Architectonic imagination and social experience: project, construction and occupation of the Unified Educational Centers (CEUs)

• Grant number: 16/19720-1
• Support type: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Effective date (Start): January 01, 2017
• Effective date (End): June 30, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Urban Anthropology
• Principal researcher: Fernanda Arêas Peixoto
• Grantee: Vinícius Augusto Guerra Spira
• Home Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The research is about the Unified Educational Centers (CEUs), public facilities that since de beggining of the last decade are being implemented in urban peripheral areas of São Paulo and many other brazilian cities. The CEUs offer in one place a set of public equipments devoted to educational, cultural, sporting and leisure activities. They have a huge potential of changing the day-to-day lives of surrounding dwellers, and can bring a major impact in the socio-economic and urban local conditions.In my previous research I studied everyday practices in CEUs Butantã and Vila Rubi in São Paulo, trying to understand how the embracing of the local population depended on the quality of interactions between users and employees, as well as on spatial characteristics, institutional norms, among other factors.In the present research I'm enlarging this scope to consider how the CEUs begin to take shape already in the planning and construction phases, in which the actions of politicians, educators and architects come to the foreground. I make use of my experience as anthropologist and architect to make a multilocalized ethnography to accompany the construction of the CEU Parque Novo Mundo in São Paulo, as well as the development of the architectonic projects of the CEUs Alvarenga and Orquídeas in São Bernardo do Campo - the last two thanks to my architectural practice as part of the Brasil Arquitetura team, between early 2015 and mid 2016.The idea is to relate the ethnographic experience in these three CEUs, toghether with the ones already considered in my previous research (CEUs Butantã and Vila Rubi) in order to understand how everyday practices in a CEU take shape in the long-span, paying tribute to what happens in public offices, architecture firm, construction site, institutional spaces and urban surroundings. In this scope I want to highlight relations between humans and non-humans - spaces, norms, laws, construction techniques, among other factors - and processual issues - controversies, vicissitudes, decisions, attempts to anticipate the future etc - looking at how they assemble (and how they can be assembled) to favor the embracing of the users in the Unified Educational Centers.