San Miguel C_Design Practices

2. ...For me, Architecture is multicultural, but vernacular. It is diverse and doesnt limit itself to a project. It is an outcome of a 1001 experiences, connected to each
second of life. Every little attitude, breath, behavior, music, nature, culture, place, people, tribe, love, everything, influences, in what for me, is, in deed, a beautiful
and functional space. In the end, it’s all about space. Or i would say, it”s all about all about. I believe in diversity. I believe in hybrid manifestations of ethnicity and
race. I believe in versatility. I believe in regional roots. I believe in nature. Architecture is nothing more than a primitive way of expressing nature, in its maximum
beauty, passion and use. Barriers are just political symbols which in the end, don’t exist at all. In the end, it is all beyond frontiers or languages. It all turns into one
communication sign connected to regional local systems, that changes and changes ‘till it expresses what the people of today are and what the people of tomorrow
will be. If I tell you, that in transparent paths, you will induce people to take the one you want, will you believe me? We are architects, we tell what people are gonna
be, what they are gonna feel, what society will actually do. As designers, what consumers will desire will be our responsability to create. We don’t surrender, that
is the difference. And the difference why instead of transforming humans into robots, with our love, passion and beauty for life, we will focuse in our goal to dictate
the quality of living of theirs, and give them the best life they can get. Or not so pretensiously, but at least, we will try to......Of course, the search for perfectness
never ends, it is born with us, but it is the fuel to our imagination and our souls. As observers of nature, we will simplifly what is more complicated than we think.
Sometimes even weird. In a way that we, somehow, find it beautiful. And that the others, consequently will eventually too. The architect will not be the make up
artist of urban space. The architect will be in fact, the protagonist of urban space, always. And the search will never end...

3. San Miguel ConsultingBelo Horizonte, Brazil
12/12/12
...overall concept, architecture, landscape, interior
design...gated communities in protected environ-
mental areas...corporate buildings...

4. Agência Big Travel, a travel agency located along the south axis of the main avenue of Belo Horizonte, metropolitan city in the southeast of Brazil, is defined by the
change and transition from a daily rythm to an unusual state of spirit in the appropriation of space. It allows a complete touristic experience from the first moment
of its consumption. The project proposes the integration of internal and external existing spaces and allows diverse and simultaneous usage, through a central
workspace, mini kitchen, projection of travelling videos and images and a comfortable waiting room that turns the space into a dynamic and flexible one. The garden
involves the central workspace and acts as the main architectural element of transition from the real to the imaginary landscape.
Casa Pasárgada, located inside a gated community in a protected environmental area on the outskirts of Belo Horizonte, is a white massive structure disconnected
from nature. The project proposes the visual and environmental reintegration of the house to the existing surroundings, allowing the user to domain varied angles
of sights through the walk along the living space. It brings balance to the ecosystem, reassambling the regional vegetation back to the landscape.
SALA ATUAL
WC
VARANDA
EXTENSÃO
SALA ATUAL
WC

5. Puc Minas, Brazil Intervention in Sheleters
03/06/12 ...researching, analysing, proposing and inter-
vening in the system...activism...renovation of
shelters for children in risk...social inclusion...

6. Intervenção em Abrigos is a movement proposed in class as an open discussion around the concept of Habitat and Sustainability. A set of discussions, debates,
ideas, feasibilties, sociology, exclusion, passion, interests and will of change transformed theoretical criticism in class to activism in real life, transporting the
classroom to the community environment. Five houses, held as shelters for children in situtation of risk, such as violence, neglect and abuse, were selected as
case studies and laboratory sites for developing and reconstructing the meaning of Habitat in urban scale. The students, together with the children, me, donators,
and sponsors, designed, developed, and implemented the change of the exsting structure in a participatory community based process, through out the semester.

