FAUrb in the Neighborhood: walking, listening and signing up
The FAUrb no Bairro project aims to develop outreach actions in order to bring the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at UFPel closer to neighbourhoods in the city of Pelotas, based on sensitive cartography and the following methodological procedures: diagnosis and mapping of the neighbourhood, walking through transurbancy, video and photographic surveys, neighbourhood meetings, “small” architectural and/or urban projects, project execution and action evaluation. The project plan foresees staying in the neighbourhood for a semester and so on consecutively: getting to know, experimenting and interacting with the neighbourhoods. In this way, it seeks to foster a dialogue between urban-making and urban knowledge, bringing together the various agents that modify and plan cities. It is known, especially nowadays, that meeting the various actors that constitute and shape the city experience is fundamental to deconstructing the university and homogenizing planning. Going against the pluralities that shape life in cities is an ethical duty and it is essential to carry out education, both in the scope of research and extension. In this way, this project seeks to foster dialogue between urban-making and urban knowledge, bringing together the various agents that modify and plan cities.
Coordinator: Prof. Dr. Eduardo Rocha. Contact: amigodudu@yahoo.com.br
LabCom PRAXI
LabCom PRAXI aims to support the development of built spaces (public, open, buildings and interior) through actions organized by society’s demands. 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. It proposes the conceptual development of interventions in the city. 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, favouring users and marginalized communities that are often overlooked by city planning. The multidisciplinary participation of students and professors from the Federal University of Pelotas, public or socially organized institutions and underserved 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 architectural and urban executive projects. The proposal aims to suggest ideas for intervention in the city, permanent or ephemeral, that promote social inclusion behaviours, and that may interest 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 education, since UFPEL students will have active participation in the Labcom Praxi project, and social impact by improving the quality of built space for vulnerable users, thus presenting a potential for articulation with teaching and research.
Coordinators: Prof. Dr. Adriana Portella and Profa. Dr. Gisele Pereira. Contact: adrianaportella@yahoo.com.br; gisele_pereira@hotmail.com
Urban Pathography: experience of registering in the city
The Project aims to stimulate 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 the so-called sensitive cartographies has been noticed, like other emerging theoretical and practical conceptions to experience and claim a procedural discourse on cities. In order to intervene, design, identify, enhance and raise some clues about the hegemonic and non-hegemonic actors that deconstruct and reproduce urbanism, these open methodologies have been shaping a possibility for open investigation. Based on a dynamic, smaller and non-verticalized mapping, research with this aim has unfolded discourses about the city by unveiling the multiplicity inherent in the construction of urban daily life. Proposing the rescue of the city experience, foreseeing the encounter with otherness, this research proposal is committed to transdisciplinarity, and embraces 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 sphere and meets the street. The street is understood as a place of versatility, a 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 daily urgencies and significant events. Getting in touch with the other – the community – 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. Dr. Eduardo Rocha. Contact: amigodudu@yahoo.com.br
Contemporary Urbanism Interventions and Records: Pixo Magazine
The Project aims to build and deconstruct the city’s image by bringing users closer to it, making this proximity potentialize the creation activities in/of the city. Counting as the main instrument the “PIXO – ARCHITECTURE, CITY AND CONTEMPORARY MAGAZINE” covers the following areas of knowledge: Architecture and Urbanism, Arts, Philosophy, Education, Geography and Psychology. An initiative of the CNPQ Cidade+Contemporanenidade Research Group, the Urbanism Laboratory (LabUrb), the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism (FAUrb), the Postgraduate Program in Architecture and Urbanism (PROGRAU), 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 numbers and; around the multidisciplinary approach to issues related to contemporary society, especially in the relationship between architecture and the city, inhabiting the frontiers of the philosophy of deconstruction, the arts and education, in order to create project actions and affection for ethics and current urban aesthetics.
Urban writings (graffiti, stencil, Lambe, graffiti, etc.) are graphic expressions manifest in the urban space, which uses 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 city scenario and interfere in the daily urban experience, in the construction and reading of the city and in the constitution of subjects in the context of contemporaneity. 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. As visual discourses in and of the city – applied to walls, facades and monuments – they subvert the architecture of cities and desecrate the urban environment at the same time as they compose it. The theme of urban writing emits a sound of social transformation, as voices emitted that set critical thinking and the landscape of the contemporary city to move. Tones of protest, rebellion, urban appropriation, for a right to the city and the construction of a multiple environments of bodies, interests and uses. Works are accepted to participate in actions, in different areas of knowledge, whose discussion is about the theme of Urban Writings. The performance of its producers, the discursive narrative of the manifestations and the production of the scenario of cities from these languages that start to build a hybrid space that inhabits the border between formal and non-formal in the current urban context.
