"Cidade Hackeada"  - " Hacked City " was a workshop given by an architect and designer Guto Requena at SENAC University in 2015. The workshop consisted in develop urban solutions for a famous São Paulo highway called Minhocão ("Big Worm"). This highway is a controversial construction that was built during the beginning of the dictatorship period at Brasil. Controversial because the intention was to reduce traffic congestion connecting two main points of the city, but the downside is that being a highway all the buildings nearby were affected and nowadays with the increasing numbers of cars, the solution is no longer good, creating more traffic jam, noise and visual pollution to the city. Currently the Minhocão have new rules, being closed for cars and open for pedestrians every working day from 20pm to 6am and on weekends is all day open for pedestrians. Those new rules made people explore this highway using it as a park. For this reason the project was created to provide more interaction, leisure, safe-spot and shadows for those who want to live the city.

The photo above we can see how people appropriate the highway, but at the same time we see a lack of structure to improve their experience. Our project that you can see further is a structure inspired in the Pitaia flower, that is a cactus and also a delicious and magnificent fruit from a semi-arid climate in Brasil. The idea was to bring that beauty,  juiciness, and the resistance of this beautiful plant to the highway, creating a structure fixed at a light pole that could bring shadow, energy, light and entertainment to the pedestrians but at the same time when the highway is open for cars the structure don't interfere with it, staying safe and attached.

After the presentation of the project we got the surprise in 09 of november of 2015, by the jury of Giovanni Vannucchi, Gonzalo Castillo, Ignacio Urbina, Ivan Cortés and Uqui Permui to be selected to present at the 6º  Student Bienal Interamericana of Design in Madrid, inside the category "Transversales/ interdiscipliares" - "Transversal / Interdisciplinary"

A big thanks to Junior Magalhães,  Nadira Ruman, Dabbie Olivieri, Beatriz Aquino, Ana Beatriz Figueiredo to be part of this project. <3