Drawing board, pencil, “T” rule, colored pens or AutoCad, it doesn’t matter, the working tool is “creativity”, which will always be indispensable for any architect that aims to be in active. However, we cannot close our eyes when facing the big changes that have occurred along the past years in the area and which definitively marked this professional’s “modus operandi”. Constant upgrades, intense information trading, market vision, network, agility, power of compatibility and study viabilities with precise results, adequate solutions for the objective and the product’s functionality wished to be achieved, are some of the embedded ingredients in the desire package that constructing companies and incorporators seek in an architect… It is always necessary to amaze the consumer. Investors today seek for more than just a well planned architectonic project, they look for proactive and participative, sensible and experienced professionals, to better define the product’s concept, together with the real state consultant and the publicist. It is also hoped for the architect to use a conceptually multifaceted vision and not only technique and business that formerly will opine about what the market can or cannot absorb. It is a game where there are no risk boundaries and no details may pass by unnoticed, since the cauldron’s survival, which daily moves billions of reais in investments, depends on the “perfect shot”, where the product must be “round” like the target, so the sale can be a predictable result and if possible, inevitable in reason of attraction, justness, enchantment and certainty of the return achieved.

Who understood the message and is making the homework certainly will have better chances of ensuring a long life business, enjoying work, better yet, transforming the act of projecting in a realization of quality, made with pleasure and lots of love.

As an architect and urbanist I may say that I have projected a bit of everything through these 38 years acting in the real state market. Also as curious as I am, I accumulated in my baggage experience with incorporation, construction materials’ commerce and commercial installation, which helped me learn deeply the essence of the architecture and construction universe. During the harvest of interior design projects I dedicate myself currently to especial projects, which among all I highlight the commercial interiors, to be more specific, delicatessens. I remember as if it was yesterday. I had just returned from Paris and totally delighted with what I saw out there. Real refined emporiums, where a bit of everything could be found, such as good wines, especial cheeses, seasoning, spices, chocolates, and other products that I have never heard of before. Those places could not be considered supermarkets, but yet they were not similar to any grocery stores or bakeries I have visited in my whole life as son of a Spanish merchant. I returned to Brazil with that piece of news in my head, without even knowing how to name it, while telling everything to an old Spanish friend of mine, who at that time owned a bakery and a sweet-shop in Barra, one of Salvador’s most traditional neighborhood. This friend put me in charge of his establishment’s reconstruction. But, more than just changing its visual, what I really wanted was him to permit me to help by putting into practice the kind of commerce focused on people with good purchasing power, who can afford special products, with better quality than others found in supermarkets.

After insisting a lot, he handed to me an unoccupied deposit so I could project the store. The business which started out with 120m2 was so successful that later on we decided to use the other side of the house, where a bakery was kept, and we transformed everything into a 400m2 grocery store. And this was how we created 30 years ago, I believe, the first concept of grocery store in Brazil. The store came out to be synonym of sophistication and quality, which resulted in eight new addresses in town. The formula I won’t give it away not even under torture, but I can tell that this model of grocery store is custom-made to attend the profile of differentiated, informed, gastronome and well tasted clients that find pleasure in being reference, in personally selecting each product with nimbleness and refined habits, and by seeing and being seen. Son there are needs for gondolas lower than the common ones, enabling a panoramic view of the surrounding. The shop store needs to offer an atmosphere that assimilates your own style, being cozy, with direct illumination that enriches exposed products and highlights in a natural way its’ packaging colors and sorts with a variety of intensities, going from the hottest to the coldest depending on what is intended to be noticed. I draw attention to the ceiling height which suggests an oxygenated and comfortable space, flavored and with soft music focusing on aggregating everything to the concept, treatment and values that awakens the consuming desire. The commercial interior’s project also emphasize the white, the glass and the metal elements in order to minimize the visual pollution that normally

takes place in shops that brings up a large amount of products of all sizes, colors and brands, and also passes to the client a hygienic sensation of the ambient. For that, the products’ and equipments’ choices are always carefully made based on several researches, travels to international fairs and specialized business industries. The architectural project of all stores is composed by an external garage, production areas, the bread making space, the confectionery, main kitchen, fridge chambers, deposits, staff’s room, administrative office, a technical storey with equipments central, and the grocery store itself. For all reasons involving the grocery shop’s concept, our model exceeded all borders of Bahia and is currently present in other similar establishments projected by us for companies in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and more recently in Manaus. Originally Published by REVISTA CONSTRUIR NORDESTE

Thoughts about the future estate market The 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s... 2000, finally 2009. What has change in the last 10 years in way of being of people? Making a retrospective we have on 50’s a big reconstruction era post world war. On 60’s we have also a revolution period with the emergence of counterculture, which has broken much paradigms. We had also the dictatorship in 64 that, in other way, caused fear and censure on Brazilian society. The 70’s were painted for the repression and cold war. Following, on 80’s, we have the end of dictatorship, big inflation, Sarney Plan, Collor Plan and Real Plan. Only in 2000 we start to try the economic balance. Competition, competence, communication, information technology, economy, capacity, formation, environment, market, style, media, population density, violence, security, transportation, feeding, time, culture, solidarity, stability, sedentary, production, sustainability, humanization, civilization, assistance, health, hope, love, home, recourse, peace, work, leisure, sport, family, company, study, job, personal marketing, success, friends... Are you paying attention to everything? With so much to worry and so many to do, what will be the principal values on your current life? How would we be in 2010? What will be the new decade? Which would be the tools or “weapons” used to confront with the competition in these next two years, before the new decade that is coming? The appearance or “concept” image will keep coming first and selling always before the competence? How would be in the next two years? What references the “communication” is going to use to this society so multifaceted by the behavior and values changing on the first decade of the 21st century? What is the influence of evolution on Information Technology about human behavior? How the economy would behave related to the production and commercialization even bigger of uncommon property, virtual services and use rights with no physical property? When you think that your “capacity” or formation would be enough to face the future considering that world doesn’t stops? These are so many questions inside our collective knowledge. Talking about environment, everyone will have to choose for which world produce, for which world direct our interests and concerns. The “A Way” is direct ourselves to the “catastrophic”; Green house effect, storms, floods, blizzards, thawing, forest fires, earthquakes etc. The “B way” is turn ourselves to the “environmental” world where men and countries are committed with the preservation, the elimination of pollution, and the recuperation of the planet environment. And now, here’s the question: what will be your attitudes in this new year? Have you thought about that or you are going to pretend that it is not whit you? To the next decade, starting with the “transition” already in 2009, asking: with so many values changes, the market will reflect only aspirations and wishes imposed to the consumers or the consumers will give personality to the new markets? Style is a market invention to sell or is the necessity to change and even try to be exclusive in this big jungle of human being? Media. Every time a new media appears that doesn’t replace the old ones, but complements. But, in front the acceleration of current life, and the almost dismissal of the conventional object that brings information, this one, that almost materialize in sound and virtual image, how do you see the communication in the next decade? To this “brave new world” parodying Audou Huxley, that we’ll be working. To this real estate market whose face we imagine and have to identify inside so many in this much possible, that we’ll produce, Project and construct if we want to stay alive and financially healthy, if we want keep having success in these new times, the “modern times”, not the Charlie Chaplin ones, but the ones that are coming, thank’s God!

