Investigations on Territorial Interdependencies
The exhibition presents studies and essays in Rio de Janeiro’s expanded metropolis scale, with focus in infrastructure, ecology, increase density and critical themes regarding the challenges of global climate change and the recent environmental disasters caused by the human action.
The content is the result of two years investigation by the Urban Design Program (MSAUD) at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP), from which Studio-X Rio is part, in partnership with the School of Architecture and Urbanism from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (FAU-UFRJ).
The first study, initiated and concluded in 2015, investigated the quick growth of peripheral and peri-urban areas, specifically Santa Cruz neighborhood, in the far west of Rio. During the past years, due to the proximity of Itaguaí Harbor and the Metropolitan ring road, Santa Cruz is facing major infrastructural changes thus stimulating population growth. Regarding those facts, MSAUD studio worked with agricultural, urban, and informal areas through the lenses of density, identity, and ecology.
The second study will begin in January of 2016 and extend through the first semester of the same year. It will investigate urban areas connected by infrastructural corridors, with focus in four cities along the Paraíba river valley: Barra do Piraí, Volta Redonda, Barra Mansa and Resende. The activities intend to develop urban intervention proposals addressing the hydric crisis which affects not only Paraíba’s neighbors cities, but also the water supply for Rio’s Metropolitan Area.