Ampahro Headquarters Project
The project for Ampahro’s headquarters includes functional areas intended for the care of children and parents of children with ASD (Autistic Spectrum Disorder). On the ground floor there are spaces for therapies, as well as an industrial kitchen, space for the Ampahro brecho and vertical circulation. On the second floor there are spaces for different types of therapies for children with ASD and their parents, as well as the ballroom and auditorium of Ampahro’s headquarters. The project also includes the integration with the context of the square next to the building site. The project was developed at the Preliminary Study level and will continue until it becomes an executive project.
Coordinator: Prof. doctor Eduardo Grala Cunha and Prof. Dr. Adriana Portella. Contact: eduardogralacunha@yahoo.com.br and adrianaportella@yahoo.com.br
FAURB vegetable garden
Extension action of the FAUrb no Bairro project, which aims to revitalize the garden of the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of UFPel, in order to provide the production of healthy food, contributing to the environment, valuing local cultures and community empowerment. Organized by LabCom and LabUrb, from FAUrb/UFPel. Initial activities: Survey of pre-existence on the FAUrb/CA campus, meetings with the UFPel “Urban Vegetable Gardens” project, feasibility study of the FAUrb Community Vegetable Garden, environmental education actions in social media and visual programming, installation and maintenance of “ Composterira” in the FAUrb lobby, installation of flower pots with herbs and spices to encourage the re-implantation of the vegetable garden.
Coordinator: Prof. doctor Eduardo Rocha. Contact: amigodudu@yahoo.com.br Photo: Eduardo Rocha
3rd International Congress on Citizenship, Public Space and Territory
The 3rd International Congress on Citizenship, Public Space and Territory is an Extension Project of the Federal University of Pelotas. It took place from the 3rd to the 5th of November 2021 in Brazil, in the city of Pelotas. The event was promoted by the Behavioral Studies Laboratory of the Federal University of Pelotas (UFPel). Together with the Laboratory, the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at UFPel hosted the event, online due to the pandemic, with the support of the PlaceAge Project, the Graduate Program in Architecture and Urbanism at UFPel and Universidad La Gran Colombia. The Symposium is developed with the support of LabCom Hospitalar and the Center for Healthy Cities, Aging and Citizenship, which is part of UFPel’s Institutional Internationalization Program – CAPES PRINT. This is a worldwide event that takes place annually in different countries; the latter was hosted in Bogotá and promoted by Universidad La Gran Colombia. We are now involved with the development of the PIXO Congress Abstracts Book and Special Edition.
The event was fully funded by the CAPES-PRINT Project – Nucleus of Healthy Cities, Aging and Citizenship, which involves academics from the Graduate Programs in Architecture and Planning, Social Memory and Cultural Heritage, Dentistry, Physical Education and Epidemiology at the Federal University of Pellets . The Nucleus works with the following countries: United Kingdom, France, Argentina and Chile. The Center is part of the CAPES PRINT International Program of the Brazilian Federal Government. The objective is to encourage the construction, implementation and consolidation of strategic internationalization plans; encourage the formation of international research networks; expand actions to support internationalization in postgraduate programs; promote mobility of professors and students (with emphasis on doctoral students, post-doctoral students and professors abroad and in Brazil); foster the transformation of participating institutions in an international environment and integrate other CAPES promotion actions into the Brazilian internationalization effort.
The first edition of the Congress arose from the investigation called “Territories of fear and their impact on the vitality of public spaces in the sectors of Usme (Bogotá, Colombia) and in the central squares of Corsan and URI in Frederico Westphalen (Brazil)”. The Congress had its first edition held in person in the city of Frederico Westphalen in Brazil, and was organized by the Universidade Regional Integrada (URI) at Campus Frederico Westphalen, in 2019.
