Letters to the Mayor: São Paulo
July 30 – August 27, 2016 | Pivô Art & Research, São Paulo, Brazil
Pivô Art and Research and Storefront for Art and Architecture present the exhibition Letters to the Mayor: São Paulo, curated by the architects Bruno de Almeida and Fernando Falcon.
The exhibition is part of a larger project conceived by Storefront for Art and Architecture, consisting of an itinerant show that already took place in cities such as New York (USA), Athens (Greece), Bogota (Colombia), Buenos Aires (Argentina), Panama City (Panama), Mexico City (Mexico), Taipei (Taiwan), among others. In each of these cities the exhibition featured a set of letters written by fifty local architects to their Mayor, expressing their ideas opinions and desires for the city.
São Paulo’s edition will strategically take place during the electoral campaigns for the Municipality of São Paulo. The letters will be exhibited at Pivô Art and Research, in the Copan building at the heart of the city, in a free exhibition accompanied by an intense program of conversations, round-tables and lectures that will take place during August. Afterwards all the exhibited letters will be sent to the Mayor’s office.
By bringing a set of relevant voices to the public awareness and to the agendas and desks of the potential mayors, the exhibition intends to intensify the discussion about the city at a crucial time for its future and for its citizens, amidst a complex political and economic moment for the country.
The group of invited architects and institutions offers a varied outline of the nuances that the architectural discipline can contain, including both consecrated and emerging names from fields such as the projectual, academic, theoretical, critical, artistic and curatorial.
23 Sul (André Sant’Anna, Gabriel Manzi, Ivo Magaldi, Lucas Girard, Luís Pompeo, Luiz Florence, Moreno Garcia, Tiago Oakley), Abílio Guerra, Aflalo/Gasperini Arquitetos (Roberto Aflalo Filho, Luiz Felipe Aflalo, Grazzieli Gomes, José Luiz Lemos), Agnaldo Farias, Andrade Morettin Arquitetos (Vinicius de Andrade, Marcelo Morettin), Apiacás Arquitetos (Anderson Freitas, Acácia Furuya, Pedro de Barros), AR Arquitetos (Marina Acayaba, Juan Pablo Rosenberg), Boldarini Arquitetos Associados (Marcos Boldarini, Lucas Nobre), Carlito Carvalhosa, Carlos Alberto Cerqueira Lemos, Ciro Pirondi, Cristiano Mascaro, Ermínia Maricato, FGMF (Fernando Forte, Lourenço Gimenes, Rodrigo Marcondes Ferraz), Francesco Perrotta-Bosch, Francisco Spadoni (Spadoni e Associados Arquitetura), Gabriel Kogan, GrupoSP (Alvaro Puntoni, João Sodré), Guilherme Wisnik, GTA (Grupo Técnico de Apoio) + MTST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto), Héctor Vigliecca (Vigliecca & Associados), Hereñú e Ferroni Arquitetos (Pablo Hereñú, Eduardo Ferroni), Hugo Segawa, Instituto Pólis (Margareth Uemura, Natasha Menegon), José Armênio (Instituto de Arquitetos do Brasil), Laura Sobral, Ligia Nobre + Coletivo UAP, Lizete Rubano, Lucas Simões, Luis Espallargas Gimenez, Marcio Kogan (Studio MK27), Marcos L. Rosa + Julia Masagão, Maria Cristina da Silva Leme, Martin Corullon (Metro Arquitetos Associados), MMBB Arquitetos (Milton Braga, Marta Moreira) + Fernando Martines + Luís Antônio Jorge, Mônica Junqueira de Camargo, Nadia Somekh, Nitsche Arquitetos (Lua Nitsche, Pedro Nitsche, João Nitsche, André Scarpa), Observatório de Remoções, Paulo Caruso, Piratininga Arquitetos Associados (João Beugger, José Armênio, Marcos Aldrighi, Renata Semin), Regina Meyer, Renato Cymbalista, Rodrigo Cerviño Lopez (Tacoa), Sérgio Ferro, SIAA (Cesar Shundi Iwamizu, Eduardo Gurian), Silvio Oksman (Oksman Arquitetos Associados), Terra e Tuma (Danilo Terra, Pedro Tuma, Fernanda Sakano), Triptyque Architecture (Carolina Bueno, Grégory Bousquet, Guillaume Sibaud, Olivier Raffaëlli), Vão Arquitetos (Anna Juni, Enk te Winkel, Gustavo Delonero), Vera Pallamin and Vitor César.
