Re-urbanization of Água Branca, São Paulo, SP, 2004. Sao Paulo will have to be consistent in managing its natural resources in a sustain- able and rational manner. In this context, the effective urban reconfiguration of an area as large the proposed new borough in Água Branca can only be achieved through the infrastructural planning of the region. How- ever, an intervention on this scale essentially means defining the design of that urban in- frastructure, giving legible form to a strategic action on behalf of the public authorities. The association between transport and water- related issues in Sao Paulo surfaces here as a project theme, broached through a conse- quent critical deportment. New train stations on existing lines are proposed to fulfill a strategic role as points of mediation between scales, and to serve as links between the metropolitan transport non-polluting railway system and the locali- ties. In our project, these train stations are organized as agglomeration points for public facilities, special services and social housing. Another matter is the definition of public spaces in this project: recreational and gath- ering spaces, which seek proximity with the circulation system and with the watercourses, arise out of precisely this conviction. The re- sulting water square holds both the system of the borough’s public spaces and the technical system for the drainage, treatment and re-use of water resources. Fruit of a wellspring of non-contaminated groundwater, it will serve as a landmark and spatial reference on the cityscape of the borough, laying water’s claim to the floodplain, at once technical and sym- bolic, rigorous and crystalline. D
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