communication, philosophy, psychology, geography, cultural studies, visual arts, history, urban planning and architecture.

We organized this issue emphasizing many ways of dealing with the theme Designing Coexistence. In the section Interview, the cultural actors and animators Adriano Mauriz and Paulo Carvalho, from Instituto Pombas Urbanas, report e analyze this coexistence in their day-to-day interaction with communities at the peripheral urban area of Cidade Tiradentes, Sao Paulo, and also with politicians and projects sponsors.

Two main invited authors offer thoughtful reflections on the subject: the British cultural scientist Mica Nava addresses coexistence between foreign and local people in the city of London, highlighting the role of communities created from the strengthening of structures of feeling among people. Commonly understood as loci of coexistence, the online social networks are analyzed in the text of the social scientist Sergio Amadeu da Silveira, which compares the networks' private character with the open but still controlling structure of the cyberspace.

In the Submitted Papers, academic researchers address the theme by ranking and discussing experiences and postures that created conditions for dealing with differences in several parts of Brazil and the world. Some of them present studies and analysis, like Adriana Fortes, who investigates the interaction between skaters and non-skaters in public squares in central Barcelona. Having Rio de Janeiro as a field for study, Emika Takaki and Glauci Coelho put multi-territoriality, culture and social networks in relation by observing how hip hop’s communities organize in the city. Finally, Nuno Duarte Martins and Heitor Alvelos explore people’s participation in the use of online systems as an aid to pediatric cancer treatment in Portugal.

Also in the Submitted papers, some authors relate experiences in different urban contexts, aiming at merging profiles and enlarging visions of the world. Tom Bieling, Gesche Jooster and Alexander Müller report Street Lab’s experience with the population in Berlin. In Belo Horizonte, Brazil, an experiment through using a blog targeted to foster neighbors' intervention in an abandoned stretch of street, according to the Lígia Milagres, Silke Kapp and Ana Paula Baltazar report and analysis. The coexistence around the work in waste recycling sheds in Porto Alegre, Brazil, is the object of study for Fernando Fuão, Bruno de Mello, Camilla Bernadellli and Antônio Pedro Figueiredo. And the poetic and interdisciplinary experience of the multimediatic Pterodata project is presented by João Diniz and Gabriela Mello Vianna.

Finally, two submitted papers propose actions to stimulate coexistence in the midst of cultural diversity. In the urban scale, Vinícius de Moraes Netto, Roberto Paschoalino and Maira Pinheiro suggest strategies for planning coexistence from understanding people’s physical displacement, which would allow the recognition of matching patterns and communication possibilities. In the scale of a country, Hildizina Norberto Dias indicates principles for reviewing aspects of Mozambique’s education system, facing the country’s cultural diversity.

The Project section presents submitted papers that focus on architecture and urbanism proposals. Anne Marie Sumner exposes her ideas for deploying habitation on Sao Paulo city's former sand harbors areas, in a region of water bodies at the south of the city. Denise Morado Nascimento, Simone Tostes, André Soares, Hernán Rieira, Janaína Pinheiro and Renata Nogueira design public spaces for coexistence, precisely placed in central Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

In the Carpet section, ten scholars from various fields were invited to freely aggregate brief ideas to the theme Designing Coexistence, either in short academic text format or testemonials, images and videos. Some papers present a reflection on fundamental questions. Architect Ruth Verde Zein suggests the need of overcoming some difficulties for diverse thoughts to coexist within architecture education before architects might be propositivel on the design of coexistence. The architect’s role in social movements for housing construction through collective mobilizations is also examined by architect João Marcos de Almeida Lopes, in actions in which coexistence between differences aims at producing some common goods.

Still in the Carpet section, and observing cities, Spanish architect Carlos Tápia explores the idea of counterspace proposed by the Outarquías group, as a means of reflection on conditions for coexistence in cities. Urbanist Rodrigo Firmino sees the use of telematics networks as a possible vector of coexistence among differences, implying on one hand, in a significant enlargement of urban life through TIC and, on the other hand, on the valuation of coexistence among differences as a focal point of actions in urban space. The architect Eulália Portela Negrelos highlights the risk of the area’s gentrification and homogenization in the Sao Paulo eastern side from the deployment of large public projects. The researcher Benjamin Häger deals with similar problematic by contextualizing the Frappant’s occupation experience, in Hamburg, Germany, by a group of artists whose objective was to discuss bottom-up alternatives to the gentrifying effects of current official neo-liberal strategies for city’s restructuration.

Other texts in the Carpet section propose actions or strategies aiming at promoting the coexistence between differences. The German sociologist Volker Grassmuck comments dimensions of the coexistence concept and two initiatives for designing coexistence: one, in the concrete space of Dutch cities, and the other one, in the peer-to-peer files sharing on Internet. The Swedish designer Otto Von Busch sees an important role of objects’ design to stimulate solidary postures among people, requalifying acquaintanceship in cities.

Lastly, other two papers in the Carpet section analyze their authors’ actions to approximate differences in two completely distinct situations. The Palestine architects Yara Sharif and Nasser Golzari, together with British architect Murray Fraser, created PART, the Palestine Regeneration Team, aiming at acting with Palestinian and Israeli populations, victims of the conflict between their countries. And the German architect Heiner Lippe presents the event Ringlokschuppenost that brings together artists and railway workers in a Hannover’s train station abandoned building, for three days of raprochements among them and the architecture of the place.

The Review section brings the pleasurable and stimulating exam by social scientist Marco Antônio de Almeida of some movies whose central theme is the coexistence and the dealing with diversity, in seven different stories.

We hope that reading this rich material, produced by many hands, bring us wider visions over the subject and stimulate us to be equally propositional in terms of actions able to induce coexistence.