Pedestrian Recapture by Iris Akram
“While the structure remains permanent, its uses may change.” – Alain Demangeon, “L’infrastructure dans tous ses états”. Le Temps des infrastructures, L’Harmattan, 2007
“O Minhocão” : the nickname was given by the inhabitants of São Paulo to an airborne thoroughfare inaugurated in 1971 and closed to traffic since 1989 on evenings and weekends, it sums up by itself the transformation initiated in the Brazilian megalopolis. The “big worm” – as it can be translated – is a shifting place, which turn into a pedestrian area thanks to its users, everyone can roam, stroll, cross this road which is winding through buildings to enjoy it differently. That pedestrians recapture makes it possible to consider the city, and life in a new way, to see the world from another angle, and this book is the trace of this metamorphosis. o Minhocão shows how poetry has invasted what is the most prosaic.
Text written in collaboration with Antoine Séguin.