The free access to this article was made possible by support from readers like you. Please consider donating any amount to help defray the cost of our operation.
Designing a Smart Atmosphere in São Paulo: Public Spaces and the Green Image
Christiane Wagner
Abstract
It has been suggested that urbanization does not create ways of life but rather offers models that satisfy the expectations of public life. These models can result from the ways that architects, designers, artists, and social actors shape the urban atmosphere setting. In this context, this paper focuses on how São Paulo has worked toward designing a smart city with elements that advance complex issues and promote climate change solutions. This paper explores the processes of aestheticizing and expanding public spaces through an empirical qualitative analysis in which the visual value of a space is evaluated based on cognitive and emotional perceptions. The analysis concludes that aesthetics goes beyond visual and symbolic meanings. By incorporating sustainable and culturally diverse solutions, cities can showcase ethical and aesthetic values that go beyond just a “green image” associated with ecology. A sustainable city that promotes these values is what defines the urban atmosphere.
Key Words
aestheticization; cityscape; diversity; human environments
1. Introduction
New forms and contents emerge as processes of transformation that highlight the value of the orderings and rules that different cultures use to construct a collective imaginary and perceptions of individuals. A contemporary atmosphere is formed by employing new principles of digital technology and simulating scenarios and environments through innovation in the configuration of urban spaces. In this way, the urban atmosphere is shaped by aesthetic conceptions in the context of new spatial forms and experiences that can be used to understand new paradigms. Thus, it is interesting to know what could designate and condition the arts to change—in contrast to their observers’ definitions—by innovation in the urban scenario. Shapes and contents in urban space are common issues explored by contemporary art, design, and architecture with the goal of sustainable development. In an effort to understand urban contemporaneity, the analysis of the urban atmosphere in this paper focuses on design and on its cultural and social aspects linked to sensitive elements. Through this method, interventions in urban centers that use digital technology or materialize new ideas (for example, visual arts, architectural spaces, and urban design) are analyzed with regard to social and urban solutions. The changes in the city’s surroundings are a significant aspect of atmospheric aesthetics. It involves both personal emotions and objective observations about how people perceive the world and its requirements. These perceptions vary depending on the culture, society, and economy. This paper presents a context and a reflexive discussion of urban spatial challenges; it considers technical possibilities as stages of the individual’s life and as one of the diverse processes of social reality. Therefore, the concept of atmospheres in the urban space scenario as described by Gernot Böhme is applied: “atmospheres are produced by certain agents or factors, in particular by sound and illumination, but also by the geometry of a room, by signs, pictures, etc.”[1]
First, this paper establishes a notion of the transformation of the urban environment that takes into account urban aesthetics in its process of aestheticization in relation to architectural space-time. This is exemplified by some design and architectural features related to urban and natural space in São Paulo. This analysis notes that, in configuring a “green image,” the cultural diversity of societies is essential for urban centers mainly because of human social participation through traditional representations and innovations. From this, several questions emerge. What are the possibilities for the continuous development and evolution of our environment following the implementation of techniques for problem-solving and improvement through art, design, and architecture?
In this context, the interplay in the arts and the intentionality of sustainable environments, which determine possibilities, are addressed through models becoming a reality. Methodologically, this research takes an interdisciplinary approach in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. The aim is to analyze spatial and visual perception since new technologies and techniques strive for a representative system in creating smart cities and expanding public spaces. These models result from the interactions between architects, designers, artists, and social actors as they configure the urban environment––the atmospheric design. In the “green image,” through its description and effects on culture, reciprocity is involved as an aesthetic experience toward sustainability. Under these conditions, design solutions produced as part of the urban space are part of a complex visual and material culture that implies current ethical, social, and political values. Accordingly, the proposed approach effectively analyzes art and architecture, especially design, as a social solution. This restructures the fragmented values of culture’s inherent differences and similarities, and it integrates sustainability across the corporate value chain to ensure ethically and aesthetically new value creation and cultural change globally.