The concept of Citizenship refers to a set of rights and duties of the person and is based on the principles of law and equality: we are all equal before the law. The city is characterized as the main place of exercise of citizenship. This means that not only the city must guarantee the means for the human being to develop economically and culturally, but that the city must be the result of the aspiration and action of all its citizens regardless of race, religion and economic condition. Therefore, public urban development policies must consider the concept of citizenship inherent in all their decisions. The right to the city refers to access to a good quality of life through services that the city must provide to all people, such as schools, health centers, hospitals, squares and green areas for leisure, treated water, sewage and waste collection. However, not all people residing in the city have equal access to the right to the city: citizenship has been established in a hierarchical way in the world, a contradiction to the conception of equality it presumes. Vulnerable social groups such as low-income people and refugees often have their citizenship rights denied in the city due to political and social structures that favor certain groups. The most vulnerable groups end up as prisoners of their place of residence, while the others appropriate the rest of the city (Freitas & Castilho, 2016).
The concept of citizenship is directly connected to that of Territory. The territory is associated with an attribution of value, meaning and a type of spatial demarcation that produces a new reading, a new relationship, a new symbolic and existential bond of the person in his relationship with the world and with the other members of his community. In this way, a condition of appropriation is established, in which the human presence is defining for the determination of a territory (Massara, 2016).
The Public Space is the place where citizens identify with cities. It is through the meaning attributed to certain urban spaces that they become places of memory for people, places of remembrance of experiences and feelings. Being part of a city, a state or a country is not just a legal state, but above all sharing experiences and living in places, especially public ones, such as a square, a park, a street. Per
FAUrb in the Neighborhood: walking, listening and signing up
The FAUrb no Bairro project aims to develop extension actions in order to bring the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of UFPel closer to neighborhoods in the city of Pelotas, based on sensitive cartography and the following methodological procedures: diagnosis and mapping of the neighborhood, walking through transurbance, video and photographic surveys, meetings in the neighborhood, “small” architectural and/or urban projects, execution of projects and evaluation of the action. The project’s planning envisages staying in the neighborhood for one semester and so on consecutively: getting to know, experiencing and interacting with the neighborhoods. In this way, it seeks to foster dialogue between urban-doing and urban-knowledge, bringing together the various agents that modify and plan cities. It is known, especially in contemporary times, that meeting the various actors who constitute and shape the lived city is fundamental to deconstruct the university and the homogenizing planning. Going against the pluralities that configure life in cities is an ethical duty and fundamental for the realization of education, both in the scope of research and extension. In this way, this project seeks to foster dialogue between urban-doing and urban-knowledge, bringing together the various agents that modify and plan cities.
Coordinator: Prof. doctor Eduardo Rocha. Contact: amigodudu@yahoo.com.br
LabCom PRAXI
LabCom PRAXI is an Extension Project that aims to support the development of built spaces (public, open, buildings and interiors), through actions organized by demands from society. It is a continuous flow project that seeks to advise, in the design field of Architecture, Anthropology and Tourism, groups that come into contact with the Behavioral Studies Laboratory (LabCom) at UFPel. The conceptual development of interventions in the city is proposed. Based on the principles that guide LabCom’s activities – SOCIAL INCLUSION AND WELL-BEING FOR ALL, demands that have a social nature will be met, which favor users and communities that are marginalized and often forgotten by city planning. The multidisciplinary participation of students and professors at the Federal University of Pelotas, public or socially organized institutions and neglected communities is a prerequisite for offering actions.
There are mainly two contexts that justify this proposal. The first concerns the fact that some groups and non-governmental organizations that work with vulnerable communities, such as Caritas and also Cuidativa, have sought support from the Laboratory for the development of ideas for architectural and urban spatial organization. In order to formalize these demands, as well as others, through an extension project, we developed this continuous flow project to serve the most vulnerable social groups that need support at the conceptual level of project ideas. It is not our objective to carry out executive architectural and urban projects. The proposal aims to suggest ideas for intervention in the city, permanent or ephemeral, that promote social inclusion behaviors, and that may be of interest to the groups that come to us for this free and multidisciplinary consultancy. On the other hand, in line with the Brazilian university extension policy, the proposed actions should promote an impact on student training, since UFPEL students will have an active participation in the Labcom Praxi project, and social impact by improving the quality of the space built for vulnerable users , thus presenting potential for articulation with teaching and research.
