PLACE

São Paulo

PROJECT YEAR

2015

LAND AREA

11.250 m²

PROJECT AREA

177.740 m²

Inside an area of Guarulhos City, a very industrial town, Via Flora neighborhood started to be occupied by irregular and disordered dwellings amidst the industrial remains.

The multinational company Umicore is installed there and wanted Levisky Arquitetos to structure a public-private partnership, to run a Feasibility Study for Via Flora Park, mediating the efforts from the company and the city hall to renew the region.

In an area of 11,250 square meters, the project aims at mitigating environmental impacts and offering public equipment with spaces for sports, leisure, culture, and coexistence – based on universal design guidelines and respecting the natural topography of this terrain. The tree restoration in partnership and landscape curation with the Secretariat of Green and Environment brings species dedicated to phytoremediation. To guarantee the visual permeability and safety of users, translucent closures were proposed at the park’s boundary with the Fernão Dias Highway.

The park spaces are organized in floors following the levels of the land and include Praça das Águas square and a playground, with educational, recreational and playful character, and a closed water reuse system. Near that we proposed sports courts and a skatepark, an environment with outdoor fitness equipment and a second, wider, contemplative, and social square, with space for events and a side grandstand connecting to the lower level. The project also proposes a hiking trail, playground, community exhibition space, and a new walkway that connects the neighborhoods cut by the Fernão Dias Highway.

PLACE

São Paulo

PROJECT YEAR

2013 | 2016

GARDEN PROJECTED AREA

19.200 m²

BUILDING AREA

1.500 m²

PARK AREA

13.540 m²

Senac Águas de São Pedro maintains a school hotel in São Paulo countryside, a hydro-mineral resort. Reorganizing their leisure areas is an attempt to attract a younger audience. Assuming that challenge, the office designed a ground floor building inside the hotel’s woods, which, with its staircases and ramps, connects new areas to the old ones.

The integration of spaces is made by wooden decks, which also serve for entertaining and interactive activities with guests. Thinking about the purpose of this building, the environments were designed to be modular and flexible according to activity type and age group, which can be reduced, expanded, or even integrated into the external area with the use of glass partitions.

The idea of a water park arose from the design, as a way to enhance and rescue the water element, so important for the history of the hotel and the city. With aquatic and recreational equipment divided by age group and rubberized sand-colored floor, the environment was inspired by a small beach.

Thus, at the same time that it proposes contemporary solutions, the building adapts to the environment where it is inserted and to the established constructions. This valued its surroundings and respected the important tradition of the city, developed around the hotel, and the discovery of the thermal waters.

In addition to the Water Park, the office designed a zen garden around the hotel, taking advantage of a golf course of more than 19 thousand square meters that has no use now. The environment offers guests areas to stay, stroll and rest, with great vegetation, two ornamental lakes, lawns, wooden decks, and stone paths.

Photos: Ana Mello (Park and Recreation and Leisure Center) and Archive (Zen Garden)

PLACE

São Paulo

PROJECT YEAR

2016 | 2017

INTERVENTION AREA

586.630 m²

A strategic opportunity to create, through urban renewal, a growth-inducing pole with great potential to bring back vitality and diversify the use of one of the most upscale neighborhoods in the largest Brazilian city, shaping the Masterplan proposal for Urban Renewal and Heritage Preservation for São Paulo Jockey Club.

Based on the Urban Intervention Project (PIU, in Portuguese), the opportunity to qualify the potential of space with a size of 536 thousand square meters, currently used for private events underpins a project that mix public interest interventions with solutions and opportunities for economic sustainability and feasibility as well as to preserve the financial situation of the club.

To diversify and requalify the use of the venue, we propose the construction of new buildings for residential, institutional, cultural, corporate, services, and commercial purposes. Promoting new options for leisure, healthy activities, well-being, social life, culture, entertainment, housing, work, tourism, and gastronomy.

In addition to the restoration and preservation of this heritage-listed site and the creation of a large private park for public use, this project transforms the Jockey Club into a genuine center of urban development.

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