Passinho and Pacification

As I listened to a Youtube video of a Passinho battle, with it’s rough and heavy funke soundtrack, something perfectly appropriate happened. A middle-aged acquaintance remarked sarcastically from the other Continue reading →

The First 3 Things I Learned: What Were Yours?

Last week I was involved in the penultimate critique for a 4th year design studio. I love participating in critiques for the shear volume of creative outcomes I get exposed Continue reading →

Pacification and 24 Hour Surveillance in Rocinha

The favela pacification process is well under way in Rio’s favelas–the process of reclaiming territory once run by drug gangs such as The Comando Vermelho, Terceiro Comando, and Amigos dos Continue reading →

Happy New Year from the Morro

Just about every American I know who’s been just about anywhere in Latin America baffles about how all the good real estate is the bad real estate. In the US, Continue reading →

Marketing “3rd World” Thrift

In 2009 I was talking with a friend of ours in Santa Elena de  Uairén, Venezuela just North of the Brazilian border. While we talked he described visiting an American Continue reading →

New Ecological Park for Rocinha: Public Intervention Worth Bragging About

When I first visited the construction site of the Parque Ecológico da Rocinha I was asked to not share photos since the government entities involved in its planning and construction Continue reading →

Public Space-Public Investment

It’s summertime where I live. And I get an extra dose of seasonal exuberance from my living room window into East City Park where the family reunions picnic, church groups Continue reading →

Limpa Brasil: Municipal Waste Management Under the Sambinha Influence

Last month I posted on how catadores–people who earn their living by picking through solid waste to glean and resell recyclables–in Brazil set a positive example of how personal thrift Continue reading →

The Thrift of Sambinha: Catadores and Waste Mitigation

“Or do without.” That’s the last line of the American axiom, left off of this World War II era poster promoting thriftiness in support of the war effort. It may Continue reading →

Sambinha Architecture, Biophysics, and Cheap Energy

To my friends and family who are unfamiliar with my town, I’ve often described it by asking them to picture the US in the pre-interstate highway era. It’d take about Continue reading →

Favelas, Foreigners and Due Diligence

If you haven’t seen some iteration or other of the “KONY 2012″ campaign yet, you have lived a dearly rare life in America over the last few months. Likely as Continue reading →

Já Era o Nem: So What’s Next for Zona Sul’s Favela Residents?

I have a friend, Antônio Carlos who lives with his little family in the jungle just above Rocinha, somehow more free from the socioeconomic messiness surrounding his friends and family Continue reading →

Tale of Two Transits

I recently ran into a video well worth checking out on the Abahlali baseMjondolo homepage. The video documents comments made by Bandile Mdlalose representing Abahlali baseMjondolo (The South African Shack Continue reading →

The Sambinha of Urban Density

This month, as our planet’s population jumped past 7 billion, our focus on population density –people per unit of land, and per natural resource—seems appropriately more acute. In the short Continue reading →

Arquitetura do Sambinha: Life, Ecology, and the Favela

Intro Post by Andrew Carman Being a newcomer to the study of architecture and urbanism, it was only relatively recently that I first heard someone wax emotional about the form Continue reading →