Coordinator: Prof. Dr. Eduardo Rocha. Contact: amigodudu@yahoo.com.br
LabCom Online Cafe
LabCom Online Cafe is an Extension Project developed by the Behavioral Studies Laboratory (LabCom) of the Federal University of Pelotas, and it aims to promote online conversation circles between researchers, artists, activists, communities, NGOs and everyone interested in topics that address SOCIAL INCLUSION AND WELL-BEING FOR ALL. Online meetings take place every Friday at 4 pm (Brazil time) 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 the thematic of our Cafes, it is just to contact the project organization and LabCom. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all activities of the Behavioral Studies Laboratory (LabCom) had to be rethought in terms of structure and objectives. Our meetings for academic discussions took place before in a physical environment, at the school of Architecture and Urbanism at UFPel, Brazil. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic, these meetings were rethought and since 7th August 2020 they have been 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 also the public made us formalize the Project within the University, as an extension activity. The meeting is open to anyone interested. The Cafes are announced 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, it is asking for the link to the GoogleMeet room by private message. Our proposal is not to make lives, but to meet in a chat room to promote interaction among friends and build new international projects. Researchers and academics from Brazil, United Kingdom, India, Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, Chile, Australia and the USA are part of this activity.
Coordinators: Prof. Dr. Adriana Portella and Profa. Dr. Gisele Pereira. Contact: adrianaportella@yahoo.com.br; gisele_pereira@hotmail.com
LabCom Taller: Internacional Behavioral Studies Taller
LabCom Taller (Internacional Behavioral Studies Taller) aims to propose practical and theoretical workshops, which meet the multidisciplinary dimensions of Architecture and Urbanism, providing and consolidating internationalization as a form of academic development and inter-institutional policy. The performance of such activities is of fundamental importance to the academic environment, which is why Taller LabCom provides opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students from different institutions, access to debates and discussions on topics of relevance to Architecture and Urbanism, in the regional, national and international context. In this regard, the Project contributes significantly to the training of academics and the improvement of teaching practices. The development of workshops aimed at behavioural studies in the area of Architecture and Urbanism also seeks to dialogue, imagine, structure, develop, create and implement social public policies for people. In addition, the performance of innovative activities in higher education courses is one of the requirements of the MEC (Ministry of Education of Brazil) and must be an integral part of the academic calendar. As a basic premise, Taller LabCom is characterized as extension activities contributing to the formation of the new professional architect and urban planner, researcher and teacher. This ‘Tallerist’ experience consists of an interrelation of academics and teachers for the construction of an interdisciplinary proposal, which is an innovative way and seeks to solve recurring problems in the professional training of architects and urban planners, through a collective look at a region and/or problematic, through field work and/or remote integrated into the form of exchange, which can also contribute to the development of urban development policies.
Coordinator: Prof. Dr. Cristhian Moreira Brum. Contact: cristhianmbrum@gmail.com
REDELAB – UFPel Laboratory Network
The Behavioral Studies Laboratory (LabCom) is part of REDELAB – UFPel Laboratory Network. In view of 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 pandemic and preserve people’s health, mobilizing 17 laboratories from the School of Architecture and Urbanism, the Arts and Technological Development Centre of UFPel, each one acting within its expertise. LabCom participates of this network carrying out the following action: Mapping the situation of vulnerability of refugees in Rio Grande do Sul (Brazilian federal state) against the pandemic of COVID-19, which is part of the Project ‘Building Resilient Communities to Support the Health and Wellbeing of Venezuelan Refugees in Brazil and Colombia’.
Coordinator: Prof. Dr. Mauricio Couto Polidori. Contact: mauricio.polidori@gmail.com
LabCom Hospitalar
LabCom Hospitalar is a group of studies belonging to the Behavioral Studies Laboratory created to promote and develop social and behavioral policies in the area of Hospital Clinical Architecture, comprising an inclusive and innovative reading of public health policies, providing the humanization of hospital environments, the flexibility of their spaces, and its operational and functional agility. It searchers for the promotion of quality of life for hospital´s users, searching for design and public policies to support places that promotes life and dignity for patients. Through meetings and research projects, LabCom Hospitalar aims to research and reflect on the design of places and buildings for health, to debate the teaching of Hospital Clinical Architecture in the curricula of undergraduate courses in Architecture and Urbanism, and the prospects and futures of this research area in the post-pandemic COVID-19. We want to establish a timely framework for the launching of ideas, projects and proposals, improving teaching practices through participatory methodologies for the development of specific behavioral tools.