About Storefront for Art and Architecture:
Storefront for Art and Architecture, founded in 1982 by Kyong Park, in New York, USA, is an institution committed with the advancement of innovative and critical ideas at the intersection of architecture, art and design. As well as an experimental forum and exhibition space for activating and engaging emerging voices and promoting public discourse around issues effecting, influencing and challenging the built environment.
Storefront’s exhibitions, events, competitions, publications, and projects provide alternative platforms for dialogue and collaboration across disciplinary, geographic and ideological boundaries.
Throughout its history, the organization has investigated critical social issues such as public housing (1984), homelessness (1985), gender identity (1994), and has responded to geopolitical and economical conflicts and movements such as the Gulf War, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Occupy Wall Street movement (2011) from a design perspective, while offering emerging artists and architects the opportunity to present new ideas and exhibit innovative work. Over one thousand internationally recognized artists and architects have shown at Storefront, including Peter Cook, Diller+Scofidio, Tony Feher, Dan Graham, Coop Himmelblau, Alfredo Jaar, Kiki Smith, Lebbeus Woods, Enric Miralles and Carme Pinós, Eyal Weizman, Bjarke Ingels, Didier Fiuza Faustino among many others.
About Pivô:
About the curators:
Bruno de Almeida
1987, Brazil/ Portugal. Curator and architect. He is an alumnus of De Appel’s Curatorial Programme, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2018/19). Holds a Master’s degree in Architecture from the Accademia di Architettura, Mendrisio, Switzerland (2013) and a Bachelor degree in Architecture from the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Oporto, Portugal (2009).
Almeida is the founder and curator of the research/exhibition platforms ‘SITU’ (2015-2018) and ‘1:1’ (2018-ongoing), both in São Paulo, Brazil. SITU is a platform for artistic production and research that investigates the dialogue between art, architecture and the city as a tool to problematize socio-spatial aspects of contemporary urbanity. The project commissions site-specific works for the external public spaces of Galeria Leme, a building designed by the architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha. The project 1:1 commissions a series of bipartite works that simultaneously take place in an exhibition space inside Galeria Jaqueline Martins, and in a pre-existing location within the gallery’s neighborhood, this second site is chosen by each artist and already hosts its own daily functions.
Bruno de Almeida has developed projects with institutions such as: Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, USA; Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York, USA; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; 11th São Paulo Architecture Biennial, Brazil; Pivô Art and Research, São Paulo, Brazil, among others.
He participated in residencies such as: TATE Intensive, TATE Modern, London, UK (2018); Ideas City Arles, New Museum, New York, USA in collaboration with LUMA Foundation, Arles, France (2017); Curatorial Intensive Accra, Independent Curators International, New York, USA (2017); IMPACT17, PACT Zollverein, Essen, Germany (2017), among others.
Fernando Falcon
1977, Brazil. Holds a degree in Architecture from the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of São Paulo, Brazil. Since 2005, is a partner of the architecture office Tacoa Arquitetos (www.tacoa.com.br). Among the office’s projects are the art galleries Fortes Vilaça (2008) and Luisa Strina (2011), the cultural association Pivô (2013), the residential complex Vila Aspicuelta (2013), the competition for the headquarters of MIS-RJ (2009) and the spatial design of exhibitions such as Arte-Vida (2014), 31st Panorama of Brazilian Art (2009) and Casa 7 at Pivô (2015), among others. Tacoa was also part of the selection for the 33rd Panorama of Brazilian Art (2013) e developed the site-specific installation Jardineira (2015) as the core of the exhibition Liga 18 for the gallery Liga DF in Mexico City.
Cartas ao Prefeito São Paulo 