New public space has opened in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in an unlikely place. The new park sits a few feet above the contaminated grounds of a deactivated municipal incinerator.
Supported by steel beams, the floating park includes greenspace, an amphitheater, and a large deck area.
"[C]ontamination levels were so high the city wrote a decree stating that a reused site would need to be capped with 20 inches of fresh earth.
In a less resourceful city, that mandate might have limited the options, but the designer saw it as an opportunity. 'The idea for the park was actually the opposite of what this decree was saying,' explains Dietzsch, who runs the Davis Brody Bond Aedas office in São Paulo but worked on the park independently with Adriana Levisky, a local architect who specializes in zoning and planning. 'They were going to hide the contamination. What I proposed instead was to land a structure over the site. Everything for public use would occur above the contamination.'"
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