PLACE

São Paulo

PROJECT YEAR

2016 | 2018

PROJECT AREA

12.195 m²

To design, in an area of approximately 10,000 square meters, an environment to be used by 1.5 million pedestrians who pass daily through the Avenida Paulista region, São Paulo’s postcard, inviting them to enjoy culture, art, gastronomy, coexistence, and leisure. This was the drive for Levisky Arquitetos in the development of the “Diversity Boulevard” project.

The Urban Renewal proposal includes a street design that levels the ground floor of the buildings around the new Boulevard, located between Avenida Paulista, Avenida Rio Claro, parts of São Carlos do Pinhal street and Itapeva street, in addition to the underground passage for vehicles, expanding the public space for pedestrian circulation, ensuring accessibility and universal design.

Integrated with the Cidade Matarazzo complex, it is an effective model of the connection between public, semi-public, and private spaces, ensuring enjoyment, accessibility, cultural, social, and economic integration.

The requalification of the urban space provides solutions for urban infrastructures such as drainage pavers, urban drainage reusing rainwater, public lighting, landscaping, distribution of water and energy consumption, and telecommunications. Besides offering a space to pedestrians, after renewing the floor completely, create new spaces for leisure, socializing, entertainment and art, new urban furniture, more afforestation with native trees and kiosks dedicated to organic markets.

The work developed also includes strategic consultancy and coordination of licensing processes for Cidade Matarazzo Complex and Urban Intervention in the road system, including interfaces with relevant public agencies, concessionaires, and specialized consultants.

PLACE

São Paulo

PROJECT YEAR

2011 | 2012

CONSTRUCTION YEAR

2018

LAND AREA

7.900 m²

BUILDING AREA

26.000 m²

Senac’s largest unit in São Paulo state was designed to be a building that can be adapted to its needs as fast as their training courses can adapt to the rapid changes in the labor market. On the other hand, it is to become cultural equipment to the most populous neighborhood of São Paulo city, an area that suffers from the lack of this type of space and has low socioeconomic development.

To meet these demands, the office created a flexible building, easy to maintain, and with great mobility thanks to the work carried out with the pedagogical team, aligning the architecture with Senac’s educational project. Based on this alignment of intentions, the project envisaged a series of specific laboratories and conventional classrooms. The integration made by corridors and lounges, which adapt and assume many functions, stimulate the pedagogical and educational character by promoting encounters and exchanges.

The transparency of the three blocks not only brings natural light to the interior but is also an invitation to come in for people outside. The invitation is also made by the open ground floor of the main building, located on an important avenue in the neighborhood. Likewise, the library is open to the general public, and a public square connects the three buildings.

To help to organize teaching activities with playful aesthetics, the office worked intensively with colors. The palette appears both on the giant mobile, hanging from a 25-meter tall wall in the main building, creating a myriad of colors and volumes, as well as in the painting of areas intended to host different training programs. This grouping makes employees’ work easier and students can move from one room to the other easily, contributing to the flexibility and adaptation of spaces.

By offering a major sensorial experience, mixing lights, colors, volumes, and spaces for interaction, the buildings contribute to efficient learning, connected to current needs. Besides, it invites the local community to use the space, people eager for opportunities for personal development and access to culture.

CityScape Awards 2018 • Category: Community, Culture and Tourism Project • Finalist Project

Photos: Ana Mello and Pedro Mascaro

PLACE

Bebedouro – SP

PROJECT YEAR

2015

CONSTRUCTION YEAR

2018 (under construction)

LAND AREA

1.850 m²

PROJECT AREA

6.000 m²

An architectural project well aligned with the institution’s pedagogical proposal is capable of supporting the transformation of teaching and learning. For this reason, Levisky Arquitetos had its winning bid in the tender for the new Senac unit in the city of Bebedouro, in São Paulo countryside.

The project establishes a great learning environment that goes beyond the limits of the classroom. Through modular spaces that adapt to different pedagogical needs, enables multidisciplinary activities, follows the didactic process of the institution, and creates a stimulating educational experience inside and outside the conventional rooms.

By arousing curiosity and stimulating creativity, the architectural solution unites functionality and design, invites people to discover the educational and cultural complex and to experience the internal and external environments.