Coordinators: Prof. Dr. Adriana Portella and Prof. Dr. Gisele Pereira. Contact: adrianaportella@yahoo.com.br; gisele_pereira@hotmail.com
Urban Pathography: the experience of enrolling in the city
The Project aims to encourage the practice of urban experience from the exercise of urban pathography (walking and mapping, concomitantly), in order to enhance and intensify the experience in contemporary cities, creating clues and new solutions related to urban ways of life and emerging architecture, which qualify and contradict Latin American cities.
In recent decades, the contingency of so-called sensitive cartography, as well as other theoretical conceptions and emerging practices to experience and claim a procedural discourse on cities, can be seen. In order to intervene, project, identify, leverage and raise some clues about the hegemonic and non-hegemonized actors that deconstruct and reproduce urbanism, these open methodologies have been forming a possibility of open investigation. Based on dynamic, smaller and non-vertical mapping, research with this aim has unfolded discourses about the city by revealing the multiplicity inherent in the construction of urban everyday life. Proposing the rescue of the city experience, anticipating the encounter with otherness, this research proposal is committed to transdisciplinarity, and welcomes different points and ways of experiencing urban life. Opening itself to students from different areas, planners, and curious people who want to follow urban dynamics, the research goes beyond the academic scope and goes to meet the street. The street is understood as a place of polyvalence, the stage for movements of consensus and conflict, control and resistance, which establish a territory that is contradictory in itself. The experience proposes activation and proximity – touching and stepping, on the ground, on the grass, on the sidewalks. Meeting everyday urgencies and significant events. Getting in touch with the other – the community – by talking, listening, acting or resisting. Subverting vertical and distant planning, which ignores the pulsating and evident demands in life that occur in the juxtaposition of realities.
Coordinator: Prof. doctor Eduardo Rocha. Contact: amigodudu@yahoo.com.br
Interventions and Records of Contemporary Urbanism:Pixo Magazine
The Project aims to build and deconstruct the image of the city from the approximation of users with it, making this proximity to enhance the creation activities in/of the city. Counting as main instrument the “PIXO – MAGAZINE OF ARCHITECTURE, CITY AND CONTEMPORANEITY” covers the following areas of knowledge: Architecture and Urbanism, Arts, Philosophy, Education, Geography and Psychology. An initiative of the Research Group CNPQ Cidade+Contemporaneidade, of the Urbanism Laboratory (LabUrb), of the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism (FAUrb), Graduate Program in Architecture and Urbanism (PROGRAU), of the Federal University of Pelotas. The quarterly digital magazine (spring, summer, autumn and winter – agile and continuous) brings together articles, essays, interviews and reviews (written in Portuguese, English or Spanish) in thematic issues and; around the multidisciplinary approach of issues related to contemporary society, especially in the relationship between architecture and the city, inhabiting the frontiers of the philosophy of deconstruction, arts and education, in order to create project actions and affections for an ethics and current urban aesthetics.
Urban writings (graffiti, stencil, licks, graffiti, etc.) are graphic expressions manifest in the urban space, which use the city and architecture as supports and instruments of action, communication and protest. Thus, they function as visual elements inscribed by the plans that make up the scenery of the cities and interfere in the everyday urban experience, in the construction and reading of the city and in the constitution of subjects in the contemporary context. How interventions relate writing, art, territory, urbanism, social practices, desires and creation of relational spaces. They are manifestations of public life and contemporary reality, due to a need for expression and transgression. How visual discourses in and of the city – applied to walls, facades and monuments – subvert the architecture of cities and desecrate the urban environment at the same time as they compose it. The theme of urban writings emits a sound of social transformation, like emitted voices that put critical thinking and the landscape of the contemporary city in motion. Tones of protest, rebellion, urban appropriation, for a right to the city and the construction of a multiple environment of bodies, interests and uses. Works are accepted to participate in the actions, in the different areas of knowledge, whose discussion deals with the theme of Urban Writings. The performance of its producers, the discursive narrative of the manifestations and the production of the scenery of the cities from these languages that start to build a hybrid space and that inhabits the frontier between the formal and the non-formal in the current urban context.
Coordinator: Prof. doctor Eduardo Rocha. Contact: amigodudu@yahoo.com.br
LabCom Online Cafe
The LabCom Online Cafe is an Extension Project developed by the Behavioral Studies Laboratory (LabCom) of the Federal University of Pelotas, and aims to promote online conversation circles between researchers, artists, activists, communities, NGOs and anyone interested in topics that address SOCIAL INCLUSION AND WELL-BEING FOR ALL. Online meetings take place every Friday at 4 pm via GoogleMeet. The main objective is to create a forum for the exchange of ideas and knowledge, a moment inspired by our globalized reality, to promote the inclusion and connection of all. Anyone can propose a Cafe theme, just get in touch with the Project organization and LabCom. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all the activities of the Laboratory for Behavioral Studies (LabCom) had to be rethought in their structure and objectives. Our meetings for academic discussions previously took place in a physical environment, at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at UFPel. However, with the pandemic, these meetings were rethought and since August 7, 2020, they are taking place online, every Friday, via GoogleMeet. We started informally, but the scale of the program and the number of international participants who are taking part in our meetings, both as speakers, guests and the public, made us formalize the Project within the University, as an extension activity. The meeting is open to anyone interested. The Program is published on the Laboratory’s website (https://wp.ufpel.edu.br/labcom/pt/pagina-inicial/), on our Instagram, Fanpage and Twitter (@LabComUFPel). Those interested in participating ask for the GoogleMeet room link by private message. Our proposal is not to do lives, but meetings in the chat room to promote interaction and construction of new international projects. Researchers and academics from Brazil, United Kingdom, India, Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, Chile, Australia and USA are part of this activity.
Coordinators: Prof. Dr. Adriana Portella and Prof. Dr. Gisele Pereira. Contact: adrianaportella@yahoo.com.br; gisele_pereira@hotmail.com
REDELAB – Rede de Laboratórios da UFPel
The Behavioral Studies Laboratory (LabCom) is part of REDELAB – UFPel’s Laboratory Network. Faced with the current situation of urgency to combat COVID-19, the Federal University of Pelotas (UFPel), in Brazil, through PROPLAN (Pro-Rectory of Planning and Development), presents a program of integrated actions to combat the disease and preserve the people’s health, mobilizing 17 laboratories and collectives from the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, the Arts Center and the Technological Development Center of UFPel in a network, each acting within its expertise. LabCom participates in the network by developing the following action: Mapping the situation of vulnerability of refugees in Rio Grande do Sul (Brazilian State) in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is part of the Project ‘Designing Resilient Communities to support health and well-being -being of Venezuelan Refugees in Brazil and Colombia’.
Coordinator: Prof. doctor Mauricio Couto Polidori. Contact: mauricio.polidori@gmail.com
Sense of Place as Public Policy to Promote Healthy CitiesSenso de Lugar como Política Pública para Promover Cidades Saudáveis
The SENSE OF PLACE PROJECT AS A PUBLIC POLICY TO PROMOTE HEALTHY CITIES aims to compile actions that are being developed at the Behavioral Studies Laboratory of the Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil, aiming at studying the user’s perception, considering the visual and sensory quality of the city, from heritage and the school environment to the creation of participatory methodologies and guidelines for public policies based on the Sense of Place.
Sense of Place refers to the emotional ties and attachments that people develop or experience in specific places and environments, on scales ranging from home to nation. Sense of place is also used to describe the distinctness or uniqueness of particular locations and regions. Sense of place can refer to positive ties of comfort, security and well-being generated by place, home and dwelling, as well as negative feelings of fear, dysphoria and lack of place. A sense of place is a unique collection of qualities and characteristics – visual, cultural, social and environmental – that provide meaning to a place. A Sense of Place is what makes one city different from another, but it is also what makes our physical environment worthy of consideration. These precepts should underlie any urban public policy that seeks healthier cities. The concept of a sense of place has played an important role in the debate in human geography over the past 30 years. When first introduced, the concept drew attention to the often subjective nature of human environmental experience, as well as to the perceptual and cognitive dimensions of these experiences. Sense of Place remains a bridge between a number of subdisciplines, as well as a link between humanistic and positivist geographies.
More information: https://wp.ufpel.edu.br/senseofplace/
Coordinators: Prof. Dr. Adriana Portella and Prof. Dr. Gisele Pereira. Contact: adrianaportella@yahoo.com.br; gisele_pereira@hotmail.com
Designing Resilient Communities to Support the Health and Well-Being of Venezuelan Refugees in Brazil and Colombia
As an integral action of the ‘Resilient Communities and Humanitarian Actions’ Project, the Behavioral Studies Laboratory is developing the following investigation: ‘Designing Resilient Communities to support the health and well-being of Venezuelan Refugees in Brazil and Colombia’. The COVID-19 pandemic has created significant challenges for the most vulnerable populations, compromising their ability to access basic health and social care services, social participation and civic engagement. In response to this, LabCom seeks to propose technological tools that can help to understand and address issues related to the vulnerability of Venezuelan refugees in Brazil and Colombia, considering the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This project proposes a set of tools for planning and integrated urban management, which contribute to the development of effective public resilience policies and practices in response to COVID-19. These tools seek inclusive interventions, of a technological nature, that offer support to public agencies to assist in the development of public health and social welfare policies.
This project is a priority now as the impact of COVID-19 is having deleterious effects on low and middle income countries (LMICs) such as Brazil and Colombia. 80% of refugees live in LMICs and these countries already have weak formal health support and urban infrastructure even in contexts prior to the pandemic. Many refugees have left their countries to escape armed conflict, violence and/or human rights violations, and often end up living in temporary camps in LMICs. Resettlement efforts during the COVID pandemic were suspended by the UN, at a time when people are already separated from their families and do not have access to support networks, which further increases their vulnerability (UNHCR, 2020). Past experiences with the Ebola virus and other outbreaks have shown that public policies need to include refugees and migrants in their plans to combat the impact of pandemics and ensure they have access to health and well-being. We recognize that public policy must include refugees in COVID-19 pandemic preparedness/response measures – This is vital and urgent support is needed to explore how these communities can be resilient and prepared to face pandemics, all the more immediately in the context of COVID-19 and future scenarios.
The project is innovative in both the research design and the multidisciplinary nature of the project team, driven by a framework that places communities at the core of the research process. . We are seeking international funding for this project, and the Federal University of Pelotas is already supporting LabCom with seven scientific initiation fellows to work on this investigation. A pilot study of the GIS platform began to be developed in August 2020. For more information, visit the Project website: https://wp.ufpel.edu.br/refugiadosbrasilcolombia
Institutions of our partners: Federal University of Pelotas (Brazil), Federal University of Rio Grande (Brazil), National School of Public Administration (Brazil), University of La Sabana (Colombia), Sayara International (USA), Caritas Arquiodiocesana de São Paulo (Brazil) and Heriot-Watt University (UK).
