Last December (2010), ARCAM (director Maarten Kloos and project manager Flora van Gaalen) and architect and Brazil expert Paul Meurs visited Recife to meet some of the key persons of the project. At first we were overwhelmed by the humidity, the traffic and the feeling of entering a completely different universe. But after the first day - as we got sucked into the cities energy - Recife started to unravel itself to us bit by bit. This was ofcourse due to the warm welcome of our Recifian hosts: we met people from the University of Pernambuco, the municipality of Recife, the state of Pernambuco and the IAB (Instituto de Arquitetos do Brasil/the Brazilian 'BNA'). They took us on intensive tours through the city during which we discussed the current situation in Recife and Amsterdam and explained to each other how we are working on the future.
Recife is a city that consists of many different layers. There is the Dutch core of Bairro do Recife and Sao Antonio (former Mauritsstad), the Portuguese layer on top of this and ofcourse 'Brazilian' Recife that has grown to be the fourth biggest metropolitan area of Brazil. Recurrent subjects of the talks with our Brazilian counterparts were the omnipresence of the water in both our cities, the way we deal with heritage and the infrastructural challanges that we face. We decided to take these three themes - water, heritage and infrastructure - as the basis of our exchange project.
Flora van Gaalen
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