LabCom Hospitalar is part of ‘Taller LabCom’, where multidisciplinarity and multiple perspectives are necessary to carry out collective groups activities composed of students, professors, researchers and beneficed community. The coordinated actions revolve around Hospital Clinical Architecture and its defined context, being composed by study groups which will have the challenge of gathering information for a diagnosis of challenge situations regarding possible architectural and urban solutions, in partnership with specific subjects in the curriculum from undergraduate courses and post-graduation programs in Architecture and Urbanism. The LabCom Hospitalar meets every week in a digital format. Please, if you want to participate or just know more about our work, contact Professor Cristhian Moreira Brum, cristhianmbrum@gmail.com
Coordinator: Prof. Dr. Cristhian Moreira Brum. Contact: cristhianmbrum@gmail.com
Sense of Place as Public Policy to Promote Healthy Cities
The Project SENSE OF PLACE AS PUBLIC POLICY TO PROMOTE HEALTHY CITIES aims to compile actions that are being developed by the Behavioral Studies Laboratory of the Federal University of Pelotas, in Brazil. The actions aim at the study of the user’s perception, considering cities visual and sensory quality, heritage and education environment, for the creation of participatory methodologies and guidelines for public policies based on Sense of Place.
Sense of Place refers to the emotional bonds and connections that people develop or experience in specific places and environments, on scales that go from home to the nation. Sense of place is also used to describe the distinction or the unique character of certain localities and regions. Sense of place can refer to positive bonds of comfort, security and well-being generated by the place, home and housing, 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 give meaning to a place. The 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 support any urban public policy that seeks healthier cities. The concept of 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. The Sense of Place remains a bridge between a series 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 Profa. Dr. Gisele Pereira. Contact: adrianaportella@yahoo.com.br; gisele_pereira@hotmail.com
Building Resilient Communities to Support the Health and Wellbeing of Venezuelan Refugees in Brazil and Colombia
As an integral part of the ‘Resilient Communities and Humanitarian Actions Project‘, the Behavioral Studies Laboratory is developing the following investigation: ‘Building Resilient Communities to Support the Health and Wellbeing of Venezuelan Refugees in Brazil and Colombia‘. The COVID-19 pandemic has created significant challenges for the most vulnerable populations, compromising the ability of these groups to access basic health and social assistance services, social participation and civic engagement. In response to this, LabCom seeks to propose technological tools that can help understand and address issues related to vulnerability of Venezuelan refugees in Brazil and Colombia, considering the context of COVID-19 pandemic. This project proposes a set of tools for integrated urban planning and management, which contribute to the development of effective public policies and practices of resilience for responding to COVID-19. These tools will seek inclusive interventions, of a technological nature, that offer support to public agencies in the development of public health and well-being policies for this vulnerable group.
The project is a priority now, as the impact of COVID-19 is causing deleterious effects in 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 before 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 families and do not have access to support networks, which further increases their vulnerability (UNHCR, 2020). Previous 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 access to health and well-being. We recognize that public policies 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 be prepared to face pandemics, all the more immediately in the context of the COVID-19 and future scenarios.
The project is innovative both in the research design and in the multidisciplinary nature of the project team, driven by a structure that places the communities in the central of the research process. We are searching for international funding for this Project and the Federal University of Pelotas is already supporting the LabCom with seven Research Fellows to work on this investigation. A pilot study of the GIS platform has begun to be developed since August 2020. To 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 about 100 Venezuelans from the city of Pacaraima in the past two days. Marcelo Camargo, 2018, available at https://pt.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ficheiro:Venezuelan_refugees_in_Boa_Vista,_Brazil_1.jpg.
Resilient Communities and Humanitarian Actions
Recognizing the rapid nature of many challenges faced by low and middle-income countries, this Project is characterized 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, changes in conflicts, large displacements of populations, etc., or unforeseen opportunities for research contribute to public policies and sustainable urban development practice. The Project includes different actions in partnership with the United Kingdom, Colombia, Mexico, Argentina and Venezuela so that emergent and risky situations can be investigated in a multidisciplinary way, involving researchers in an international network. The first four actions of the Project aim at the vulnerability of refugees from Venezuela in Brazil and Colombia, considering the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the political and urban conditions of Latin America.
