A6 Meeting: Public Presentation

Mercado Publico in Porto Alegre

The Mercado Publico in Porto Alegre is one of the best known in Brazil, particularly for its revitalization in the 1980s. It is still considered the best place to purchase fish in the country and is the anchor to one of the busiest public squares in the city. Around it, overflow produce sellers have set up shop near the bus stops and paved plazas. The market is my favorite place in Porto Alegre, reminiscent of the city's origins as a port and trade post while incorporating the gaucho lifestyle and modern downtown atmosphere. It is colorful, alive, and infinitely rich in photographic potential.



A block from the market is a building that has been abandoned since it was under construction. It is over 15 stories tall and in the heart of downtown but was never completed so it has been taken over by squatters. They have installed windows, power, television antennas, clotheslines, stores, and all the spontaneous parts of most favelas inside the building's skeleton. Here are a few pictures:

Images of Rio Grande

The city of Rio Grande is in the souteast tip of the state of Rio Grande do Sul. It is home to the second largest port in Brazil, behind Santos. It has just been given an enormous investment by the government to expand the superport. With the speculated tripling of the port, the housing market in the city has boomed, although in the very lowest class of dwellings. The city contrasts a rich tradition of colonial and eclectic Portuguese architecture with the gritty industrialized superport development. Here are images from the downtown area, the housing projects in the outskirts, and the summer beach town next door.

Images of Santana do Livramento and Rivera

Pictures from the border city of Santana do Livramento, Brazil, and Rivera, Uruguay. Essentially the city has developed along its border driven by a free trade zone. The dividing avenue is a site for informal shops and a variety of goods, generally aimed at the lower class. The streets off that avenue house several duty free shops aimed at the middle and upper classes.

Procession of Goods

In searching for a program, I have observed a gap in the ideal distribution and urbanization of a region. Despite plentiful land in most regions of Brazil and Latin America, the regional distribution infrastructure is overly dependent on truck traffic, due to a lack of railroads or alternative methods, and far too independent from the small population centers since they are destinations for goods and consumption instead of production centers supplying larger urban centers with goods. There should not be a radial procession of goods, but rather a gradient one.

Present Regional Distribution of Goods in Brazil

Proposed Distribution of Goods through Development of Rural Nuclei

Program Sketches

My search for a program is narrowing down, as might have been evident in my rant on the public market of Bage. The idea of a workers villa, or co-op, still is on the top of the priorities. The development of the village patterns around a raison d'etre is what I must develop more in depth.

The Tragic Story of the Public Market of Bagé

In searching for a program, I looked into the historic patterns of development in Latin America, particularly in the Pampas of Rio Grande do Sul.
The Laws of the Indies established a skeleton for town development in Spanish colonized areas from the 16th to 18th century. Its most notable point was a regular block grid grown from a central open space enclosed by a church, a governmental building, and a public market in most complete cases. The nuclear nature of the cities' souls in these regions are still very evident today and provide many cities with beautiful characteristic and vital spaces.
In the case of Bagé, I am personally affected by the history of these spaces. The city developed around two main public squares - the colonial square flanked by the onion-domed cathedral, and the newer square originally flanked by the public market built in 1862 (as pictured below). My grandfather moved from Brummana, Lebanon, to Bagé in 1935 and opened a textile shop in one of the doors of the public market. Eventually he moved his store to the north side of the square out of the market. In 1953, the city, under Mayor Carlos Kluwe, decided to demolish the market citing the need for the city to grow and the lack of funds for the municipal government. In the place of the market were built a hotel and an office building, while a third building was never fully finished, rebar and all still exposed. The last vestige of the market is the street corner clock, pitifully dominated by a 1960s hotel building.

Mercado Publico de Bagé, circa 1948








Site of the Mercado Publico, 2007