Commom View - The Limits of the City

This publication has its origin in a desire to know the city better, to build a mental image of its architecture and to develop a more accurate sense of direction in it. We chose as a method, in a first approach, the identification of the limits of the city, its extreme sites according to the cardinal coordinates of the map. This adventure could provide the initial images to design the external face of the city, to have a grasp of its expression, the general lines of its contour, the city mirrored through its neighbourhood. This reference to the system of coordinates, as an abstraction, was taken as a first axis in the research of the city as language. The speech of its gates. The specific iconography of its compass.

The terrace of the Itatiaia Building, in the centre of the city, at Largo Bittencour (which is also the home of the photographer), was chosen as a tower of observation. From this place we could follow the movement of the sun on the horizon of the city and have a first impression of the most inhabited regions in the suburbs and their position in relation to the centre. From this elevated site of viewing we planned the initial route of navigation to map the limits of the city.

Which aspect can differentiate Curitiba from the huge gatherings of buildings that are typical of the modern metropolis, with their dense vertical columns and well-traced avenues in a square plan? We have as a representation of the city, thoroughly remembered in the collective imagination, some of its famous urban features, as leisure parks, historical buildings and avenues, but we do not share, in the common local repertoire, a notion of the geographical contour of the city, or a figure that could provide a sense of direction in it, with a specific topographical iconology.

What face can we identify in the design of the city? Which is its chain of mountains? Which are the organs of its body? Which image could indicate an association with nature and reveal the urban organism as the huge Neolithic constructions built in honor of the gods? How can we know the city in its totemic aspect, as a temple? Which is the synoptic view of its architectural body? Which image can represent it to the collective memory?

The life in the city, in a modern metropolis, has profoundly changed the relations between man and nature. We cannot see the night-sky anymore. We do not identify the stars that favour planting. The moon and the tides do not refer to us immediately. We have rivers and water fountains in the sink of the kitchen. We do not know the gifts of the land. The ancestral fire comes dominated in the gas stoves with embedded wood in the warming systems of the houses, in the fluorescent lamps, in the electrical showers. Food of varied type can be found resting like fruits in the colored branches of the shelves in the supermarkets. All these things are offered by the city as a second nature. How does this animal-like organism function? Where the mouth? Where the anus? Where its members spread in the space and which is their rule in the life of the giant?

The ancient limits of Curitiba were established by rivers: in the east the meeting point of the Atuba with the Iguaçu; in the South, the encounter of the Iguaçu with the Barigui; in the west the rivers Barigui and Passauna; and in the North, the Ribeirão Antonio Rosa and the Arroio Cachoeira. These old limits of the city were almost unaltered by the recent demarcations. We have searched for their exact location with the aid of a compass and the geopolitical map of the city published by IPPUC in 2005.

We found in those places a rural view of Curitiba, with bucolic images in the style of the first painted reports of the city from Debret, Elliot and Keller, despite poverty in some of these regions and the pollution of the surrounding rivers.
In the North, the most elevated cliff of the suburb of Abranches is in the corner of Rua 1 and Rua José Bajerski. (There, in the closest spot to the limit of Curitiba and Almirante Tamandaré, a child of 4 or 5 years of age wanted to be photographed. We asked his name and the boy answered - I don`t know my name, sir!)

In the south of Curitiba (south west) we can find the Sanitary field of Caximba. It is the last portion of the digestive system of the city. Through this suburb, in the day, we see thousands of garbage trucks circulating. It is a place of rare beauty. There we find the largest population of vultures (urubus) in the city. They are an important environmental agent in the digestion of organic waste. The smell of garbage is still a factor to be resolved by the city and by its system of final destination of the solid residues. (More to the south, in the limit of the city, in front of a private property, some children posed to be photographed holding toy guns.)

In the east we find the origin of the rivers that converge to the Iguaçu. It is the way that leads to the Serra do Mar, and then, to the shore. (There, to our surprise, we found people fishing!)

In the west, we find the Passauna River. One-third of the water supply of the city comes from there. It is along this way that leads to the countryside of the State. (In the limit of the city of Curitiba and Campo Largo, in a small resting place, under the bridge that passes over the River Passauna, we found the following inscription: EUSODEZETCORTAEMHEINAUMEIDEMVES)

This identity Curitiba hasn`t lost. We found Araucarias in each of its four corners.

Octavio Camargo
May, 2006