The Project seeks (including the collection, analysis and critical interpretation of data) to investigate and inform resilience responses and ways of recovery for communities from investigations of a series of events that affect low and middle-income countries, which could not have been anticipated in advance, such as:
• the case of cultural, humanitarian, political and/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 peace-building processes;
• unforeseen forced displacements/migrations on a large scale of the population;
• environmental disasters (natural and/or resulting from human activity), such as earthquake, tsunami, volcanic eruption, hurricane, major pollution incident, and collapse of dams as in the case of Mariana and Brumadinho in Brazil;
• hunger and health emergencies (for example, disease outbreaks/pandemics like COVID-19); and/or sudden large-scale destruction of/damage to cultural heritage/assets.
Coordinator: Prof. Dr. Adriana Portella. Contact: adrianaportella@yahoo.com.br
Photo: Reg Natarajan from Vancouver, Bogotá. https://flickr.com/photos/61266278@N00/49070277587.
Centre for Healthy Cities, Ageing and Citizenship
LabCom has been part of the Centre for Healthy Cities, Ageing and Citizenship of the Federal University of Pelotas – UFPel (Brazil); the Centre was founded in 2018 and is coordinate by Professor Adriana Portella from UFPel in Brazil and Professor Ryan Woolrych from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. It is an international partnership between Brazil, the UK, France, Argentina and Chile, funded by the Brazilian government, CAPES research council, in a total of 1,000,000.00 USA dollars (R$ 5,000,000.00). The Centre involves researchers from the Post-Graduate Programs in ‘Social Memory and Cultural Heritage’ and ‘Architecture and Urbanism’ of UFPel (Brazil), the Laboratoire de Sociologie Mémoire et Cognition (LASMIC) of the Université Nice Anthipolis (France), the National University of La Patagonia San Juan Bosco (UNPSJB), and the Urban Institute of Heriot-Watt University (UK). Ageing must be understood as a construction crossed by a plurality of practices and cultural values that shape people´s ages lives. Recent studies conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO) show that by 2050 the number of people over 65 years old will double in the globe, creating several challenges mainly for low and middle-income countries (LMICs). The Centre aims to analyze the interaction of three dimensions when considering the process of ageing in place – the city, the environment, and the dwelling. These three dimensions, in which daily experiences are included, must be adapted so that the ageing process can healthily take place, granting autonomy to older adults and strengthening social ties through integration with their local communities. These are life paths that evoke memorable narratives, key for social identity affirmation.
The objectives of the Centre are:
• Enhance the international partnerships between Brazil, UK, France, and Argentina, about ageing studies as well as to establish new international funded projects.
• Support research that proposes guidelines to promote healthy ageing in place, enabling older adults to live in their communities until late age and be active and social connected with their community.
• Organization of seminars, workshops and short courses related to active ageing, memory and identity.
• Promote international academic mobility of researchers to and from the partner institutions.
Institutions of our partners: Federal University of Pelotas (Brazil), Heriot-Watt University (UK), Universidad Nacional de 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 city, considering the health and wellbeing of older people when analyzing the ability to access health and social assistance services. Access to these resources is essential to keep the elderly healthy and active and also socially connected in their communities. The elderly were disproportionately affected by the pandemic, both in terms of mortality (over 95% of all deaths from COVID-19 occurred in those over 60 years of age) and in the physical and mental well-being resulting from social isolation and loneliness. COVID-19 has a significant impact on the lives of adults living in urban communities around the world, especially in developing countries, where spatial and social inequalities are profound and where the ability to age locally is compromised by a lack of formal support to age well. This research is urgently needed to understand the social impact of COVID-19 on the older adults, in order to develop effective and age-friendly community interventions that cover different urban, social and cultural contexts. In response to this, LabCom has begun to investigate the experiences of older adults residents in Brazil (city of Pelotas) as a pilot study (and full investigation in Brazil, India and the United Kingdom will be done when international funding is approved). We search to determine the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on social wellbeing and the effectiveness of responses as measures of social distance and ‘stay at home’ to face the crisis. The formation of resilient and supportive environments that address social well-being is crucial to ensure the physical and mental health of the elderly 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 offer resilient, age-friendly communities, and that enables the social wellbeing of older adults during a pandemic. Age-friendly communities need to be more receptive to rapid changes in 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 Brasilia (Brasil).
