TEaching

BUILDING BRAZIL!
Proactive Urban Renewal of Informal Settlements

In Building Brazil!, the Master of Advanced Studies in Urban Design program at the ETH Zürich turns its
attention to the settlements blanketing the hills of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

As cities strain under a growing population and demand for resources, Brazil will provide a test case
for how politicians, architects and urban planners can work together with local stakeholders to improve living conditions
in informal settlements without upsetting their social structures. Against the backdrop of recent and exemplary
developments in Brazilian public policy and slum-upgrading practices, Building Brazil! puts forth a proactive approach
to the favela that opens up the existing urban fabric to architectural and urban interventions.

Shifting between micro and macro levels of analysis, Building Brazil! investigates the way forward for the favelas
of Jardim Colombo, Heliópolis, Cidade Ipava and Rio das Pedras. Practical design solutions for informal, risk-prone
areas are situated within overarching urban strategies; and context-specific projects are complemented by
editorials on the spatial, social and financial dynamics of the informal Brazilian city.

At once specific and general, particular and allegorical, Building Brazil! reflects on the problems
and prospects of a rapidly urbanizing world.

Building Brazil!
Proactive Urban Renewal of Informal Settlements
Ruby Press, Forthcoming 2011
English, 464 pages, 20 x 27 cm, paperback
ISBN 978-3-9813436-4-9

COURSE POSTERS
The Science of Science (Lernen lernen durch Fragen fragen)
Universität der Künste Berlin

The The Science of Science – Lernen lernen durch Fragen fragen was thought by Schubert, Schütz and
Streich at the University of the Arts Berlin during 2010 and 2011. On a didactic level the class tried to reduce the
inhibition threshold of the students in the pursuit of getting their own questions answered. On a content level it investigated
ways of gaining knowledge on fields that are not considered part of the architecture discipline as such but nevertheless
are instrumental from the view point of Something Fantastic: The belief that architecture is affected by everything
and vice versa does affect everything is the basis of their claim that working as architects today involves a
general interest and involvement in the world.

Their current course at the MAS UD at ETH Zürich entitled "Technology Exchange" builds
upon the same principals and tries to produce, invent or transfer smart, touching, simple technologies
to informal settlements in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.