Coordinator: Prof. Dr. Adriana Portella. Contact: adrianaportella@yahoo.com.br
Photo: Abrigo Rondon 1, in Boa Vista, which received around 100 Venezuelans from the city of Pacaraima in the last two days. Marcelo Camargo, 2018, available at https://pt.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Venezuelan_refugees_in_Boa_Vista,_Brazil_1.jpg.
Resilient Communities and Humanitarian Actions
Recognizing the rapid nature of many of the challenges faced by low- and middle-income countries, this Project characterizes itself as an ‘umbrella’ Project, a responsive mechanism through which applied social science researchers (working with other disciplines, when appropriate) can respond to urgent and unforeseen research needs, including (but not limited to) pandemics, disasters, emergencies, rapid radical political or economic changes, shifts in conflict, major population displacements, or unforeseen opportunities for research to contribute to public policies and practices of sustainable urban development. The Project encompasses different actions in partnership with the United Kingdom, Colombia, Mexico, Argentina and Venezuela so that emerging and risk situations can be investigated in a multidisciplinary way, involving researchers in an international network. The first four actions of the Project are aimed at the situation of vulnerability of refugees, coming from Venezuela, Brazil and Colombia, considering the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the political and urban conditions of Latin America.
The Project seeks (including data collection, analysis and critical interpretation) to investigate and inform responses or forms of resilience or recovery from a range of specific events affecting low- and middle-income countries, which could not have been predicted in advance, such as:
• the case of cultural, humanitarian, political or economic emergencies or crises and their impacts on issues such as cultural production/expression, equality, marginalization, vulnerability and social exclusion;
• the unexpected escalation or rapid changes in conflicts, human rights violations, threats to human security or peacebuilding processes;
• unforeseen large-scale forced displacements/migrations of the population;
• environmental disasters (natural and/or resulting from human activity), such as: earthquake, tsunami, volcanic eruption, hurricane, major pollution incident, collapse of dams as in the case of Mariana and Brumadinho in Brazil, etc.;
• famine and health emergencies (eg disease outbreaks/pandemics such as COVID-19); and/or sudden large-scale destruction of/damage to cultural property/property.
Coordinator: Prof. Dr. Adriana Portella. Contact: adrianaportella@yahoo.com.br
Photo: Reg Natarajan from Vancouver, Bogotá. https://flickr.com/photos/61266278@N00/49070277587.
Center for Healthy Cities, Aging and Citizenship
LabCom is already part of the Center for Healthy Cities, Aging and Citizenship at the Federal University of Pelotas – UFPel (Brazil); the Nucleus was founded in 2018 and is coordinated by Professor Adriana Portella from UFPel in Brazil and Professor Ryan Woolrych from Heriot-Watt University of Edinburgh in the UK. It is an international partnership between Brazil, United Kingdom, France, Argentina and Chile. The Center involves researchers from the Graduate Programs in ‘Social Memory and Cultural Heritage’ and ‘Architecture and Urbanism’ at UFPel (Brazil), from the Laboratoire de Sociologie Mémoire et Cognition (LASMIC) at the Université Nice Anthipolis (France), from the University National Patagonia San Juan Bosco (UNPSJB, Argentina), and the Urban Institute of Heriot-Watt University (United Kingdom). Aging must be understood as a construction formed by a plurality of cultural practices and values, which characterize people’s age. Recent studies carried out by the World Health Organization (WHO) show that by 2050 the number of people over 65 years of age will double in the world, creating several challenges, mainly for low- and middle-income countries. The Nucleus aims to analyze the interaction of three dimensions when considering the population aging process – the city, the environment and housing. These three dimensions, in which people’s daily experiences are inserted, must be adapted so that the aging process occurs in a healthy way, promoting autonomy for older people and strengthening their social bonds through integration with their local communities. These dimensions form life trajectories that evoke memorable narratives, fundamental for the affirmation of social identity.
The objectives of the Core are:
• Enhance international partnerships between Brazil, United Kingdom, France and Argentina on aging studies, as well as establish new projects with international funding.
