Morphological shocks and crises of sociability in university space and in the urban space

Abstract

My PhD studies developed in the years 1990 led me to conclude/note that the urban and architectural modernist model has proved fallacious, even though became crystallized as a model in Brazil. Misleading both in the sense that one of the maxims of the modernist architecture "form follows function" produced campus and university towns populated by buildings-icons often with serious deficiencies (such as noise and environmental issues of the Central Institute of Science (ICC) at the University of Brasilia (UnB), designed by Oscar Niemeyer, among others), as well as the recommendation to have the University space as one of the sectors that structure the planned modern city (as idealized by the Letter of Athens, 1933) promoted, in many cases, a disastrous rupture between city and University. In addition to this, the ideas of contemporary strategic planning that took place in the turn of the 20th century to the 21st, rather than get away from solutions that already result exclusions as well as go in the direction of certain characteristics that privilege economic relations to the detriment of social relationships, producing strong spaces and tourist attractiveness of international capital investments, but not leverage relationships of sociability and more effective space appropriation. You can see these results in both studies that the author developed about urban solutions implemented in the city of Niteroi/RJ, from architectural projects by Oscar Niemeyer, as well as various studies on regeneration of port areas around the world, as in the case of the region of Porto Maravilha (Rio de Janeiro/RJ) They point the same type of solution: strong tourist attractiveness and spaces of structured consumption from emblematic architectural solutions "signed" by the most renowned international architects. If the modern/modernist campus proved a fallacious uniform model, current urban model results by similar logic. This text seeks to reinforce the need for urban solutions able to counter this logic, shaping up as alternatives. The aim is to reflect on the production of space and sociocultural practices and envision ways of production space to bring reinforcement to sociability.