7. rd2B limited office
Zürich, Switzerland / São Paulo, Brazil
28/06/11
...developing concepts, master plans, overall sec-
tions, detailing rambla, designing patterns...
Olympic Park Rio 2016 / Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

8. The competition project proposes the reinterpretation of an olympic park in a natural permanent park for sports, leasure, culture,encounter and life. A model district
remains to the city with cultural centers, event halls, sport stadiums, plots and the new olympic training center. RIo Alto defines the visual and urban identity of the
project, serving as an important visual connection between park and surroundings, where users can locate themselves in space and domain the landscape. From
a plane base, RIo Alto is a public elevated plattform that separates and organizes the accesses and circulations between the main existing structures for sport
activities, backoff ha
ouse, new instalations and lake, besides minimizing impacts. During the games, the path organizes in two main levels: services, with the circulation of athletes and
back off and front off house and public in two sublevels, with the public circulation and basic infrastructure for the stadiums. Ramps and main entrances provide
the access through bikes or even by foot. The green, with shadows, water and native plants from Mata Atlântica, enters the stadiums and the sidewalk, along
the lifts, the observatory in the end edge of the walk, green hills by the tennis courts, the eco corridors along the river, lake and finally around the open air sport
activities. These elements allow themselves to influence the natural statement of the environment through sunlight, shadow, views and silence and create different
possibilities of microclimates that enable, besides the sport activities for the games, the spontaneous use of public spaces for bicycles, skateboards, rollingskates,
joggings, dog walks or simply walks, leasure, permanence, rest and contemplation. The existing asphalt is crushed, recycled and reused in the construction of new
streets. The gabions for the grandstands of the games are built with the useful matter of the existing buildings. The structures for the water and hockey stadiums
and some tennis courts, removed after the games, are remoduled as 15 multifunctional rooms for the favelas. Sheds and stadiums receive roofings that allow the
capture of rain water for greywater and irrigation as well as solar energy through photovoltaic pannels fixed over the roofs of all the buildings.

9. Rethinking HIL , researching...designing...
ETH Zürich, Switzerland
24/09/10Workshop ETH with FAU Usp
Department Architecture, Chair Annette Spiro

10. Workshop FAU ETH is a union between swiss and brazilian architecture students, from ETH and FAU Usp held and organized by the chair of architecture of Prof.
Annette Spiro, in ETH Zürich, in September 2010. It is a research on creating architecture and how this can reflect on building design. It is not a strategy of new
teaching but the development of possible exisiting and future scenarios. Rethinking HIL asks wether the process of design should be social or technical, generic or
intuitive and allows the development of a third identity, broadening the variety of possibilities in architecture. HIL, in other words, the architecture building of Science
City Campus, of ETH Zürich, as our group perception of space, presents an efficient structure but rather unclear and disperse. Our concept proposes subtracting
to adding through reorganizing the whole existing program and adding a main connection element horizontally and vertically that turns into a strong void space for
public realm. This connection works as the main circulation system linking the central courtyard with the plattforms of each floor level untill the top roof. The system
activates the use of the terraces and the roof with the addition of the library of HIL, completing a ring of circulation. The roof, covered with photovoltaic pannels,
works as a generator of energy. The building is also connected with the ground energy storage system of the campus. The two actions together establish a new
way of organizing all the activities in the building. The definition of this new space brings an architectural character in contrast to the homogeneity of space and
functionality in the current HIL building.

11. ...sustaining the eco living building process
towards anonymous architecture...
Carolina San Miguel
MAS in Architecture, in Housing, ETH Zürich
“Alternative Strategies for the environmental
protected urban area of Serra do Cipó, Brazil”
Jul 2010

12. This research, developed for the Master in Advanced Studies in Architecture, Specialization in Housing, for the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, in Zurich,
searches for the maintenance of cultural and natural expressed ways of quality for the generations to come, proposing an alternative strategic action of interferring
in immediate urban cores from protected environmental areas spread all over Brazil, the biggest biodiversity land of the world. The National Park of Serra do
Cipó is a region of environmental importance strategically located in the proximities of important metropolitan growing zones. The disordered accelerated growth
of its immediate urban surroundings is influenced mainly by the urban developments for the World Cup 2014, such as the expansion of the international airport,
the new administrative center and the vector north of the metropolitan city of Belo Horizonte, with high risk of environmental impact and mischaracterization. It
justifies the choice of Cipó as an object of study to develop a strategic vision into sustainable communities to be applied elsewhere all over the world. 9 categories
of research and a three month field research trip have been adopted as the analysis instrument into generating the findings and further interlinked interpretations
for the development of the ECO LIVING BUILDING PROCESS, a process that builds a place in a ecological way, transforming it into walkable neighborhoods. It is
characterized by bioarchitecture, renewal of resources, ecotourism and new economic activities, passive energy, CO2 free alternatives and physically structured
by ecological community unities, which are building structures that can receive the interdisciplinary needs of the place and serve as public infrastructure. It is a
cooperative process, transforming common living rooms into common infra rooms.

