In the August-July 2010 edition of The Economist, Bjarke Ingels and Paul Nakazawa examined Brazil’s potential to undergo a “new urban revolution” with the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics Games. With these two major events being hosted by the same country, Brazil will need to implement long term strategies for properly equipping the areas. Yet, the real solution lies in the country’s “improvements for the large local population rather than merely servicing the temporary needs of the global tourists and the world press.”
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These thoughts will be the focus of Ingels and Nakazawa’s fall studio at Harvard this upcoming semester where they will challenge design students and business students to create self-sustaining and efficient models for Rio. The exercise will urge students to create practical ideas that will be profitable on not only a social or environment scale, but also on an economical scale.
The strategies cannot be quick fixes to patch Brazil’s problems. Brazil needs thoroughly developed ideas that can grow and still be successful long after the events have run their course. Ingels and Nakazawa understand that this is the perfect opportunity for Rio to invest in a complete urban upgrade, and it will be exciting to see how their mentoring will influence the studio.
“If we have an interest in social issues we need to design business models that improve the living conditions of the poor as a byproduct of a profitable process. We need to design eco systems – systems of both economy and ecology – that operate like urban perpetual motion engines – in dependant of charity but rather processes triggered by investment,” explained Bjarke and Nakazawa.