The spaces bring a playful aesthetic that stimulates creativity through multimedia lounges; areas for reading, meeting and coffee, contemplation and socializing outdoors; library and study niches, in addition to ensuring multidisciplinary and simultaneous activities, with flexibility, accessibility and adaptability according to the intended use.

PLACE

São Paulo

PROJECT YEAR

2017 | 2018

PROJECT AREA

26.900 m²

São Paulo’s manufacturing old days, a fundamental part of the identity of the largest Brazilian city continues to be told in several buildings from the early 20th century was the background of the country’s industrialization. Every day we see properties like these, listed as historical heritage, in a situation of abandonment and economic impracticability of recovery and maintenance.

Aiming at promoting the debate about valuing heritage inside the protection of the historical heritage agencies, associating restoration with the creation of new uses, Levisky Arquitetos developed a feasibility study to transform the old Weaving Companies known as Indústrias Reunidas Fábrica Matarazzo, built in the 1930s, into a new educational institution.

The proposal considers the partial preservation of the protected area, the restoration of the building, and the expansion of the area, to receive the teaching materials and the education program. The recovery of its walls and structures, witnesses of time, the expansion of the restoration scope, and the intended renewal, caused a stream of memories seen in all the historical, landscape, technical and technological aspects.

The new building is a light and transparent volume, a “prism made of glass”, which plays a key role in connecting the buildings in the complex, creating an internal courtyard. In addition to enabling better use of the building, contemporary activities are hosted now, bringing valuation and sustainability to this protected landmark, which is deemed as a School-Museum.

PLACE

São Paulo

PROJECT YEAR

2010

CONSTRUCTION YEAR

2011

LAND AREA

2.460.000 m²

In an archeological site of 2.4 million square meters formed by a meteor crater, the occupation of irregular dwellings in an area of environmental preservation led to a demand for urban requalification. Thus, the Secretariat of Green and Environment of São Paulo needed a solution that would, on one hand, address issues of land regularization, basic sanitation, and urban infrastructure, and on the other hand, valorize environmental heritage.

Based on conversations with the local community about intentions and needs, the project foresaw the creation of public spaces such as squares, four linear parks, sidewalks, two lookouts, open areas with water treatment, channeling the existing watercourse and green areas recovery. From the lookouts, it is possible to view the geological depression of the crater, with 3.5 km in diameter.

Thus, the idea of local urban and economic development was thought by the residents themselves, considering tourism and new opportunities for trade. In this way, the proximity of Environmental Protected Area (APA, in Portuguese) Capivari-Monos raised the possibility of generating income from ecological tourism, simultaneously addressing social and environmental issues – becoming a park-museum.

PLACE

São Paulo

PROJECT YEAR

2006 | 2007

COMPLETION

2008

LAND AREA

13.648 m²

BUILDING AREA

2.650 m²

To rehabilitate an abandoned and contaminated area next to its building, Abril Publishing house sought the office to be the mediator with the city of São Paulo, owner of the land, and to propose an opening project to the public. The Publisher house wanted to create an environment to offer graphic arts courses, in connection with its industry.

Based on this proposal, Levisky Arquitetos used its expertise and designed a public-private partnership model, generating a cooperation term for the rehabilitation of that area, in which the city government would give up the use of space and the company would take care of the execution of the project and the maintenance of activities in the square.

Given the high impact of soil decontamination, the office designed a large suspended wooden deck, with spaces for walking and permanence for visitors to circulate and engage in activities. The concept of Sustainability Open Museum was created to explain the solutions given to the problems in the area, and a permanent exhibition inside the building of an old incinerator, to teach how space was renewed.

The architectural language adopted in the renovation of the building opted for the aesthetics of brutality so that the place is part now of the recovery history. Hanging Gardens were also installed, with rainwater collection and gardening systems, in addition to landscaping with phytotherapeutic plants and biofuels.

In a context in which sustainability discussion was new, the work did not only enabled a bridge between public and private authorities in this direction, but also brought practical responses to a degraded urban environment. These solutions, in turn, brought permanent didactic and cultural gains for the population of the city as a whole.

 Co-authorship Anna Julia Martins Dietzsch

Photos: Nelson Kon, Nathalie Artaxo and Pedro Mascaro