13. 17/04/09
...coordinating ecological participatory
architectural process...designing and
building in natural protected environments...
San Miguel Consulting
Casa Cipó - Serra do Cipó , M.G., Brasil

14. Located inside the environmental protected urban area of the district of Serra do Cipó, in the southeast of Brazil, Casa Cipó faced the initial challenge to satisfy,
in one hand, the brazilian wife who wanted a simple rustic living space and on the other hand, the norwegian husband who wanted the most beautiful and
modern house of this specific urban core. Designed as an unifamiliar residence to be later adapted to a cosy hotel, the main concept was to maintain 80% of the
natural landscape of the 4000m2 land and explore the maximum of the view of the National Park of Serra do Cipó with the total constructed area of 517m2. The
regional characteristics of the local architecture served as a starting point. The main house is placed on the existing flattened plateau, area already touched by
human interventions, leaving the other declining half of the protected land with its original natural cover. The house, separated into two main shaped elements,
expresses in both edges the transition between a traditional brazilian architecture in the functional spaces to the contemporary massive volume for the private
spaces on the upper center. Both elements bind on the bottom center into the main social space of the house, the big varanda. The varanda is planned to hold
the social interaction together with the connection of the architecture to the outside space and its whole environmental protected surroundings. The idea is that
the architecture invites to the use of the outside space as the main living space. The massive rectangle is rotated to provide a 180º view of the park to the rooms
on the second floor and a 270º view from the couple’s dormitory. On the ground floor, the edges receive on one hand the kitchen and on the other hand, the living
room. Colored concrete columms mixed with 20X20 to 40X40 Cumaru wooden pillars form the structure of the building. The structure is sharpened by the regional
building techniques of ceramic tiles, bamboo ceiling, earth brich walls, natural cement floor and earth paint prepared and executed inside the construction site. The
construction, with the total low cost of 150000 dollars, was designed, managed and built by a local construction team, the architect, owners and family, from 2007
to 2010 in a cooperative participatory way.

15. ...developing volume & façade concepts, models,
presentations, pictures, designing plans and sections...
Erlenbach VorProjekt / Zürich, Suíça
23/05/08
Christ & Gantenbein officeBasel, Swityerland

16. The project for Schärer-Areal, located in Erlenbach, one of the most exclusive areas near the benches by the lake of Zurich, is composed of 14 high standard
residential apartments, from 2 1/2 to 6 1/2 rooms, with up to 200m2 and one commercial reserved space on the ground floor, as well as an extension building of
the fabric. This extension holds new office spaces and a gallery and also receives the access to the underground parking lot. The building is surrounded, besides
the coast of the lake, by typical traditional houses, a little stream, and an old textile industry, this one today occupied mainly with industrial and office holdings. The
main building is based on the principe of additive elements that are connected to each other by an industrial volumetric logic and completed with strategic and
functional openings that provide it a massive expression, with simplicity and lightness. The openings are studied to explore the strong views of the surroundings,
the two buildings and the lake of the city, through wide glass windows and sliding doors that give access to big balconies and terraces. The extension building
follows the same logic of openings from the new building, formed by a massive rectangular volume with a three-shed roof. Both buildings receive skobalit finishing,
to reinforce the industrial concept. My work resumed in developing volume and façade concepts, mockups, models, presentations, pictures, booklet brochures,
designing plans and sections.

17. Christ & Gantenbein office
Basel , Suíça 21/08/07
...analysing insulation, developing volume con-
cepts, models, façade furnishings with pictures...Volta Mitte VorProjeekt / Basel, Schweiz

18. Volta Mitte is the reconstruction and development of a street of houses following the construction of an underground motorway: the project proposed a large
residential building with 106 flats and a small adjacent office building instead of the old housing development. The two buildings complete the traditional perimeter
block development and thus create a clearly defined urban situation. The distorted volume of the residential building on the courtyard side creates individual flats of
varying space qualities. In this manner, each flat is shaped differently. My work resumed in analysing the insulation of each flat through measuring tools, developing
volume concepts, models, façade brick furnishings with pictures and patterns.