Coordinator: Prof. Dr. Adriana Portella. Contact: adrianaportella@yahoo.com.br
Photo: Pixabay. MirceaIancu_CandidShots / 2095 images.
PlaceAge – Brazil, United Kingdom and India
The Behavior Studies Laboratory at UFPel has been coordinated the PlaceAge Project in Brazil since May 2016, when the Project received first place in projects selected for the international funding Healthy Urban Living and the Social Science of the Food-Water-Energy Nexus. The PlaceAge Project currently consists of two investigations 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 sterling (R$ 8,491,812.00). Among the countries involved are the United Kingdom, Brazil and India. One of the Project’s investigation is entitled ‘Place-Making with Older People: Towards Age Friendly Communities’ and focuses on exploring how older adults face ageing in different urban, social and cultural contexts in Brazil and the United Kingdom. The other investigation is entitled ‘Ageing Well in Urban Environments: Developing Age Friendly Cities and Communities’ and seeks an analysis of ageing in the neighbourhood and perceptions of a sense of place in India, the United Kingdom 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. Dr. Ryan Woorych. Contact: r.d.woolrych@hw.ac.uk
Coordinator in Brazil: Profa. Dr. Adriana Portella. Contact: adrianaportella@yahoo.com.br
Coordinator in India: Prof. Dr. Jamuna Duvvuru. Contact: jxd172@gmail.com
Ageing in a World of Inequality: How to Design Healthy Cities for All
The Project ‘Ageing in a World of Inequalities: How to Design Healthy Cities for All’ consisted of organizing the ‘2019 IAPS Symposium Ageing in Place in a World of Inequalities’, which brought researchers 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 ageing, 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 support for active participation, opportunities to build and sustain social networks and take on a significant role in the community. In contrast, a feeling of exclusion or lack of opportunities to participate in the community is associated with alienation, isolation and loneliness, often resulting in diverse health and well-being problems, particularly among vulnerable older adults. Socially, the creation of ageing-friendly urban environments that support a sense of place is an integral part of successful ageing, ensuring that people can continue to make a positive contribution to old age, delaying the need for institutional care and reducing health and care costs. Within this theme, academics, researchers, professionals and students participated in this meeting and LabCom is finalizing the publication of the proceedings of the event in Portuguese, English and Spanish for 2020-2021. The most prominent articles in the event until December 2020 will be published in two editions of the scientific magazine PIXO; the first edition was published in August 2020. For more information on 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, based in Spain), PlaceAge Project, UFPel’s Behavioral Studies Laboratory, UFPel’s Graduate Program in Architecture and Urbanism. The Symposium was also developed by the Centre for Healthy Cities, Ageing and Citizenship Project, which is part of UFPel’s Institutional Internationalization Program – CAPES PRINT.
Coordinator: Prof. Dr. Adriana Portella and Profa. Dr. Nirce Saffer Medvedoski. Contacts: adrianaportella@yahoo.com.br and nirce.sul@gmail.com
Photo: Marcelo Soares.
Participatory Methodologies in the Teaching of Architecture and Urbanism
This Project seeks to develop and apply participatory methods in the teaching process of architecture and urbanism for undergraduate students. Architecture and urbanism must be thought to design to meet people’s needs, with special focus to the most vulnerable communities. Thus, the student must know the methodological tools that can be applied to recognize the user´s needs. Human diversity and the multiple factors to be considered in an architecture and urbanism design, make the design process quite complex, requiring training, which includes artistic, social and technical domains, aiming at the solution of multifaceted problems. Paradoxically, this broad spectrum of knowledge often distances architecture students from lay people´s perception. This can become an obstacle to identifying the real demands of local communities. Aiming at a complete professional training of the architecture and urbanism student, this Project proposes to reduce the gap between the design produced by future architects and urban planners and the perceptions, needs and desires of people who will use the places in the city. Several themes are analyzed here, of which we can highlight: design process, user-centred design, participation in architecture and urbanism projects and participatory design methods. The disciplines, in which this methodological approach is applied, are: Architecture Competition Workshop and Social Housing Workshop at School of Architecture and Urbanism, of Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil, during 2020 and 2021.
Photo: Gisele Pereira.