On a winding, hilly street in São Paulo, workers are putting the final touches on the last of the 276 houses being painted to create a kaleidoscope of colors that re-flect the dynamism of Brazilian culture. This isn’t occurring in one of the city’s swankiest neighborhoods, but rather in an area on the poor, hardscrabble periphery of Brazil’s bustling financial and industrial center.
Urban design is often viewed as only a concern of the chattering classes, but lately it has become the interest of community leaders in Heliopolis—the largest of 400 favelas (or shantytowns) in São Paulo and the second largest in South America. To combat the favela’s typically gray, depressing mishmash of cement and brick, the group asked São Paulo–based architect Ruy Ohtake to create an urban-design project that would unify and beautify what can be a staggeringly bleak place.
“Ohtake told a newspaper that Heliopolis was the ugliest part of the city, so we went to him and asked him to figure out how to make it beautiful,” explains Geronino Barbosa, who is a director at the Heliopolis community group UNAS. Ohtake, who has a longstanding interest in reclaiming the colorful streetscapes of Brazil’s colonial past, was so taken by the opportunity to literally paint his hometown red (and yellow and purple and green) that he donated his time. “The project was a great challenge from the very beginning,” Ohtake recalls. “But I believe in beauty as a social function, so what better way to exercise that belief?”
The Ohtake painting project is taking place in one of the favela’s 14 subdistricts, where some 6,000 people live. The favela is as diverse as it is big, with hugely varying degrees of income and urbanization among its 120,000 residents packed into about one-half square mile. Set-tlers first invaded the vacant land (sandwiched between a highway and an avenue) that became Heliopolis in the 1970s. Crime is common, but many families live quite well. Precarious shacks fill the newer areas, while older sections—like the one where Ohtake is painting—have paved streets, sewage, schools, phone lines, bakeries, meat shops, and restaurants.
To get the project started and to actively involve all of the members of the neighborhood, Ohtake engaged the homeowners in the development of the color scheme for each house. Residents were given a choice of six vibrant colors, ranging from bright yellows to deep purples, while Ohtake chose the hues for window and doorway trims. The architect then put his design-world renown to use, convincing the Suvinil paint company to donate the paint. Community members are doing the actual paint- ing, instilling a remarkable amount of pride in the project and bringing back a bit of Brazil’s colorful past.
The early results are startling. Viewed from the top of the street, the houses create a river of color in an otherwise dreary landscape of unfinished brick homes wedged between forlorn streets and factories. While often unfinished, with rough textures, many houses in the favelas share fragments of modern design: spare, simple boxes and a minimalist aesthetic of utilitarian rawness. But when seen together, at street level, they resemble the organic forms of Italian hill towns, with elements that allow a pedestrian to experience surprises like narrow, paved footpaths, winding streets, and tiny staircases that lead to dangling terraces, hidden plazas, and little bars.
Ohtake’s undertaking in Heliopolis may provide a new model for favelas that have urbanized and are now preparing for the next stage of development. But it also has larger implications, as it has reinforced the importance of the urban ideal of the neighborhood’s main street (in this case, Rua da Mina) also serving as a communal living room for residents.
“Our dream is to expand this project to the entire favela,” says Barbosa, who grew up in Heliopolis but lives outside of the painted zone. “People love their painted houses. One of our participants told me that her house has been transformed into a sort of Carnaval parade,” he continues, referring to Brazil’s exuberant, world-famous pre-Lenten bash.
While the favela’s name might appear cruelly ironic (Heliopolis, an ancient Egyptian city, was once the center for worship of the sun god Ra and for the early study of philosophy and astronomy, and an important reference for urban design), Ohtake’s paints are brightening the outlook. Heliopolis, for now, isn’t a center of learning, but it could become an important reference for urban design in poor neighborhoods—not to mention a good place to make a life.
“Who doesn’t want to live in a beautiful house?” asks Joao Miranda, the head of UNAS. “We want the same things as everyone else.”
Paint the Town Red
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