19. IED - Istituto Europeo di DesignMaster Research Study Program in Strategic Design
26/06/07
...in any corner...
researching, designing
“Busca Viva”
São Paulo, S.P., Brasil

20. For the final graduation project for module C of the Master Research Study Program in Strategic Design for IED, in June 2007, the initial research was divided in
three parts: the third age of today, the third age of 2025 and the scenary of 2025. Our finding is that the biggest needs for the third age of 2025 will be related to
services other than products. Our product is the creation of a service, that will provide entertainment, communication and information. This service will stand for
making it easier and stimulating the human relationships as well as their physical and cultural activities. “Busca Viva” or live search in english, is a service for data
search that stimulates and makes the real world happen, as a friendly and techonological product with easy interface. It satisfies the multiple needs of the third age
of 2025: pleasure, dreams, social integration and inclusion, phyisical and intelectual activity, company, information, entertainment, emergency, networking, contact
with people, portability, fun, approach, education, leasure, interaction and rescue of romance. All these needs can only be satisfied in a global social context.
In order to reach the majority of people, it is necessary to work with a mass communication media. So the system for the service works like this: it receives a
motivation, which means, the pleasures and dreams that are then, explored through the communication media to get the result of social integration. In other words,
the user enters the net, types a subject, the central service searches for a person or more at the third age that have story telling experience to share on that specific
subject, informs it to the user, that chooses the option he wants and the central then connects the user to the informer, that will always have his pocket gadget as
an aparatus of connection to the system. The connection is open, and for free, you can buy some products such as stories, data, debates, lectures, etc in paralell
relations that the system will create. You can access it by a computer or get the preview and buy the experienced stories at shops strategically spread at spots on
the city or even, from a seat, at home, in the streets. The street seat is a manifest against the lack of time of modern people. It is a place to listen to a story, in any
corner of the city. “Em qualquer esquina”.

21. 30/11/06
...which pedigree is yours?...Doc Dog
....researching, designing, experiencing...
IED - Istituto Europeo di Design
Master Applied Research Study Program in Design
São Paulo, Brasil

22. The final project for modules A and B of the Master Applied Study Program ASP, completed in 2006, is a result of the transversity between different areas of design.
Doc Dog, a fashion brand known and well recognized in the market of São Paulo, was chosen by IED as our target of work. The briefing was to make the brand
a pioneer in the market again, since it had been losing place for competitive shops with similiar concepts in the city. After researches and conclusions found, Doc
Dog, as a positioning statement, offers different proposals to people who want to search for or to create their own style. Our vision, as a team, and as designers, for
the brand positioning of Doc Dog, was to expand its brand to beyond the physical limits of the architecture of the shop. And, to express in its brand language, the
values of its products: individuality, creativeness and boldness. We believe that it should represent the several personalities and individuality of its costumers as a
way of expressing “what pedigree is your pedigree”.The x-ray concept was the start point for the definition of the visual identity of the brand: a multiple culture id. In
fashion, the threads represent the cross of tribes and attitudes in one fabric, that connected to the acessories of each being, create the own style of each person.
The industrial design approach adopts a floating furniture, a gift you get after a purchase, that can transform itself according to the necessity, and will of each
customer, in their houses or at work or even inside the shop.But then we ask ourselves “What would be the best place to establish a fashion business? Nowhere
or anywhere”. From this finding we defined that every place in the city could be a place for the store, in a compact, multiple and interactive way, transforming and
being part of the happenings and history of the urban scenery. We adopted standartized containers as a concrete feasibility element of immediate intervention, that
can be applied now, anywhere in the world. Beyond the limits of interior design, it is more a strategic work of urban action.

23. . Puma BH Shopping / Belo Horizonte, Brasil..coordinating and building furniture...designing andbuilding commercial architecture...
15/03/05Shop Concept Projetos e Desenvolvimento
São Paulo, S.P., Brasil
Burgo’s / São Paulo, Brasil
...coordinating projects...

