Centered on the development of architectural projects in favelas and peripheries, the work of Coletivo LEVANTE showcases a deep sensitivity to the unique characteristics and nuances of these environments. According to the group, "the recognition of what already exists and is attributed with values lived and earned by the favela residents — landscapes, constructions, identities, and relationships" is what they seek as the raw material for their projects. This approach is evident in projects such as Centro Cultural Lá da Favelinha and House in Pomar do Cafezal, winner of the 2023 Building of the Year Award by ArchDaily.
The Coletivo LEVANTE's team currently comprises Alan Franca, Amanda Castilho, Anna Lobato, Fernando Maculan, Marcos Franchinni, Nattalia Bom Conselho, Giovanna Camisassa, Helder Machado, Kdu dos Anjos, Maria Soalheiro, Marina Vilela, Matheus Angel, Pedro Assis, Rafael Yanni, and Ricardo Lobato. However, as demonstrated by LEVANTE's work, the network of professionals, suppliers, partners, and collaborators extends beyond the collective itself, proving to be a valuable factor in realizing their projects.
In an interview with ArchDaily, they discussed the challenges of working in peripheral contexts. Still, more importantly, they highlighted the opportunities and shared the learnings and experiences gathered over their six years of existence. Check out the interview below:
Susanna Moreira (ArchDaily): How did Coletivo LEVANTE come about?
Coletivo Levante: The origin stems from the convergence of two distinct actions. In 2007, Fernando Maculan, Rafael Yanni, and Mariza Machado Coelho initiated a series of projects in the Aglomerado da Serra and Morro das Pedras neighborhoods in Belo Horizonte through the firm MACh Arquitetos. Among these projects, the revitalization of Beco São Vicente stands out. It combined the creation of three small squares with spaces dedicated to the Association of Seamstresses of Aglomerado da Serra.
During this same period, Maculan joined Laboratório Piracema de Design, led by the artist Heloísa Crocco, which proposes research into form in Brazilian culture through knowledge exchanges between professionals with diverse academic backgrounds and artisans holding traditional knowledge and skills. As one of the outcomes of Piracema, in 2017 Maculan was invited by SEBRAE-MG to work with urban communities and organize a fashion upcycling workshop in Aglomerado da Serra. The REMEXE brand emerged from this initiative, which now, directly and indirectly, impacts dozens of residents.
In organizing the workshop, Maculan first encountered Kdu dos Anjos, the artist behind the Lá da Favelinha Cultural Center. To give the building as much freedom as possible in the face of the imagined uses for the center, Maculan proposed a joint action of architects to rethink the project and form a network of partnerships for the feasibility of the works. At that moment, the collective was conceptualized, a small nucleus formed by Fernando Maculan, Joana Magalhães, and Paula Zasnicoff.
SM: What are your areas of operation?
CL: Coletivo LEVANTE has been dedicated to architectural projects in favela and periphery contexts, with an emphasis on programs of a collective nature or, even in private contexts, those that can manifest as an expandable or replicable process to a larger number of people in these territories and communities.
We acknowledge the need to address the most basic and recurring spatial and infrastructural problems in favelas, but we also experience a coexistence that brings out affections, dialogues, values, and aspirations for an inclusive and participatory transformation. Acting in presence rather than absence; in potential rather than scarcity — these are our strategies for guiding projects and works at all stages.
We have also embraced the idea of recycling in different forms of operation, such as in the design of furniture for the Cultural Center and the parklet in front of it, built with metal desks from the municipality's unusable stockpile, as part of a partnership with Movimento Gentileza and Coletivo Micrópolis. In both cases, residents of the community, mostly children and young people, were directly involved in the creation and production processes.
Coletivo LEVANTE also organizes and designs exhibitions, such as the one presenting the work of Lá da Favelinha at the Museum of Fashion in Belo Horizonte (MUMO). Our areas of operation are constantly evolving, guided by the opportunities that the time spent in each territory can bring to light.