Thoughts about the future estate market The 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s... 2000, finally 2009. What has change in the last 10 years in way of being of people? Making a retrospective we have on 50’s a big reconstruction era post world war. On 60’s we have also a revolution period with the emergence of counterculture, which has broken much paradigms. We had also the dictatorship in 64 that, in other way, caused fear and censure on Brazilian society. The 70’s were painted for the repression and cold war. Following, on 80’s, we have the end of dictatorship, big inflation, Sarney Plan, Collor Plan and Real Plan. Only in 2000 we start to try the economic balance. Competition, competence, communication, information technology, economy, capacity, formation, environment, market, style, media, population density, violence, security, transportation, feeding, time, culture, solidarity, stability, sedentary, production, sustainability, humanization, civilization, assistance, health, hope, love, home, recourse, peace, work, leisure, sport, family, company, study, job, personal marketing, success, friends... Are you paying attention to everything? With so much to worry and so many to do, what will be the principal values on your current life? How would we be in 2010? What will be the new decade? Which would be the tools or “weapons” used to confront with the competition in these next two years, before the new decade that is coming? The appearance or “concept” image will keep coming first and selling always before the competence? How would be in the next two years? What references the “communication” is going to use to this society so multifaceted by the behavior and values changing on the first decade of the 21st century? What is the influence of evolution on Information Technology about human behavior? How the economy would behave related to the production and commercialization even bigger of uncommon property, virtual services and use rights with no physical property? When you think that your “capacity” or formation would be enough to face the future considering that world doesn’t stops? These are so many questions inside our collective knowledge. Talking about environment, everyone will have to choose for which world produce, for which world direct our interests and concerns. The “A Way” is direct ourselves to the “catastrophic”; Green house effect, storms, floods, blizzards, thawing, forest fires, earthquakes etc. The “B way” is turn ourselves to the “environmental” world where men and countries are committed with the preservation, the elimination of pollution, and the recuperation of the planet environment. And now, here’s the question: what will be your attitudes in this new year? Have you thought about that or you are going to pretend that it is not whit you? To the next decade, starting with the “transition” already in 2009, asking: with so many values changes, the market will reflect only aspirations and wishes imposed to the consumers or the consumers will give personality to the new markets? Style is a market invention to sell or is the necessity to change and even try to be exclusive in this big jungle of human being? Media. Every time a new media appears that doesn’t replace the old ones, but complements. But, in front the acceleration of current life, and the almost dismissal of the conventional object that brings information, this one, that almost materialize in sound and virtual image, how do you see the communication in the next decade? To this “brave new world” parodying Audou Huxley, that we’ll be working. To this real estate market whose face we imagine and have to identify inside so many in this much possible, that we’ll produce, Project and construct if we want to stay alive and financially healthy, if we want keep having success in these new times, the “modern times”, not the Charlie Chaplin ones, but the ones that are coming, thank’s God!

Do the new, again Do the new in every project is what the market waits from who accumulated experiences doing architecture by years, having the habit to always surprise from a solid foundation with never seen and steady projects in front of the superlative adjectives with try to honor him or try him hardly. But, would anyone ever ask where is exactly “the new” in the architectonic projects that we see around in the last years? The hurry would say that it can been see on the pages of the last edition of “Architecture Now” where are the countless wonders that are been build out there in the world, full of audacities and pretensions, in a huge constructive waste on behalf of a shape and an excessive challenge to the gravity with such a big value, that creates the “Weightlifter Architecture”. All of this, without saying the unnecessary abuse of sophisticated materials that only elevates the cost of the buildings to unthinkable prices. Search the “new, again” or always as an obsession, as a distinction necessity is closer to the search again for the new, as a success recognize by any price, with no clear purpose of a worthy, edifying and significant aim to anyone, besides that who does. Search the new brings implicit a “why?”, “for Who?”, “for each reason?”. Unless doesn’t make sense. Before everything, what is “the new”? Maybe that thing different of all the things done, seen or tasted before? Would really be new what is in highlights only because the materials that were used, new dimensions and function multiplicity? No, not really! All of these qualities can go together and present in something not necessary new. We’re tired to see repeated and redone projects, solutions, proposes, only recycled and masked with sofistications like the described sooner that only make them different, but “be different isn’t be new!”. The new is related to the future. Perhaps, we’re living a moment of lot of things on the display and a little on the storage, as Said, wisely, George Carlin, the thinker. Do the new, requires, besides the structural and aesthetic change, as a basic necessity, the change, mostly of attitude and position of who does, to proceed the innovation in the essence of what want to produce. It’s a competent and responsible futurology exercise based on the sedimentation of information, many observations, study, statistics and searches together a big dose of creative intuition. I, want with this text, do a provocation to the restless architects, as me, who are searching “do the new” in the essence and not “on frontage”, sorry for the joke. So, thinking about new is an exercise that many times we don’t learn in school. It comes from the inside, the individual search. And in architecture this is an indispensable condition, because we project with feet in the present and head in the future. So, I make an invitation to everyone dive in your inside to find truly “the new” besides “the new, again”. As said an architect, Frank Lloyd Wright on the 40’s, “the architect has to be a prophet. A prophet in the literal sense of the word. If he can’t see at list ten years from now don’t call him architect.”

Mirror, mirror on the wall I was absorbed in my tasks in the middle of the afternoon, blueprints, printed e-mails, newspapers and magazines clippings, daily mail, and something else. For now it’s ok, don’t be scared, this is a typical desk of a person who has to make decisions, everybody put something on. Sometimes because want to resolve something or just because want to get over of that… Yes, what can be done? All right! A coffee to make a pause in the day, a cut in the production of cortisol to not loose the memory and here in the abstract of my great minutes I see myself in front of two articles that were resting as well. The first one caught my attention for bringing an image of a beautiful biblical painting made by Michelangelo, underlined by a provocative title: “Loyal Professional” which started with the phrase “Selling is not to amateurs”. This one reduced what comes next: “Sell the untouchable (publicity, design, architecture, etc), it’s almost a divine job”. The author was challenging even more… Wanna see? “Product”, let’s put in this way, is everything that you can touch, smell, see, even closer. In other way “Services”, where I fit, as a service provider, the whole thing is different. You will only know after buy and wait to be done, what will be a product, so you can have an idea if you did or did not a good deal, what contradicts Philip Kotler – marketing pope (also mentioned in the article), “product is everything that fit to the client necessities”. The product result of this agreement maybe can’t explode, but can be a bomb! For sure wasn’t what you’re looking for when you hired. “Services” are like this, they are not on the stores or supermarkets shelves, can’t be packed and sometimes as a label or guarantee it only has the name of the contracted. This entire thing frights me. Sometimes I freeze only thinking about the client, consumer, contracting or potential victim insecurity in front the necessity of hiring a service… And then I wonder: as a service provider am I doing the right thing? Am I surprising for the good quality of what I do? Couldn’t I add more values to the product? Am I position and acting in the best way? Am I knowing how to introduce myself? Am I following competently the post-service and letting the clients satisfy? There are numberless questions. It is need a non-stop and systematic work with efficient quality actualization. As it wasn’t enough, because all of us know, the article finish with the sentence “In the heaven there’s place only for the real good ones!”. I’m not loosing my serenity or my hope, because, though I don’t tell anyone, when I’m only with myself, I even think that I’m one of the good ones. But, still dive in this thoughts, I take a look in the second article about corporative environment, wrote by Luiz Marins with the title: “Take a time to the essentials things in life”. The text starts with the phrase “It is true that world today is stressing, busy and even merciless”. Not for me, my friend! Was once… It was when I used to run, I don’t know where, compete with myself and another million of unknown people, unless I didn’t it none sunshine would hit me and I wouldn’t have a place in the world for me. Ai, ai, ai… I just read an article that tells me “you can’t stop!”. And now, come Mr. Marins telling me “Stressing, tired, in bad mood and who doesn’t sleep well can’t develop the necessary creativity to win”. And ends telling that “time is a matter of preference”. I know this too, but who said I am stressed? My friend, it’s been a long time ago I just do what I want and what gives me pleasure. I learn this is the only way you can be through the bests! Doing with pleasure, attitude and hunger what you like. So, he still says “You need to find a time to you, to your family, to your recreation and your leisure”. Then, my friend, after this, half of the world stays with no ground and the other half starts to condemn themselves. By this time, back to my grounded projects trying make them touch the sky, I fell in my encouraging reality of doing what I like when eyes cheat me and run through the last lines of the text righted by Marins that says: “Aren’t you proving yourself that you are a super hero who only think about work, work and work? Take a time to the essentials things in life!”. Well, look at this! What is more essential in life than love? Love the lover, love the family, the friends, the beauty, the divine… Love what you love to do even because it’s not prove that laziness take anybody to anywhere. For this reason, I don’t go to the battle in the mornings. I’m not fighting for food, don’t kill a lion everyday, but I enjoy the pleasure of doing what I like until I can’t anymore, because through the essentials things of life there’s have fun with what you choose as a job and love to work at what you choose to have fun, and maybe became the best, not for competition, but for doing with more pleasure! Life is this teeter-totter and the good only is very good because there is the very bad. For this reason, in highs and lows, darks and lights, straights and curves, I keep having fun, working seriously and lovely, my Architecture.

Mirror, mirror on the wall I was absorbed in my tasks in the middle of the afternoon, blueprints, printed e-mails, newspapers and magazines clippings, daily mail, and something else. For now it’s ok, don’t be scared, this is a typical desk of a person who has to make decisions, everybody put something on. Sometimes because want to resolve something or just because want to get over of that… Yes, what can be done? All right! A coffee to make a pause in the day, a cut in the production of cortisol to not loose the memory and here in the abstract of my great minutes I see myself in front of two articles that were resting as well. The first one caught my attention for bringing an image of a beautiful biblical painting made by Michelangelo, underlined by a provocative title: “Loyal Professional” which started with the phrase “Selling is not to amateurs”. This one reduced what comes next: “Sell the untouchable (publicity, design, architecture, etc), it’s almost a divine job”. The author was challenging even more… Wanna see? “Product”, let’s put in this way, is everything that you can touch, smell, see, even closer. In other way “Services”, where I fit, as a service provider, the whole thing is different. You will only know after buy and wait to be done, what will be a product, so you can have an idea if you did or did not a good deal, what contradicts Philip Kotler – marketing pope (also mentioned in the article), “product is everything that fit to the client necessities”. The product result of this agreement maybe can’t explode, but can be a bomb! For sure wasn’t what you’re looking for when you hired. “Services” are like this, they are not on the stores or supermarkets shelves, can’t be packed and sometimes as a label or guarantee it only has the name of the contracted. This entire thing frights me. Sometimes I freeze only thinking about the client, consumer, contracting or potential victim insecurity in front the necessity of hiring a service… And then I wonder: as a service provider am I doing the right thing? Am I surprising for the good quality of what I do? Couldn’t I add more values to the product? Am I position and acting in the best way? Am I knowing how to introduce myself? Am I following competently the post-service and letting the clients satisfy? There are numberless questions. It is need a non-stop and systematic work with efficient quality actualization. As it wasn’t enough, because all of us know, the article finish with the sentence “In the heaven there’s place only for the real good ones!”. I’m not loosing my serenity or my hope, because, though I don’t tell anyone, when I’m only with myself, I even think that I’m one of the good ones. But, still dive in this thoughts, I take a look in the second article about corporative environment, wrote by Luiz Marins with the title: “Take a time to the essentials things in life”. The text starts with the phrase “It is true that world today is stressing, busy and even merciless”. Not for me, my friend! Was once… It was when I used to run, I don’t know where, compete with myself and another million of unknown people, unless I didn’t it none sunshine would hit me and I wouldn’t have a place in the world for me. Ai, ai, ai… I just read an article that tells me “you can’t stop!”. And now, come Mr. Marins telling me “Stressing, tired, in bad mood and who doesn’t sleep well can’t develop the necessary creativity to win”. And ends telling that “time is a matter of preference”. I know this too, but who said I am stressed? My friend, it’s been a long time ago I just do what I want and what gives me pleasure. I learn this is the only way you can be through the bests! Doing with pleasure, attitude and hunger what you like. So, he still says “You need to find a time to you, to your family, to your recreation and your leisure”. Then, my friend, after this, half of the world stays with no ground and the other half starts to condemn themselves. By this time, back to my grounded projects trying make them touch the sky, I fell in my encouraging reality of doing what I like when eyes cheat me and run through the last lines of the text righted by Marins that says: “Aren’t you proving yourself that you are a super hero who only think about work, work and work? Take a time to the essentials things in life!”. Well, look at this! What is more essential in life than love? Love the lover, love the family, the friends, the beauty, the divine… Love what you love to do even because it’s not prove that laziness take anybody to anywhere. For this reason, I don’t go to the battle in the mornings. I’m not fighting for food, don’t kill a lion everyday, but I enjoy the pleasure of doing what I like until I can’t anymore, because through the essentials things of life there’s have fun with what you choose as a job and love to work at what you choose to have fun, and maybe became the best, not for competition, but for doing with more pleasure! Life is this teeter-totter and the good only is very good because there is the very bad. For this reason, in highs and lows, darks and lights, straights and curves, I keep having fun, working seriously and lovely, my Architecture.

The charge and the bonus It’s been many carnivals since the golden years when everything was allowed respecting the good sense. Without so many laws and every joy was permitted until the neighbor’s wall, yes, since the old FAU/BA – Urbanism and Architecture College of Bahia still occupy narrow sheds of pressed wood on Federação’s neighbor where today the steel and concrete feet are remain fixed, where lot of water had passing down the bridge and many summers and Christmas have already gone. Good old times, let me with a pathetic face reminding Casimiro de Abreu, lived and well keep emotions, outstanding recordings, declared passions in strong flicks in colors of adolescent or precocious and pretentious “adultescent”. Used to listen Bossa Nova and MPB with Chico Buarque, Ivan Lins and Gonzaguinha. In books we were introduce to the writers Gorki, Dostoyewsky, Puskin, and also to the architects Mies, Frank, Corbusier, over there, Lúcio and Oscar here. In 64 after March 31st, Vilanova Artigas calls the attention to the FAU/Brasília, the education reform happens, São Paulo breathes concrete with Paulo Mendes, Otake, Miguel Juliano, Teperman, Rino, Demétrio, Vasco, Zanettini steel devout nowadays… Oh God I’m so unfair! I should mention so many other colleagues, before and after these reminding that by the same time at Rio de Janeiro, Joaquim Guedes, Paulo Casé. Índio da Costa, Sergio Bernardes and much more even in other places, give, with same relevance and great talent, their contributions that mark in a solid way the architectonic history of our cities, our country and our private lives, specially mine as an architecture student, out of the way where the things used to happen, Rio/São Paulo. By this time, me, here at the old São Salvador, as Caymmi sang, when was ask about what study had to listen the comment: Ha! Architecture… You’re studying to “drawing” houses, isn’t it? It is that, not more not less, except to some few informed people, I mean, people who study; “doctors” as were call that ones with no title, but with power and money, this is how it was. Attention! Don’t confuse with “coronéis” that is another thing, well, the important is, though time weren’t good because the pseudo binary politicalization, made by the yankee Americanism and the antagonistic militancy of the knowledge left support by the colleagues pro scythe and hammer, both from inside to out but assuming as nationalists, as the white religion catechists did when tried force the Catholicism while the black people, the Umbanda and the Candomblé, left nothing to the real sun burnt Brazilians Tupã lovers. Well, “as everything that was good come from outside”, basic rule or common voice in this occasion, imagine what happen with the architecture? By the way, let’s be fair with Severiano Porto, so I won’t let this sin extend, with the license of the word, had lost through the forest in the north of Brazil, letting himself influence by the “OCAS”, first real vernacular nationalist architecture, to create the more authentic Brazilian architecture, what provided deserved and fair prizes. Backing to our architecture and to 60’s/70’s of concreticism or brutalism of Paulista architecture of 70’s as it was remember, the times was nervous, anxious, the TOP much repression and thousand censure pretensions, Nyemayer and Brasília were now measure to everything and obligatory presence in every chat group where were talking about fashion, art and mostly, architecture. Some, love tirelessly, others critiquing in an acid and violent way, but, everyone and always in a passion way and almost always based on the anxious way on the monthly wait magazine “A Ácropole”, architectonic bible for who didn’t have access to the foreigner L’Architecture, D’Aujourd’hui, Domus, etc in a way to always be in touch with the last word about modern, vanguard, innovation. The time and the belief was in the modernists, so, our architecture lasts influenced by many masters like Kenzo, Corbusier, Khan, Stirling, Frank, Mies, Aalto, and others. In this occasion dreaming was so important as breath, without what we could die. How I miss… but life is a sum of presents. Used to study a lot, to defend the Aflalo, Croce and Gasparini, Jorge Wilheim, Oscar, Villavecchia, Flavio Penteado “modernism”. When was possible to us, students, play with that freedom of shapes and scales so monumental, who doesn’t dream the time to do something like this? Brasília impregnated everyone with your modernity and modernism that make possible see beyond the four walls of the box we’ve been stocked in. We were breathing new times, we had knowledge thirst and hungry, the expression freedom and the apparent absence of limits to create was more important even than eat, many times we forgot to do it, it was the dream surpassing the reality, the desire suppressing the necessity, the happiness giving sense in life. Though it is in the “past” all this facts, already be winter, or old time cases, or just remembers, they are memories photographed by our eyes and are in our thoughts in the present, they are registers that manifests against the static, are alive memories that, once was libertarian made us dream, because addicted us in not use brakes in imagination and motivate us, and always do, where life exist, coming back the smell, the taste, the sound, the desire, the joy of play with God, because only God creates, creates and illuminates who had the charge to learn with the life to have the bonus of dreaming with the happiness creating the future.

The charge and the bonus It’s been many carnivals since the golden years when everything was allowed respecting the good sense. Without so many laws and every joy was permitted until the neighbor’s wall, yes, since the old FAU/BA – Urbanism and Architecture College of Bahia still occupy narrow sheds of pressed wood on Federação’s neighbor where today the steel and concrete feet are remain fixed, where lot of water had passing down the bridge and many summers and Christmas have already gone. Good old times, let me with a pathetic face reminding Casimiro de Abreu, lived and well keep emotions, outstanding recordings, declared passions in strong flicks in colors of adolescent or precocious and pretentious “adultescent”. Used to listen Bossa Nova and MPB with Chico Buarque, Ivan Lins and Gonzaguinha. In books we were introduce to the writers Gorki, Dostoyewsky, Puskin, and also to the architects Mies, Frank, Corbusier, over there, Lúcio and Oscar here. In 64 after March 31st, Vilanova Artigas calls the attention to the FAU/Brasília, the education reform happens, São Paulo breathes concrete with Paulo Mendes, Otake, Miguel Juliano, Teperman, Rino, Demétrio, Vasco, Zanettini steel devout nowadays… Oh God I’m so unfair! I should mention so many other colleagues, before and after these reminding that by the same time at Rio de Janeiro, Joaquim Guedes, Paulo Casé. Índio da Costa, Sergio Bernardes and much more even in other places, give, with same relevance and great talent, their contributions that mark in a solid way the architectonic history of our cities, our country and our private lives, specially mine as an architecture student, out of the way where the things used to happen, Rio/São Paulo. By this time, me, here at the old São Salvador, as Caymmi sang, when was ask about what study had to listen the comment: Ha! Architecture… You’re studying to “drawing” houses, isn’t it? It is that, not more not less, except to some few informed people, I mean, people who study; “doctors” as were call that ones with no title, but with power and money, this is how it was. Attention! Don’t confuse with “coronéis” that is another thing, well, the important is, though time weren’t good because the pseudo binary politicalization, made by the yankee Americanism and the antagonistic militancy of the knowledge left support by the colleagues pro scythe and hammer, both from inside to out but assuming as nationalists, as the white religion catechists did when tried force the Catholicism while the black people, the Umbanda and the Candomblé, left nothing to the real sun burnt Brazilians Tupã lovers. Well, “as everything that was good come from outside”, basic rule or common voice in this occasion, imagine what happen with the architecture? By the way, let’s be fair with Severiano Porto, so I won’t let this sin extend, with the license of the word, had lost through the forest in the north of Brazil, letting himself influence by the “OCAS”, first real vernacular nationalist architecture, to create the more authentic Brazilian architecture, what provided deserved and fair prizes. Backing to our architecture and to 60’s/70’s of concreticism or brutalism of Paulista architecture of 70’s as it was remember, the times was nervous, anxious, the TOP much repression and thousand censure pretensions, Nyemayer and Brasília were now measure to everything and obligatory presence in every chat group where were talking about fashion, art and mostly, architecture. Some, love tirelessly, others critiquing in an acid and violent way, but, everyone and always in a passion way and almost always based on the anxious way on the monthly wait magazine “A Ácropole”, architectonic bible for who didn’t have access to the foreigner L’Architecture, D’Aujourd’hui, Domus, etc in a way to always be in touch with the last word about modern, vanguard, innovation. The time and the belief was in the modernists, so, our architecture lasts influenced by many masters like Kenzo, Corbusier, Khan, Stirling, Frank, Mies, Aalto, and others. In this occasion dreaming was so important as breath, without what we could die. How I miss… but life is a sum of presents. Used to study a lot, to defend the Aflalo, Croce and Gasparini, Jorge Wilheim, Oscar, Villavecchia, Flavio Penteado “modernism”. When was possible to us, students, play with that freedom of shapes and scales so monumental, who doesn’t dream the time to do something like this? Brasília impregnated everyone with your modernity and modernism that make possible see beyond the four walls of the box we’ve been stocked in. We were breathing new times, we had knowledge thirst and hungry, the expression freedom and the apparent absence of limits to create was more important even than eat, many times we forgot to do it, it was the dream surpassing the reality, the desire suppressing the necessity, the happiness giving sense in life. Though it is in the “past” all this facts, already be winter, or old time cases, or just remembers, they are memories photographed by our eyes and are in our thoughts in the present, they are registers that manifests against the static, are alive memories that, once was libertarian made us dream, because addicted us in not use brakes in imagination and motivate us, and always do, where life exist, coming back the smell, the taste, the sound, the desire, the joy of play with God, because only God creates, creates and illuminates who had the charge to learn with the life to have the bonus of dreaming with the happiness creating the future.

Dubai, Dubai, Goodbye I’m back, the same skeptic I was before… Untrue!!! Impossible, I don’t believe anyone can go to Dubai or Abu Dhabi with open eyes, processing mind, “new HD” and lots of memory to come back scatheless, distanced or decontaminated. Although my grandma always said that “in this world there’s people capable of anything and still people left” but, it is difficult. I was gone and come back reading everything that came to me about that region and its cities, in particular a book about interviews with architects of Hanno Rauterberg which has a part that he asks to Rem Koolhas: Why vanguard buildings are so popular? “I think we’re living the triumph of eccentricity”, Rem said. This line doesn’t go out of my mind during all the time I’ve been visiting the Emirates. My mind couldn’t stop making fantasies of so many things, for example, how the briefings would be pass to the architects? As the hotels were paradises, the malls were huge and exuberant, transcendent landscapes, divine residential, commercial and unimaginable business centers, besides that everything superlative outstanding talking about scale, and, like all of these weren’t enough, there’s still the carefully landscaping irrigated with unsalted water, transforming which was desert in flower gardens, pointed with beautiful date trees and redraw by lakes and salt waterways pumped from Persian or Arabian Golf as the Dubai natives like. About Burj Dubai with its 800 meters of height I can’t even speak… Pharaonic buildings! Tunnel behind the ocean, monorail train sliding down the trunk of Palm Jumeirath, huge foundations where we pass, were the Decks Parking, where is going to be build independents commercial towers to then become one, forming the suggestive Donald Tramp Tower pole, which we had access to the mockup that surprise us so much by the beautiful aesthetics and constructive ingenuity. Surpise after surprise, still on a monorail, as Gil’s song, seems to be a dream the Dubai express copying the 2222, parading between marinas, hotels, condominiums, beaches, parks, lakes and pools that constitute the Palm Jumeirath in direction to the colossal Hotel Atlantis as we were going to pass through the huge empty space in shape of an “lanceolate arc” so usual on Arabian mosques. Spectacular effects, Heaven visions, unreality sensations, so much fantasy could be created by George Lucas, the magic. During the walk, as we move through the magnify Sheikh Zayed Road, two or three hundreds of enterprises inevitably jump in our eyes, as they were fighting for a contemplation for yours creativity and plastic beauty, constructive audacity, spatiality and scale, pretension, exaggeration and even the bizarre qualities. A true ego party of the “Star Architects” as they are now call by the international media, because of their buildings which are first analyzed for their spectacular shapes than their meaning, spatiality, functionality or coherence with space, environment and materials, among others, left clear that nowadays everything is decided for the last ideology we still have, the market ideology. The “autism” of Dubai’s architecture is very debated. Although is also an occidental problem, everyone take the car even to go from where they leave to the neighbor build, as Hanno observed, so they’re doing there what we’re doing here, in the big Brazilian cities, the “Mix-used”, which is mix residences and offices – “everything to brake with the architecture’s autism”. Was a huge identity of thoughts, because we share the same dream, which is, build places that can be in majority public, accessible, visitable, and why not, passable, working as link through big enterprises, like some did before, in the Faria Lima Av. – SP, specially the Brookfield Towers (2008) and the Brookfield Malzoni (to be build) projected by Botti Rubin Architects. I didn’t come back the same, indeed, neither I would, as I never come back the same after visit places with significant history of past or future. It’s also true that I came back with fewer answers than when I go, because I was too provoked, I came back asking me so much that the almost 15 hours of flight to São Paulo weren’t enough for so much thinking. At the end the progress was great! I couldn’t answer conclusively to nothing, but I resume the many questions to five that seems to me as essentials, they are: 1. Can you figure a world without architecture? 2. Which is made the architecture? 3. In architecture, what is important to live well? 4. In architecture, what make us happy? 5. What is, indeed, a good architecture? These questions I’ll take to answer during the holidays, I’ll take my soul higher, with no deadline and allowing me thinking in anytime I want. The truth is, the fact of “Bilbao” became post-advent of Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum, in one of the most visited places in Spain, and an icon of the new architecture in the world, made other important cities tried the same formula as font of resources and success. Dubai e Abu Dhabi in Arabian Emirates, followed the same formula, but in other proportions, with majesty, audacity, less time, excessive pretension and big complexity. To this, not only invited the biggest names of the highest level of world architecture that signed hotels, corporate, parks, marinas, automobile race tracks, commercial and residential, equestrian clubs, polo, golf, a Sorbone, a Louvre and a Guggenheim of Gehry in his own, besides of other museums in Abu Dhabi projected by Norman Foster, Hadid, Jean Novel and Tadao Ando, but, to transform Dubai and Abu Dhabi completely, in figurative, in fantasy lands, joy lands, business lands and mostly tourism… Unmissable in all aspects!!! Well, to not stay only in the audience analyzing, criticizing or clapping hands, I should inform that we’ve been on stage as well, we were on Big 5 or “Big Five”, as you want, the biggest fair of engineer and architecture realized out there, showing together with important colleagues via ASBEA/APEX our works including a catalogue and participation on Arab – Brazilian Chamber of Commerce (Soon in web: www.caramelo.com.br) Dubai, Abu Dhabi see you soon! Ten days is few time to so many things we have to see, decode, analyze, absorb, purge, learn, ask, and even forget, yes, there’s people that went there, saw, and didn’t like. So?... It’s like my grandma said, remember? Simplifying… “In this world there’s people to anything and still people left”. See you, Dubai Caramelo

Dubai, Dubai, Goodbye I’m back, the same skeptic I was before… Untrue!!! Impossible, I don’t believe anyone can go to Dubai or Abu Dhabi with open eyes, processing mind, “new HD” and lots of memory to come back scatheless, distanced or decontaminated. Although my grandma always said that “in this world there’s people capable of anything and still people left” but, it is difficult. I was gone and come back reading everything that came to me about that region and its cities, in particular a book about interviews with architects of Hanno Rauterberg which has a part that he asks to Rem Koolhas: Why vanguard buildings are so popular? “I think we’re living the triumph of eccentricity”, Rem said. This line doesn’t go out of my mind during all the time I’ve been visiting the Emirates. My mind couldn’t stop making fantasies of so many things, for example, how the briefings would be pass to the architects? As the hotels were paradises, the malls were huge and exuberant, transcendent landscapes, divine residential, commercial and unimaginable business centers, besides that everything superlative outstanding talking about scale, and, like all of these weren’t enough, there’s still the carefully landscaping irrigated with unsalted water, transforming which was desert in flower gardens, pointed with beautiful date trees and redraw by lakes and salt waterways pumped from Persian or Arabian Golf as the Dubai natives like. About Burj Dubai with its 800 meters of height I can’t even speak… Pharaonic buildings! Tunnel behind the ocean, monorail train sliding down the trunk of Palm Jumeirath, huge foundations where we pass, were the Decks Parking, where is going to be build independents commercial towers to then become one, forming the suggestive Donald Tramp Tower pole, which we had access to the mockup that surprise us so much by the beautiful aesthetics and constructive ingenuity. Surpise after surprise, still on a monorail, as Gil’s song, seems to be a dream the Dubai express copying the 2222, parading between marinas, hotels, condominiums, beaches, parks, lakes and pools that constitute the Palm Jumeirath in direction to the colossal Hotel Atlantis as we were going to pass through the huge empty space in shape of an “lanceolate arc” so usual on Arabian mosques. Spectacular effects, Heaven visions, unreality sensations, so much fantasy could be created by George Lucas, the magic. During the walk, as we move through the magnify Sheikh Zayed Road, two or three hundreds of enterprises inevitably jump in our eyes, as they were fighting for a contemplation for yours creativity and plastic beauty, constructive audacity, spatiality and scale, pretension, exaggeration and even the bizarre qualities. A true ego party of the “Star Architects” as they are now call by the international media, because of their buildings which are first analyzed for their spectacular shapes than their meaning, spatiality, functionality or coherence with space, environment and materials, among others, left clear that nowadays everything is decided for the last ideology we still have, the market ideology. The “autism” of Dubai’s architecture is very debated. Although is also an occidental problem, everyone take the car even to go from where they leave to the neighbor build, as Hanno observed, so they’re doing there what we’re doing here, in the big Brazilian cities, the “Mix-used”, which is mix residences and offices – “everything to brake with the architecture’s autism”. Was a huge identity of thoughts, because we share the same dream, which is, build places that can be in majority public, accessible, visitable, and why not, passable, working as link through big enterprises, like some did before, in the Faria Lima Av. – SP, specially the Brookfield Towers (2008) and the Brookfield Malzoni (to be build) projected by Botti Rubin Architects. I didn’t come back the same, indeed, neither I would, as I never come back the same after visit places with significant history of past or future. It’s also true that I came back with fewer answers than when I go, because I was too provoked, I came back asking me so much that the almost 15 hours of flight to São Paulo weren’t enough for so much thinking. At the end the progress was great! I couldn’t answer conclusively to nothing, but I resume the many questions to five that seems to me as essentials, they are: 1. Can you figure a world without architecture? 2. Which is made the architecture? 3. In architecture, what is important to live well? 4. In architecture, what make us happy? 