24. Shop Concept Projetos e Desenvolvimento is specialized in interior design commercial projects, related to fashion stores, restaurants, kiosks, gas stations,
stands in fairs, and cafes spread all over Brazil and some examples in South America. It is connected, in the same factory building, with a wood factory, where
in most cases, project and construction are done in parallel and mostly at the same time. Adidas, Puma, Hugo Boss, Bulgari, Burgo’s, Mc Donald’s, McCafes,
Kiosks, Esso, Euro in the Box are some of the several interior and industrial design projects developed by the team. Puma, a store located in BH Shopping, in
Belo Horizonte, follows the german basic shop concept adapted to brazilian necessities, costs and materials. So does Bulgari, in Shopping Iguatemi, keeping
the european quality standards of concept and building. Both projects ( excluding concept developments ) and constructions received my coordination from start
to inauguration. In Bulgari, the project was adapted. In Puma, the concept project was done by the office, and Germany served as a base for technical consults
related to the construction of specific furnitures such as shoe shelves. In Burgo’s, a street fast food restaurant, the brand concept was developed from the beginning
of the investment to the end of the construction and the coordination of each step of the construction done by me in the office, as well as the compatibility with
complementary engineering projects. All the furniture was designed and built by us. The specification of kitchen system, equipments and cook machines was
defined by me. One of the main clients of Dorsa, the wood factory together with Shop, is Mc Donald’s. The architecture office was responsible for creating the
commercial product concept of Mc Cafes, small portable cafes as an addiction volume to Mc Donald’s restaurants, as well as the new concept for the kiosks of Mc
Donald’s. The construction of these kiosks was done inside our factory and coordinated by the office.

25. Carolina San Miguel
...the camelôs as a third world
urban phenomena...researching & designing
Architecture & Urbanism,Centro Universitário Metodista Iyabela HendrixBelo Horizonte , Brasil
05/12/03

26. The final graduation project designed for the school of Architecture and Urban Planning, at Centro Universitário Metodista Izabela Hendrix opens the discussion
about whether architecture should be built or rebuilt into present and future needs. The renovation of an abandoned district of old industrial warehouses and the
reinterpretation of the urban phenomena of informal illegal tents spread all over public dots downtown as an immediate income alternative of survival in concrete
jungles, characterize and lead to the proposal of the concept of the project as a transformation of these areas into a void for social and cultural needs, preservation
of the architectural existing inheritance and generation of income. The project proposes a connection of both buildings through a main open public square used
today as an open street, as the convergent point of the axis between park and district in opposite sides, to give space to an alternative shopping center to the
people, in other words, “o shopping popular”. The original façades are maintained and renovated together with the requalification of the surroundings. Inside, it
gives space to mobile “tents”, structures designed to be adapted according to the actual usage of the buildings at the moment of time: as shops, as an open square
for shows, or artistic local manifestations. The shopping center provides the basic structure to make it feasible, with toilets, cinemas, rooms for lectures, stairs,
parking, administration center, logistics, bars, cafes, and restaurants. Santa Tereza, the old district, is connected to the square through a walking passage over the
exisiting traintracks, and the traffic system is adapted to give straight access to one or the other from the park, by car or by foot.

27. Scientific Initiation Scholarship ( NUPET )
Centro Universitário Metodista Izabela Hendrix
Belo Horizonte, Brazil
13/09/02
“ Architecture of Luxurz: alienation and exclu-
sion of a societz of consumption towards the
sign of contemporary architectural production”,
Carolina San Miguel

28. Consumption is a cultural, social and political system. It receives a secondary meaning of appropriation of the desire to have the sign of an object. Everything
that is produced in the society of consumption asserts itself only by a contextualized situation and to the whole of the interrelation between worlds and beings.
The architecture of consumption uses its image and similarity to communicate the total cultural relationship of a certain community to another one. It is through
the architecture and the behaviour of people that the cities, states and even countries come to be represented towards a globalized and homogeneous world to
heterogeneize these relations through the imagetic structure that architecture is able of transmitting. The architecture of luxury emerges in order to respond to the
necessities of the society of consumption. If in modernism the house is divided in primary functions, in the architecture of luxury it is divided in secondary functions
( Baudrillard, Jean. La Société d’Objets. 1973 ). There is an exchange, but an exchange of signs. While one house has an italian marble, the other has a spanish
one While one house has a volleyball court, the other has a tennis court. While one house has a swimming pool, the other has a waterfall or even a spa fitness
center. While one house has a private movie theater, the other has a tv in each room of the house. Materials of facades transform into sign functions of expensive,
and sophisticated coatings. The architecture, from an art of building well done, transforms itself to an art of communicating well done.