2. Designing smart atmosphere: aestheticizing and expanding public spaces
A number of elements relating to the aesthetics of urban atmosphere and their meaning in architectural space-time can be found in the contemporary image in São Paulo and its aiming at sustainable development goals. These points demonstrate how architecture, design, and art are configured in the urban space so that they extend into the public sphere. According to Henri Lefebvre’s definition of social space, in his book The Production of Space, “a distinction has to be drawn between the problematic of space and spatial practice. The former can only be formulated on a theoretical plane, whereas the latter is empirically observable.”[2] In this sense, this article discusses the transformation of São Paulo into a smart city and how it impacts the urban environment. As stated by Daniel Annemberg about the São Paulo city pilot project on smart city development, “the quality of life and the well-being of the population are the most important. The rest is a consequence and is encompassed in this.”[3] With the global environment in a worrying condition, conversations about climate change have become a necessity in society, and governments and large companies are making slow progress. As a result, numerous cities are participating in a project to modernize sustainably with a minimal impact on the natural environment and the living organisms it contains.
Considering digital technology through the lens of architectural space reveals intervention in urban areas in the context of socio-ethical issues and design aiming at solving problems. Evolution leads to urban development, population increases, and architectural shifts. In the fields of architecture, visual arts, and communication, analyzing time and space involves examining the placement of objects in space and how this relates to urban exploration. Regarding the visualization of urban spaces and the technical aestheticization of social structures and urban buildings, it is also important to consider the importance of visual communications and signalization. For instance, as far back as the Middle Ages, Paris emphasized the visual layout of its streets and buildings as a way for people to orient themselves within the city. In urban spatial composition, streets provide a visual aspect and guidance to inhabitants through the structure of residential and commercial buildings, and decorative elements like artwork, sculptures, and landscaping, that merge nature with the cityscape.[4] After the emergence of the subway and the automobile, public space and collective life amendments ensued due to urbanization and led to forming a signaling system. Private stakeholders created such a system and helped advance visual communication in advertising and in collaboration with public entities. Through collaboration between the public and private sectors, efforts to organize and keep urban spaces tidy have provided important urban features essential to public life, such as garbage bins, street clocks, bus stop shelters, and advertising space. Moreover, through virtual technologies, public and private spaces are extended from physical to virtual reality, proposing hybrid experiences.
Consequently, studies are more concerned with the future of the human condition in relation to virtual realities as a process that transforms the “real life” of the individual through technology. These issues are highlighted in debates at international conferences held by the University of Southern California, Annenberg and published in the International Journal of Communication, founded by Manuel Castells and Larry Gross, who research new communication technologies. These debates propose that if there is a tendency toward a virtual world or the transcendence of time and space, then this opposes the need for physical and self-demarcated spaces of territory or appropriations of objects. This suggests that “the concept of media systems is no longer relevant to comparative research or that a national media system as a unit of analysis is no longer relevant.”[5]
Urban planners and architects believe their designs will be able to alter lifestyles, and this can be seen in various projects. However, urbanization does not bring about new ways of life, but instead provides the necessary tools to support certain accepted norms of public life. Nevertheless, urban development, design, and architecture that address social realities are focused on the social problems created by this process. The complexity of these issues lies in the production and consumption of cities and the impacts of diverse people’s rhythm of life. New interventions connected to communications and information technology are confirming the formation of contemporary urban images for everyday aesthetics. These interventions are in sync with urban rhythms and enable the creation of images and new spaces. They are linked to a sense of movement related to how an action occurs in urban and architectural spaces. It is a mental process––imagination as a dynamic effect––that shapes the visual sequences of a moving image. This process of moving images is not limited to the mental universe, as mobility and the camera eye are fundamental skills for the camera and software providers in producing architectural projects and, consequently, moving images. Thus, in an environment that is not increased but modified by constant technological innovations, individuals transform themselves, transcending time and space. However, at the same time, these individuals need physical spaces and objects to demarcate, evidencing a human need for dominance and delimitation for the sake of personal satisfaction—a need that is apparent in a capitalist system with a consumer society.
