Images of the CEASA

I took far far too long to decide to visit this place. Two weeks into my trip and documenting too many things I will never use, I found my pot of gold. The CEASA-RS is the "Central de Abastecimento do Rio Grande do Sul", an agricultural supply center. Farmers and sellers from the entire state drive to this complex between Porto Alegre and CANOAS to sell their produce at wholesale quantities. Local markets and restaurants all buy their supplies here directly from the planters. The complex within its 6 working hours circulates over 40,000 people every day. There were plans to double the complex but the land needed has yet to be purchased. The chaotic scene is the best proof of the success of the CEASA. It is the only major center in the state, although there are two micro-CEASAs in Pelotas and Caxias do Sul. Centers like these in smaller scales could maximize the distribution capabilities of the producers in the state, especially in places lacking strong trade organization like in the Pampas.



In the administrative building I also found old pictures of what the distribution centers looked like before the CEASA and a few pictures from the CEASA's construction.

Images of Aceguá

Aceguá is the city I intend on using as my project site. It has lived off its position on the Brazilian-Uruguay border and has recently been granted a free trade zone. I was surprised to find that the city had not changed much since the first time I passed through three years ago. I was also surprised to find an elaborate, albeit meager, contraband operation dealing Brazilian produce into Uruguay. My cameras called attention to the popcorn vendor, who happened to be a look-out, and he eventually interrogated me about my presence there. I played the dumb tourist, but still left rather fast with all my incriminating photage.

On the way back to Bagé, we passed through a German colony between the two cities called Colonia Nova. It was established as a cooperative in the 1950s by German immigrants producing dairy goods. I will post more information on the co-op later.

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.

Images of Bagé

A slideshow of my explorations in Bagé on Christmas day. It is the city in the Pampas that I am most familiar with and a short(ish) distance from the border sites I am researching.

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

Patterns of the Pampas

In looking through aerials of the Pampas and examining how the cities meet the landscape meet agriculture, I began to find some mesmerizing patterns of land use. Here are a few frames at the same scales:



And here is a frame of the area that I am interest in working in. The land is far less touched, but also far less dynamic.



Here are four different situations, at equal scales, of the city edge meeting the rural landscape

Bamboo!

I met with local DC architect Meghan Walsh, AIA, last Saturday after blindly contacting her when I saw her name in the Feminist Practices exhibit at the Kibel Gallery at school. Her board displayed work she has done with her organization Axis Mundi in Brazil. In the short meeting she gave me great recommendations about where to look for tectonic approaches to resolving my project.

Bamboo and eucaliptus are two materials with plenty of promise and here are some big names in the field of bamboo and alternative materials construction:

Johan Van Lengen - Tibarose
http://tibarose.com

Simon Velez and DeBoer Architects - Bamboo Thoughts
http://deboerarchitects.com/BambooThoughts.html

Martin Coto Gomez
http://www.bambuesworks.com/index.htm

New Bamboo By Marcelo Villegas, Benjamín Villegas Jiménez, Ximena Londoño, Jimmy Weiskopf, Villegas Asociados
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Images from New Bamboo