Faced with the new territorial and qualitative changes in São Paulo industry, the fates of certain central areas of the city require urgent study on the part of the public authorities. The common issues concern the extension and modernization of the rail network.
The Mooca and Ipiranga sector, cut by the Estado avenue, encompasses a fabric that is heavily occupied by old industrial warehouses, now converted into depots, of purely logistic use. These areas, added to the vast vacant lots, provide the opportunity for a new occupation that can bring the population closer to the infrastructural networks intalled there. At the same time, these borought are home to various strata of previous city development that warrant preservation. The project’s approach is that of continuity among the different fluxes of the existing city, proposing an accumulation of various times in the same space. In this sense, it is configured as a counterweight to the transformation now underway, determined by the real estate market alone, which tends to segregate and erase these vestiges.
The presence of the conditioning factor blends with a cityscape representative of the urban formation typical of São Paulo. The floodplains of the Tamanduateí and Ipiranga rivers, shaped by the two embankment walls, were the site of the region’s first industries. The new occupation of the area ought to follow directives that preserve this geographical reading.
The proposed intervention is based upon the project for a linear park running along the railway track, the construction of a new cityscape in which water will play a structuring role, the preservation of the industrial heritage that pervades the borough’s collective memory and increased population density.
The scope of the project falls between the Mooca and Ipiranga rail stations, and the design is largely determined by the infrastructure: the parcelling of large land tracts and the laying of streets and roads in accordance with the existing grid; public leisure spaces; a sports track and local and regional drainage; connections between the train and subway stations; transpositions of the railroad and river; and social housing.