However, the aim of a smart city is to create an urban environment that is not only a prosperous business city but also one that has the “green image” of being harmless, sustainable, and socially pleasant. João Octaviano de Machado Neto, Brazil’s secretary of mobility and transport, when discussing the São Paulo mobility pilot project, explained that “[when] the goal is the citizen, the business environment gets built consequently. If I only look for business, I’m missing out on the potential of the city. I’m missing out on the inclusive city, the sustainable city, connected, even in safety. The least important factor is the business.” [6] Thus, technology is not perceived as an end goal in this model of urban modernization, but rather as a means of improving the inhabitants’ lives. According to Daniel Annenberg, Brazil’s secretary of innovation and technology from, who worked on the São Paulo mobility pilot, “the smart city project of São Paulo is this. A city that sits next to the citizen through efficient, faster and affordable services.”[7] He also clarifies that “an intelligent city depends, first and foremost, on government transparency and it must allow open source of big data.”[8]
Even so, Wolfgang Welsch suggests that the aestheticization process must be considered not only to improve the quality of life but also as an “increasing furnishing of reality with aesthetic elements.”[9] For him, “this surface aestheticization concerns not only singular factors within reality, but also affects the form of culture as a whole and that it is becoming increasingly universal.”[10] Based on this premise, Welsch compares social and material reality with subjective reality when reporting on individual experience. He describes the environment’s current aestheticization, that is, the process of making something more aesthetically pleasing by applying aesthetic elements that superficially encompass objective and subjective reality:
…façades are becoming prettier, shops more exciting, noses more perfect. But aestheticization reaches deeper, too, affecting basic structures of reality as such: of the material world in the wake of new material technologies, of social reality as a result of its mediation through media, and of subjective reality as a result of the supersession of moral standards by self-styling.[11]
Welsch nonetheless has observed that this aestheticization does not uniformly hold true and is instead distinct in each situation: “In the urban environment, aestheticization means the advance of what [is] beautiful, pretty, styled.”[12] In the advertising industry, it means that objective worlds have advanced and social reality has been mediated through digital technologies: first and foremost, this involves virtualization. Thus, the aestheticization of consciousness implies that reality has assumed a structure only known in the ideal theory, in aesthetic reflections (that is, normative theory in social sciences, city planning). Nonetheless, to advance this reflection on the aesthetic value related to everyday life, to urban aesthetics, the term ‘aesthetic’ is considered in its cognitive (perception) and emotional (sensation) sense. In this way, Welsch’s observation about the meaning of the term ‘aesthetics’ related to sublimation by aestheticization, and also its use to denote the aesthetics of design, valuing appearance as opposed to essence, is significant. Welsch addresses the diversity of meanings attributed to the term ‘aesthetics’ since Baumgarten,[13] conditioning the updates and connections of the fundamental meanings to the meaning employed with the term in its uses, stating that “[bad] philosophy flirts with the traditional expectation that one must reduce the multitude of meanings to one basic meaning in all circumstances.”[14] Above all, in clarifying in detail the necessary diversity to be considered in the semantic use of the term ‘aesthetics,’ it is also worth highlighting his remark on the meaning of this approach to urban aesthetics, public space, and everyday life that moves toward the goals of the smart city and sustainability through design and architecture. It is useful to consider in this article Welsch’s observation on the clarification of the concept: “who links the concept of aesthetic exclusively to the province of art and wants to fence it off completely from daily life and the living world partout, practices aesthetic-theoretical provincialism.”[15] In relation to the aesthetic of design, Welsch argues that there are indications of social consequences connected to superficially embellished aesthetics that should be highlighted. Therefore, art, design, and architecture interact with technological and scientific evolution in the contemporary universality of social transformations and, above all, environments. It is a scenario of natural, human, and, in general, urban environments, with natural and urban aesthetic appreciation. Human participation becomes the main interest in the picturesque sense of natural and urban environments encountering an everyday aesthetic, where there is an aesthetic committed to the aesthetic appreciation of not only nature and art but also all other aspects of the human experience.[16] Therefore, artistic, cultural, and political interdependence must be understood globally as a significant process for contemporary urban life, especially in articulating democratic ideals. It is precisely in this interdependence that one finds the potential of architects, artists, and designers to create and recreate new habits and functions based on research and transdisciplinary associations, with the goal of attaining the best social solutions. Creative activities, by their objective intention and determination, differentiate themselves from the artist in their subjective creations. This is not to say that art, in its subjective realization, is not concerned with important social realities. There is simply a difference in the creative process.