• Support research that proposes guidelines to promote healthy aging locally, enabling seniors to live in their communities into old age and be active and socially connected with their community.
• Organize seminars, workshops and short courses related to active ageing, memory and identity.
• Promote the international academic mobility of researchers to and from partner institutions.
Institutions of our partners: Federal University of Pelotas (Brazil), Heriot-Watt University (United Kingdom), National University of La Patagonia San Juan Bosco (Argentina) and Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (France).
Coordinator: Prof. Dr. Adriana Portella. Contact: adrianaportella@yahoo.com.br
Photo: https://pixabay.com/pt/users/balouriarajesh-6205857/
PlaceAge – COVID: Delivering Age-Friendly Cities to Support Social Wellbeing in Response to COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic raised significant challenges in the urban area, considering the health and well-being of older people, when analyzing the ability to access health and social care services in the city. Access to these resources is critical to keeping seniors healthy and active and also socially connected in their communities. The elderly have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, both in terms of mortality (more than 95% of all COVID-19 deaths occurred in those over 60 years of age) and the physical and mental well-being resulting from social isolation and loneliness. COVID-19 is having a significant impact on the lives of adults living in urban communities around the world, particularly in developing countries where spatial and social inequalities are profound and where the ability to age in place is compromised by lack of support. formal to age well. Such research is urgently needed to understand the social impact of COVID-19 on older people in the city, in order to develop effective and age-friendly community interventions that span different urban, social, and cultural contexts. In response to this, we investigated the experiences of older adults residing in Brazil initially (and subsequently in India and the UK with international funding approval), to determine the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on social well-being and the effectiveness of responses such as social distancing measures and ‘stay at home’ to tackle the crisis. Building resilient and supportive environments that address social well-being is crucial to ensuring the physical and mental health of older people during a pandemic, thereby reducing health and social care costs. This project contributes to the development of effective public policy and practical responses to COVID-19 and future pandemics through interventions that provide resilient, age-friendly communities and enable the social well-being of older people during a pandemic. Age-friendly communities need to be more responsive to rapidly changing urban contexts, to build places that promote individual, social and community resilience to COVID-19 and future pandemics.
Institutions of our partners: Federal University of Pelotas (Brazil), Federal University of Rio Grande (Brazil), Heriot-Watt University (UK) and University of Brasília (Brazil).
Coordinator: Prof. Dr. Adriana Portella. Contact: adrianaportella@yahoo.com.br
Photo: Pixabay. MirceaIancu_CandidShots / 2095 images
PlaceAge – Brazil, United Kingdom and India
UFPel’s Behavioral Studies Laboratory has participated in the PlaceAge Project since May 2016, when the research received first place in the projects selected for international funding by the Public Notice Healthy Urban Living and the Social Science of the Food-Water-Energy Nexus. The PlaceAge Project currently consists of two researches funded by the ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) in Brazil and the United Kingdom and ICSSR (Indian Council for Social Science Research) in India for a total of £1,213,116.00 British pounds (R$ 8,491,812.00). Among the countries involved are the United Kingdom, Brazil and India. One of the Project’s research projects is entitled ‘Designing places with older people: Towards age-friendly communities’ and focuses on exploring how older people face aging in different urban, social and cultural contexts in Brazil and the UK. The other research is entitled ‘Good Aging in Urban Environments: Designing cities and communities with older people’ and seeks an analysis of neighborhood aging and perceptions of sense of place in India, UK and Brazil. For more information, visit the PlaceAge Project website: www.placeage.org.
Institutions of our partners: Federal University of Pelotas (Brazil), Federal University of Rio Grande (Brazil), Heriot-Watt University (UK) and Sri Venkateswara University (India).
Photo: Adriana Portella.
