Public architecture program of the Escola de Arquitetura da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais - The Santo Antonio do Amparo case

Abstract

Landscape architecture is placed inside the integrated task of use, preservation, retrieval and reinvention of urban landscapes. All this based upon a city’s background and its environmental potentials. So, it is possible to build something, to preserve something else and to recover local traditions. The city then lives not only its past but its future. The landscaping must act according to social changes, modifying urban landscapes without changing its roots, natural and cultural resources that already exists. Public squares are some of those spaces.
The place’s environmental characteristics direct the drawing, character and type of landscape intervention. Users and city management departments are essential to the project, its execution and management. A public square project intends to promote the meeting of collectivity, organization and construction of the place’s landscape. That’s what this work is going to present, showing the project of João Alves Square
(Venda Nova, Northern area of Belo Horizonte, built in 2001) as an example of applied landscape concepts. This plan created a new scene for that area, its people and to the city. From an underused space, privately
and improperly used as a junk deposit, illegal spot of carroceiros (it’s in between two arterial roads and could connect two adjacent blocks), it was transformed into a proper place for entertainment and collective
gathering. Therefore, the place met its urban goal of polarization and started being used as a proper square by a number of users. The new landscape changed the place’s history of being a junk deposit. However, it was all but a short tale. The local management desconsidered the square urban dynamics. Today, it’s being destroyed and its landscape reinvented by the population. History, contemporary, square, landscape, management.