3. Green image: from ecology to the culture of nature in design
The term “appropriation of the public sphere” refers to taking control of a space dedicated to public opinion about power and the need for visibility in democratic governance. This includes addressing climate change and sustainability in addition to fighting social injustices stemming from historical colonization, particularly in the Global South. That is the case in São Paulo. On the one hand, as innovations advance toward sustainability, this urban field of transformation gains more productive and reproductive strength, mainly because this is the official rule and value for industrial development in its fourth revolution. On the other hand, the design challenges connected to global sustainable development depend on investments and support. The colonialist exploitation of the past and the many forms of capital domination have formed an atmosphere that still lingers, growing ever stronger.
The design challenge is to create an inclusive society that integrates the green economy and social and environmental sustainability. It is precisely in this interdependence that the potential of design can be found, creating habits and functions based on research and transdisciplinary connections. The interdependence between art, architecture, and design focuses on ethical and aesthetic core values for today’s urban planning. The focus is on considering technology and innovation in terms of their value and moral and political impact on individuals and society. The process of (re)urbanization takes into account the necessary values and factors that influence designers, users, and collaboration with other designers and architects regarding functionality and their intended or unintended actions. The expectations for meeting the global needs of a sustainable and green economy are directed toward a concept about projects, industry, and new consumption habits. This atmosphere involves social aspects and concerns cultural differences, education, and the fight against poverty and hunger as a fundamental basis for broad and dynamic innovation in the current consumer society system. In this context, it is important to note the emergence of environmental movements in the 1960s, the organizations (for example, Friends of Earth and Greenpeace) working toward environmental preservation, resources focused on social and economic conditions, and current activist movements like Rise for Climate and Fridays For Future. It is in this sense that atmospheric design is formed as the main means to meet ecological appeals through new technologies, techniques, and processes.
However, new technologies offer designers and industry the chance to realize the ideals proclaimed by environmental movements. It has been recognized since the 1970s that the oil crisis and environmental issues caused by the depletion of natural resources are the top concerns. As a result, designers have taken a new approach by recycling conventional norms, deconstructing their values, and creating innovative configurations to address issues such as waste, pollution, global warming, and social inequalities. This creative practice is related to the main social criticisms of the industrial and consumer contexts and their consequences. Accordingly, design, in its role as the meeting point between art, technology, and society, produces knowledge and aims at solutions to social demands with projects based on economic decisions. Moreover, in emerging economies, creating a more inclusive society with respect to a green economy and social and environmental sustainability remains a significant challenge for building the “green image.”
