The research network gathered by Professor Silvio Macedo under the QUAPÁ Lab and the studies of open space systems and urban forms in Brazil

Abstract

In the 1970s, the Brazilian Miranda Magnoli structures the Group of Disciplines Landscape and Environment of the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo and the concept of open spaces. Thus, it starts the study of opens spaces and urban forms. Silvio Macedo, for five decades, emphasizes the articulation between the urban forms and open spaces. In this way, it takes the open spaces as a system and also as an urban infrastructure. Macedo and team structure a network of researchers in universities across the country, spreading these concepts and making new researches. The approach has similarities with other author, but it is also a research for a new way to understand the particular process of strong growth of many Brazilian cities, where the circumstantial factors are considered alongside structural ones. This work gives an account of the trajectory of this group, the main concepts and methods which it works and the general results of thirteen network research, with emphasis on the central and articulating role of Prof. Silvio Macedo. Some results indicate the need for new planning strategies that seek to articulate the agents that produce open spaces and built spaces constitutive of Brazilian urban forms.

Keywords:
Open space systems; Urban form; Silvio Macedo; Lab QUAPÁ; Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo