futebol, fusball, calcio, football

it might have been a surprise to the ESPN commentators and soccer fans in general but not for football fans worldwide. The women’s world cup will be decided by two of the most traditional teams: Brazil and Germany.

italian and argentinian girls, we miss you here, when are you coming for real?

if history can ever repeat itself this is so much similar to the trajectory of the man’s world cup. US and Scandinavian teams do really well in the infancy of the competition (US in 1950, Sweden in 1958, 1962) and then cannot hold its lead due to the absence of a strong professional league. The early days are perfect for the amazing college-based talent pool of the US.

but then comes football professional and international tradition and the talent pool is not college kids anymore but poor boys and girls from the outskirts of Rio and first generation Germans whose parents immigrated from eastern Europe.

for some reason the formula used for gymnasts, swimmers and runners does not apply to football, and that is probably one of the reasons why it is the most popular sport on the planet.

and by the way: the Brazilians girls don’t have a league of their own and could barely pay their bills only a few years ago. Imagine what they can do with the right infrastructure.

and by the way #2: why does ESPN insists the US was unbeaten for 51 games? At the panamerican games in Rio last July they lost the gold medal in a 0x5 match. That kind of spin might sell politics but does not sell football.

brazil-korea-india

We have been slowly but steadily enlarging our pool of apartments/cities being analyzed and this Fall, with the Global Apartments Research Group resuming its biweekly meetings, I should be able to write more about it.

The exciting news is that Romil Sheth did a fantastic data collection in his hometown of Bombay (or Mumbai) this summer. The questionnaires have already been tabulated and most of the apartments have already undergone preliminary analysis.
The chart above shows the comparison of area devoted to each function, in average, for each pool of apartments in our database.

It is worth noting the Korean emphasis (almost an obsession) with the varanda and the amount of area devoted to circulation, required to make the tri-partite private-public-private spatial arrangement feasible.

About the Brazilian apartments I have written before but it doesn’t hurt to remind the fact that the amount of social space (25.85%) is the same amount devoted to service spaces (25.70%). We shall explore that further.

And in the case of Mumbai, it seems like a very streamlined spatial partition, with a reasonable amount of social areas (the highest among the 3) and private areas (again the highest). But are the small service spaces (17% only) correlated with the fact that in 20 questionnaires, not a single male was reported spending any time in the kitchen?

More to follow

david byrne on johnson’s glass house

excellent tip from barriga de um arquitecto:

David Byrne´s description of his visit to the Phillip Johnson´s Glass House in his blog (remember that Byrne studied architecture),

the head of the talking heads comes up with many interesting points. One in particular I want to highlight: that to live in that house without the added pavilions is only possible to a monk!

I often find that the best of modernism was precisely about that: a simpler life with fewer drawers and closets, larger windows to see and be seen.

It is very worth reading the entire post here.

flowers in the asphalt

I am back in Ann Arbor after two month in Brazil. Meanwhile, we had a great session on Architecture and Latin American Identity at the LASA (Latin American Studies Association) in Montreal,

but reflecting on this time in Brazil, I guess the biggest success had been workshops centered around the issue of urban waters. I went to 3 different schools and day-care centers and worked with children. In addition, I developed a the campaign to be delivered in the bags used to carry bread(to see post below) that it will arrive in the bakeries in few weeks.

on the workshops, the drawing above made by a child with hearing disability at the Francisco Sales School, illustrates well what it the process of urban environmental education means: it is as if we were planting flowers in asphalt.

despite the difficulties, the harvest is already in the horizon. Back in Michigan I will try to obtain funding to extend the actions next year. The goal is to train a group of architects so that we can act in multiple schools with some financial support.

the first of these workshops will still happen this year in the Equator (I hope), then Guatemala and next year in Brazil again.

the energy that emanates from the children helps us continue seeding the asphalt.