5. What is, indeed, a good architecture? These questions I’ll take to answer during the holidays, I’ll take my soul higher, with no deadline and allowing me thinking in anytime I want. The truth is, the fact of “Bilbao” became post-advent of Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum, in one of the most visited places in Spain, and an icon of the new architecture in the world, made other important cities tried the same formula as font of resources and success. Dubai e Abu Dhabi in Arabian Emirates, followed the same formula, but in other proportions, with majesty, audacity, less time, excessive pretension and big complexity. To this, not only invited the biggest names of the highest level of world architecture that signed hotels, corporate, parks, marinas, automobile race tracks, commercial and residential, equestrian clubs, polo, golf, a Sorbone, a Louvre and a Guggenheim of Gehry in his own, besides of other museums in Abu Dhabi projected by Norman Foster, Hadid, Jean Novel and Tadao Ando, but, to transform Dubai and Abu Dhabi completely, in figurative, in fantasy lands, joy lands, business lands and mostly tourism… Unmissable in all aspects!!! Well, to not stay only in the audience analyzing, criticizing or clapping hands, I should inform that we’ve been on stage as well, we were on Big 5 or “Big Five”, as you want, the biggest fair of engineer and architecture realized out there, showing together with important colleagues via ASBEA/APEX our works including a catalogue and participation on Arab – Brazilian Chamber of Commerce (Soon in web: www.caramelo.com.br) Dubai, Abu Dhabi see you soon! Ten days is few time to so many things we have to see, decode, analyze, absorb, purge, learn, ask, and even forget, yes, there’s people that went there, saw, and didn’t like. So?... It’s like my grandma said, remember? Simplifying… “In this world there’s people to anything and still people left”. See you, Dubai Caramelo

Promise is a promise In the comes and goes of the priorities the tensions come up and down, the anguishes arises, the adrenalin is remaining. This is the radical sport of human being, which goes since keep us alive to the market and to life until satisfy the vanities, measure by the quantity of success. All of it requires a regulating pressure valve… Deep breathe, calm down, relax, recline and let the imagination go, dream, dream too much. Thinking don’t hurt and don’t make callous, otherwise. Sometimes it’s fun and pleasant. Thinking specifically about certain subject, it is another thing… Requires preparative as proceed analyzes and investigate thoughts with study, searches, good talks that fertilizes mind when trying to create or intuition answers. Thinking with a deadline and committed with finding a solution… is countdown! Don’t even thinking about it… it’s torture! So, in this end of year and carnival holydays I used my free time to answer that questions that I left unanswered in the last article when I came back from Dubai and Abu Dhabi, remember? Committing myself to answer them during the holydays, so here it goes: 1st question: can you figure a world without architecture? On prehistory the man searched the cave until build his first shelter. Everything was opposed. He needed to protect, refuge, defend and the world was huge in front of his littleness. The new man’s world, as Hanno Rauterberg says is, at the same time, smaller than ever was, and bigger than never, in other words, the distances and the time are getting short, while the quantity of information increases. So, every time you need appropriate spaces to many activities and services. So, how to live without architecture? Stadium, shopping malls, airports, hospitals, restaurants, theaters, hotels, residences, etc. There architecture for so many functions!!! 2nd question: Which is made the architecture? I would say, in a very simplified way, that the architecture’s base is the space. It can be open or close, sheltered or not, intern or external. Accessible space, articulated, compatible with the function. Be inside! Use… 3rd question: In architecture, what is important to live well? I agree and identify myself very much with the definition of the great structuralist Cecil Belmond to this question of what is important because the architecture that you live well it’s for you the good architecture and according to him: “the good architecture never follows a principle, but offers a great variety of atmosphere very different. Because a life without variety, exciting and ambivalence would be extremely monotonous. I truly believe in the booster strength of architecture”. Follow ahead is not a way to progress. However I still believe that we develop as spiral, weave webs, whatever. That’s how happens with human brain. If it doesn’t be feed with new things it shrinks. In a way that if we don’t want to retrograde we need to follow ahead developing ourselves. 4th question: In architecture, what make us happy? To this question, I’m going to use a question made to Rem Kolhaas by an interviewer that ask – Are your buildings promises of happiness? Kolhaas answered “I prefer keep in silence. There’s no architect that can assume that is capable of prescribe or even define happiness. Although, of course, I couldn’t continue life without my ideals and a certain degree of optimism. Well, it is alright, OMA’s architecture can, indeed, make many people happy, not decreeing to be happy, but surpassing restrictions. It doesn’t force it to waste time and energy, indeed, it establishes something free and open the spaces.” 5th question: In the end, we’re now at the last and more important question, in our understatement synthesize all the other things and has been done since illuminism period: what is, indeed, a good architecture? Certain questions has to be answers with relative calm, parsimony, exemption and very carefully. Using every lived and acquired experience in a way to not incur in objectivity temptation, once that, not been mathematic, and involving such a huge number of components, produce concepts and sentiments inevitably sometimes so different that are more inclined to be philosophic theses than static targets displayed by dry shot with one load. It is need to invoke time, look forward and back, study deeply redoing usual questions as the answered sooner, knowing presumably what is indeed the architecture, trying with every instruments and information available exercise itself in a futurology based in how we will be living in years or decades near these. Not so far, as say the great German architect, free thinker, and innate researcher, Frei Otto “nowadays some people still asking me what should be the appearance of the architecture. This makes me furious! It is not a matter of external. That’s why architects shouldn’t be so abject on questions and answers.” So I end trying to answer amply in a synthetic way the question that “the good architecture inside my personal view is that one who fits every necessity for which was created, with efficiency and professionalism promoting well fare, comfort and pleasure for who use, as well, emoting to who appreciate, besides, of course, borrowing it to the site where It was implant reference for the qualities inherent to its plastic, aesthetic and modernity for its harmony or contrast. For all this I always say that be an architect is add present to what be a value in the future, although many times be necessary an arduous task of acculturation to make it possible.”