Santa Cruz housing complex: from the beginning to the present

Abstract

Santa Cruz Housing Complex was designed by engineer-architect Marcial Fleury de Oliveira and built by IAPB in Sao Paulo from 1947. Throughout this paper, we intend to reconstruct the trajectory of the Complex until present days, and through the study of this particular case, verify the changes in use, ownership and management of the Complex’s space. This study is justified by considering it an example, amongst other dwelling complex implemented by the Retirement and Pension Institutes, concerning its conception, which follows the housing policy adopted by the Institutes, as well as the dismantlement of the managing agency, indicating the contradictions and implications to the Complex resulting from the disassembly of the IAPs’ organizational structure. The text also brings a characterization of the Complex’s spaces and the description of their peculiar implementation, whose environmental quality is due to the single-glebe treatment given to the Complex and to the various possibilities of internal circulation presented to pedestrians. It also points to problems related to the maintenance of the open spaces and the need to create specific instruments to deal with an exception fragment within the land structure of the city of São Paulo.