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 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