Many projects have been proposed to redesign the urban landscape of São Paulo in this “green image.” One of these projects is the vertical gardens: this concerns a number of buildings in central São Paulo that are being redesigned with the implementation of vertical green spaces. This generates both an aestheticization of the urban environment and an urban solution to ecological problems. According to Guilherme Wisnik, “green areas and public spaces were sacrificed in the city of São Paulo, especially in the 1960s and 1970s.”[17] Vertical gardens bring more than just visual advantages. Scientific studies have demonstrated that a vertical garden can bring down the interior temperature of a building, improve the air quality of its surroundings, and contribute to reducing noise pollution. However, the architect and urban planner Oscar Müller argues that “the greatest advantage is still living in a place where nature is more present.” He furthermore suggests that “the vertical garden promotes evapotranspiration, minimizing the effects of heat islands so common in our city. In addition, rainwater is retained and returned to the rain system with a delay, collaborating to reduce flooding.”[18] The Movimento 90º, a landscape design NGO, has utilized the urban environment of São Paulo to implement their projects focused on vertical gardens and green roofs. They aim to promote an eco-friendly approach to environmental intervention by capitalizing on the city’s green image. It is precisely in that way that it is worth highlighting Gernot Böhme’s concept of atmospheric design as a means of revealing that atmospheres are also perceived subjectively. Atmospheres can be analyzed by the object and the agencies (Instanzen) by which they are created:
The paradigm for this perspective is provided by stage design. The general aim of stage design is to create an atmosphere with the help of lights, music, sound, spatial constellations, and the use of characteristic objects. The paradigm of stage design falls short of the case of city planning, in as much as the atmosphere in the latter is created not for the outside observer but for the actors, as it were; that is, for the participants in urban life, who together produce the urban atmosphere through their own activities.[19]
The most important element is the architect and designer’s responsibility to consider the possible consequences of their project and eliminate any problem that may arise, while still meeting the objectives of sustainable development. The applications of the aesthetic atmosphere by architecture and design must be considered. For example, the results of art, design, and architectural achievements in São Paulo are presented, while taking into account its nature as an emerging city in the Global South. Böhme describes atmosphere as “[commonplace] and self-evident for the inhabitants and which is constantly produced by the locals through their lives, but which is noticed first by the stranger as a characteristic. This is why the atmosphere of a city is not the same as its image.”[20] The introduction of the concept of atmosphere in aesthetics liberates it from being restricted to the visual and symbolic. The multiculturalism of urban cities presents more and more universal images, but, precisely because of its diversity, it does not present a general symbolism as a criterion. In this respect, Böhme suggests that the city cannot be interpreted as language: “it enters our disposition as a touching character (Anmutungscharakter).”[21] In today’s world, technology and science are rapidly evolving, impacting art, design, and architecture. These changes are not limited to social transformations, but also extend to the environment, including natural, human, and urban settings. In this context, there is a growing interest in appreciating the aesthetics of these environments, with a focus on the human experience and everyday life. This involves a commitment to appreciating nature, art, and all aspects of human existence. In addition, Allen Carlson argues:
The implication is clear. If we are to appropriately appreciate human environments aesthetically, we cannot look only to culture, as the designer landscape approach and the traditional aesthetics of architecture have done. We must also look to ecology. This points to what may be called an “ecological” approach to the aesthetics of human environments.[22]
Urban life is interconnected in ethical, aesthetic, cultural, and ecological ways. Architects, artists, and designers can collaborate to create new habits and functions that promote social inclusion. Art can address social issues, but the objective intention of creation distinguishes it from subjective art. These differences arise from variations in the creative process. While architecture and design target projects focused on objective problem-solving, art poses questions; and the environment enables every moment of social change through lived experiences. The achievements in their formal and universal diversities represent the urban atmosphere, where reciprocity is involved as an aesthetic experience.