SM: LEVANTE defines itself as a collective focused on developing projects in favelas and peripheries. What are the main challenges and the biggest learnings from designing in this context?
CL: The most sensitive challenge is to establish bridges over the barriers between favelas and other parts of the city. We seek to overcome it through presence, listening, and affection. There are also physical and spatial challenges in dealing with the precariousness of access, mobility, and infrastructure.
However, we prefer to say that there are numerous opportunities for the collective when designing in the context of favelas. Apart from the structural challenges, which exceed the scope of our practice, we perceive that overcoming obstacles can occur through the exchange of knowledge between residents and professionals from various disciplines who can contribute, in a "two-way street," their expertise.
A synthesis of the learnings is encapsulated in the form of the film Where Will You Live in 2050?, produced in 2017 by Fernando Maculan upon an invitation from CASACOR Minas for a series of lectures on the theme Architecture for Non-Architects. The title question was made to residents and visitors of the Serra favela and brought to light a series of positive perspectives on the way of life in the peripheries and what these communities have to teach other parts of the city, such as the value attributed to property usage, the shared management by residents, cooperation in collective efforts for housing construction, the true sense of community, the unique relationship with the landscape, and the growing awareness that the favela has its values and identities.
SM: Centro Cultural Lá da Favelinha was the first project of LEVANTE and the result of a multidisciplinary effort. Is this an approach you seek to bring to projects with other programs?
CL: Centro Cultural Lá da Favelinha encompassed, from conception to post-occupation, a complex and integrated action. Alongside the architecture team, lighting, landscaping, structural consulting, and art professionals contributed voluntarily. Our work also involved forming a network of suppliers and direct supporters, who contributed with donations of materials and services for the construction, such as Construtora UNI and the crowdfunding campaign called Levante Favelinha, which raised one hundred and twenty thousand reais.
With intermittent financial flow, construction and the execution of furniture and textile elements extended for almost three years, requiring a significant effort in technical supervision until its completion in 2021. However, Coletivo LEVANTE’s work does not end at this point. Since then, we have participated in actions of the Cultural Center and accompanied visits from architecture students from various parts of Brazil.
The experience with this project proved that organizing a network of professionals and partner companies is a powerful tool for project and construction feasibility. In addition to specialized work, the Collective produces technical information, models, and drawings for the first materialization of proposed concepts, which is essential in establishing institutional partnerships and seeking various forms of financing. We aim to adopt and adapt this approach in other programs with different degrees of complexity, specificity and involved audiences.
SM: How does the collective's design process work? In what way, or to what extent, do the dynamics between the favela and community life influence this work?
CL: For everything we have done so far, whether due to the intermittent availability of the collective's members and their voluntary collaborators or due to the discontinuous financial flow in the execution of the works, we like to repeat an expression that carries a pun with a dance style very present in the favela: one step at a time.
It's interesting to consider that the extended time dedicated to work in favelas allows for continuous reflection on construction and provides space for adaptations and contingencies. We realize that the waiting time is often responsible for the maturation of an idea around a process that never truly stops. Analogously, this step-by-step process is also symbolized in the LEVANTE logo. The lines correspond to the mortar of the joint placed brick by brick, in the predominant construction system in the favelas where we have been operating.
Regarding the influence of community life dynamics on our work, we highlight two approaches that particularly interest us: subverting our professional practice and including recycling as a way to save resources and value what already exists, a culture that can be identified in the favelas, where upcycling was already established long before this term became commonly adopted.
Nothing in the community is static: stirring, reorganizing, adjusting, and adapting are concepts that are at the core of the dynamic day-to-day life of the favela. This principle is directly applied in the furniture of Lá da Favelinha Cultural Center and the agricultural screen banners executed by the REMEXE workshop. In the same space, our work seeks to create a scenic architecture of floors, walls, and ceilings that configure true "bodies of color" (clearly referencing Hélio Oiticica), which should reveal and exalt the dancers, models, entrepreneurs, and artists who find in Favelinha a bridge to the world.
SM: How do you perceive the relationships between the center and periphery in the context of architecture and cities? How to seek strategies that distance themselves from the imposing and hegemonic logics of acting in peripheral contexts?
CL: It is essential to reverse the understanding of people and places in Brazil that are labeled as "marginalized" due to economic, racial, gender, or territorial issues, leading them to occupy their center, a symbolic place of belonging and identity. Today, more than 17 million Brazilians live in favelas. The certainty that Brazil can become an example of social transformation and exaltation of the values of historically overlooked communities, whose practices can be highlighted and strengthened by actions like ours, is what drives us today.
What distances us from the imposing and hegemonic models of acting in peripheral contexts is, first and foremost, the way we enter the community, which is through local leadership whose work is already affirmed and recognized by residents. Next, we seek to establish a relationship governed by the continued presence of Collective members, from the initial movement of decision-making with the community, through the elaboration, development, and feasibility of projects, to post-occupation actions of the buildings.
SM: The House in Pomar do Cafezal has gained significant recognition around the world and recently won the Building of The Year award from ArchDaily in the "Best House" category. Could you comment on some of the strategies used in the project to deal with limited terrain, topography, solar incidence, comfort, and other issues related to the context?
CL: The impact of the Casa do Pomar do Cafezal following the Building of The Year award has been a subject of constant reflection by the Collective, especially in listening to community residents, whose reports often go beyond the architectural attributes they recognize in the house.
When viewed from within Aglomerado da Serra, the movement appears as an expression of pride, as headlines from all national media outlets stop disseminating unfavorable and sensationalist news focused on tragedies and crime, to address something surprisingly positive coming from the same place. There's also a discovery sparked by the fact that the dignity and craftsmanship they perceive in the House at Pomar do Cafezal is something achievable by the community.
The spatial structure of the house responds to an intended relationship with the landscape and the neighborhood. The house is organized around two 3x3m modules on two levels beside the slab accessed by a sailor's ladder on the third level. Outside the modules, adjusting to the oblique limits of the terrain, the service area and the bathroom are conceived as "extensions" that disobey the orthogonality of the house. Regarding the topography, we established three levels from the highest point reached by the alley, so that the implantation would be staggered and with minimal earth movement.
However, it is in the deliberate choice of a common and recurrent constructive repertoire in the favela that the project seems to approach its goal of becoming accessible and replicable. The project utilizes construction techniques seen in the favelas, such as reinforced concrete structures built on pile foundations, exposed perforated ceramic bricks, slate countertops and finishes, iron frames, "red" burnt cement floors, and tiled walls in wet areas. These are solutions often implemented by favela residents, who are also heavily involved in construction projects throughout the city.
SM: Could you talk about some of the ongoing projects?
CL: In Serrão, the priority projects for 2023 include the House at Beco Dourado, the Favelinha Records music studio, the Torre de Bebel Art Gallery, and the Canão Sports Court, a space dedicated to sports and culture that can serve as a complementary structure for the integrated education of nearby municipal schools. The collective also conducted a study for the Favelinha Shopping Center at Belo Horizonte's City Market to bring to other audiences what is produced in the favela through the actions of the Cultural Center.
Beyond the boundaries of Serrão, the collective initiated the project for the Buraco Quente Community Sports Court in Belo Horizonte and at the candomblé terreiro of Quilombo Manzo Ngunzo Kaiango in Santa Luzia. In Morro do Santo Amaro, Rio de Janeiro, we developed a study for the Melhoria Square in partnership with Instituto Ademáfia; in São Paulo, we conducted three studies in the eastern zone for the project call organized by the Fundação Tide Setubal and BlendLab for +Lapena Habitar, including two mixed-use buildings and the renovation of a footbridge over the train tracks; additionally, we are also about to start projects in Salvador and Manaus.
More than fifteen years after the constructions in Beco São Vicente, one of LEVANTE's purposes in Aglomerado da Serra’s context is to establish new forms of community use and management of these buildings. Rethinking an old project, now from the inside out, with our friends from Lá da Favelinha.