Coordinator in the United Kingdom: Prof. doctor Ryan Woorych. Contact: r.d.woolrych@hw.ac.uk
Coordinator in Brazil: Prof. Dr. Adriana Portella. Contact: adrianaportella@yahoo.com.br
Coordinator in India: Prof. Dr. Jamuna Duvvuru. Contact: jxd172@gmail.com
Aging in a World of Inequalities: How to Design Healthy Cities for All
The Project ‘Aging in the world of inequalities: how to design healthy cities for all’ consisted of organizing the International Symposium ‘2019 IAPS Symposium Ageing in Place in a World of Inequalities: How to Design Healthy Cities for All’, which brought researchers to Brazil from different countries – Spain, Australia, Chile, Japan, Brazil, to discuss how to plan healthy cities for all generations, responding to different environmental, social, cultural and economic impacts. The Symposium started from the understanding that simply changing the built form is not enough to create a more inclusive environment for aging, as places are more than physical spaces. Viable environments are articulated through a strong sense of place, defined by the social, psychological, and emotional bonds that people have with their environment. A strong sense of place results from access to supports for active participation, opportunities to build and sustain social networks, and to assume a meaningful role in the community. In contrast, a feeling of exclusion or a lack of opportunities to participate in the community is associated with alienation, isolation and loneliness, often resulting in diverse health and well-being issues, particularly among vulnerable older adults. Socially, creating age-friendly urban environments that support a sense of place are an integral part of successful aging, ensuring that people can continue to contribute positively in old age, delaying the need for institutional care, and reducing health and social assistance. Within this theme, academics, researchers, professionals and students participated in this meeting and in 2020 and 2021 LabCom will finalize the publication of the event’s proceedings in Portuguese, English and Spanish. The most prominent articles at the event until December 2020 will be published in two editions of the scientific journal PIXO; the first edition was published in August 2020. For more information about the Symposium, visit the website: https://wp.ufpel.edu.br/placeage/evento/
Institutions of our partners: Federal University of Pelotas (Brazil), IAPS (International Association of People Environment Studies, headquartered in Spain), PlaceAge Project, Laboratory of Behavioral Studies at UFPel, Graduate Program in Architecture and Urbanism at UFPel. The Symposium was also developed by the Center for Healthy Cities, Aging and Citizenship Project, which is part of UFPel’s Institutional Internationalization Program – CAPES PRINT.
Coordinator: Prof. Dr. Adriana Portella and Prof. Dr. Nirce Saffer Medvedoski. Contacts: adrianaportella@yahoo.com.br and nirce.sul@gmail.com
Photo: Marcelo Soares.
Participatory Methodologies in Teaching Architecture and Urbanism
This Project seeks to develop, along with teaching disciplines in architecture and urbanism, the discussion and application of participatory methods with vulnerable communities. Architecture and urbanism must be thought out and designed to meet people’s needs. Thus, it is necessary that the student knows the methodological tools that can be applied in order to know these needs well. Human diversity and the multiple factors to be considered in an architecture and urbanism project make the design activity quite complex, requiring broad training, which includes artistic, social, ethical and technical domains, aiming at solving multifaceted problems. Paradoxically, this broad spectrum of knowledge often distances architecture and urbanism students from so-called non-technical people, as it creates a lens of their own through which students end up applying in the classroom to develop their projects in the disciplines. This can become an obstacle to identifying the real demands of users. Aiming at the complete professional training of architecture and urbanism students, this Project aims to reduce the gap between the projects produced by future architects and urban planners and the perceptions, needs and desires of the people who will appropriate the places in the city. To this end, several themes are analyzed, of which we can highlight: the design process, user-centered design, community participation in architecture and urbanism projects and the application of participatory design methods. The disciplines in which this methodological approach is applied are: Ateliê de Concursos and Ateliê de Habitação de Interest Social, of the undergraduate course at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the Federal University of Pelotas (Brazil) during the semesters of 2020 and 2021.
Coordinator: Prof. Dr. Adriana Portella. Contact: adrianaportella@yahoo.com.br
Photo: Gisele Pereira.