Prototype City Sao Paolo

Following our initial selection to be part of an international collaboration Prototype City as part of the Coventry City of Culture 2021, we were delighted to be invited by the British Council to team up with Brazil based architects CoCriança for Prototype City Sao Paolo 2022, to co-design a street with local school children.

Our team led by Alessandro Columbano of Birmingham based Co:lab, and Anna Parker from Intervention Architecture, working together with CoCriança to provide inputs into design and school workshops as the interventions evolved up to completion.

The project creates a series of playful interventions co-designed and built with the schoolchildren to the entrance of their school on Ervin do Sereno street, Brazil.

Inspired by the vibrant colours of renowned local architect Lina Bo Bardi, as well as the need due to environmental factors to provide shading along the street zone, a series of fabric canopies and totem poles were introduced with playful ground-scape alternating in levels and inviting interaction, to move and play within.

An exhibition of the process of our partnership with the key team members was exhibited as part of the Sao Paolo Biennale 2022, with further information made into a film documenting the project and its social benefit when built locally: to watch the film click here.