4. Final considerations
This analysis assumes that the diversity of cultures—whether among nations or due to a variety of nationalities being concentrated in one city—develops intellectually, spiritually, and aesthetically during the acculturation process. That is the case in São Paulo, one of the largest metropolises in the Global South. Therefore, objects and images are analyzed as urban, cultural, and political interventions through an environmental perspective, thereby defining their relationship with time and space and the ideals of inclusion and social and sustainable participation. Design and architectural projects for urban development are the results of developments during the late twentieth century, while the city’s growth has been ongoing since the emergence of civilization. The development of techniques to solve projects is closely related to time and the growth of urban centers. Specifically, the relationship between space and the transformation of the city is a key factor. That is the challenge. Over time, the transformation of the city’s shape was impacted by measures to control both population growth and decentralize metropolitan centers by, notably, expanding public spaces. Art, architecture, and design are all impacted by technological and scientific advancements in today’s world, which are characterized by social transformation and environmental concerns. This analysis focuses on atmospheric design, which takes into account the public space and local responses to create an aesthetically pleasing urban environment. Designers must address the interconnected nature of our globalized society and present emerging issues related to ecology, environmentalism, and sustainable development. São Paulo’s atmosphere is shaped by creative solutions to social issues and the contributions of artists, designers, and architects to its design. Above all, the city’s atmospheric design is shaped by its adherence to objectives of urban transformation as laid out in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
Christiane Wagner
christiane.wagner@usp.br
Christiane Wagner is a research professor at the University of São Paulo (USP) and an affiliated researcher at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry Berlin. Her research project addresses the USP Global Cities Program on Expanding Public Spaces: Smart City’s Empirical Research in São Paulo and Berlin. The implementation of this project targets the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which includes the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), focusing on the 11th goal of sustainable cities and communities. Among the author’s major publications are the book Visualizations of Urban Space: Digital Age, Aesthetics, and Politics, Advances in Urban Sustainability (London and New York: Routledge, 2022) and the co-edition of Kunst, Design und die »Technisierte Ästhetik« (Reihe Welt Gestalten, Bd. 6. Marburg: Büchner-Verlag, 2023).
Published on December 10, 2024.
Cite this article: Christiane Wagner, “Designing a Smart Atmosphere in São Paulo: Public Spaces and the Green Image,” Contemporary Aesthetics, Special Volume 12 (2024), accessed date.
Endnotes
[1] Gernot Böhme, “The Aesthetics of Atmospheres,” Ambiances, Atmospheres and Sensory Experiences of Spaces (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 26.
[2] Henry Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 420.
[3] UN Smart City 2022, 92
[4] Jean-Pierre Leguay, La rue au Moyen Âge (Rennes: Ouest France, 1984).
[5] Daniel Hallin, “Comparative Media Studies in the Digital Age: Comparative Research, System Change, and the Complexity of Media Systems,” International Journal of Communication 14, no. 12 (2020),https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/14550.
[6] In Cathelat Bernard, Smart Cities: Shaping the Society of 2030 (Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – UNESCO, 2019), 99.
[7] Ibid., 101.
[8] Ibid., 298.
[9] Wolfgang Welsch, “Aestheticization Processes: Phenomena, Distinctions and Prospects,” Theory, Culture & Society 13, no. 1 (February 1996): 5, https://doi.org/10.1177/026327696013001001.
[10] Ibid., 5.
[11] Ibid., 5.
[12] Ibid., 9-10.
[13] The term “aesthetics” was first used by Baumgarten in 1735, and in 1742, he gave a lecture on the topic. His book, Aesthetica was published in 1750 (Welsch 1996).
[14] Wolfgang Welsch, “Aestheticization Processes: Phenomena, Distinctions and Prospects,” 11.
[15] Ibid., 11.
[16] Arnold Berleant, “Aesthetic Participation and the Urban Environment,” Urban Resources, 1984.
[17] Guilherme Wisnik, “Wisnik fala do Movimento 90º, espalhando jardins verticais em São Paulo,” (my translation), Jornal da USP, September 15, 2016, https://jornal.usp.br/atualidades/wisnik-fala-do-movimento-90o-espalhando-jardins-verticais-em-s-paulo/.
[18] Report on vertical gardens in São Paulo developed through the Municipal Law Decree 55.994 that allows the city of São Paulo the environmental compensation by installing vertical gardens and green roofs (my translation), in RS Design, “Jardins verticais – São Paulo merece mais verde,” May 22, 2015, http://designparaescritorio.com.br/jardins-verticais-sao-paulo-merece-mais-verde/.
[19] Gernot Böhme, The Aesthetics of Atmospheres: Ambiances, Atmospheres and Sensory Experiences of Spaces. (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 348.
[20] Ibid., 344.
[21] Ibid., 345.
[22] Allen Carlson, “On Aesthetically Appreciating Human Environments,” in The Aesthetics of Human Environments, edited by Arnold Berleant and Allen Carlson (Australia and New Zealand: Broadview Press, 2007), 50.