Located in the North Zone of São Paulo, Cidade Center Norte plays an important role in the daily life of the population, functioning as a leisure hub with its diverse facilities and offering a strategic position close to the Portuguesa–Tietê Station on Metro Line 1–Blue and major bus terminals. Its location, combined with these transportation modes, facilitates access and brings a large number of people to the area every day, reinforcing its relevance as a center of circulation, consumption, and social interaction.
Among the facilities in the area, two stand out for their significance: Shopping Lar Center and Expo Center Norte, the latter being one of the largest and most important event venues in the city. Circulation between these spaces is partially facilitated by internal connections that allow pedestrians to move between Shopping Center Norte and Lar Center, promoting integrated and functional access. However, this connectivity is lost along the route toward Expo Center Norte, where the path is interrupted by vast parking areas that are uninviting at a human scale.
This situation raises fundamental questions that point to the need for an intervention: Is it possible to conceive a route with urbanity within a car-dominated environment? How can urban design mitigate the discomfort of such an arid landscape and elevate the pedestrian experience? Could this route be reimagined as a place for pause and contemplation — a more sensitive, more human landscape — shaped through the perspective of those who walk it?
Also responsible for conceptualizing the network of public spaces for the future Bairro Parque Cidade Center Norte, we created four guiding layers for the interventions: Living Landscape, which brings vegetation beyond a merely scenic role, prioritizing nature-based solutions (NBS); Network of Elements, which establishes a family of components to unify the open spaces; Activation of Open Spaces, which identifies and proposes new uses throughout the district; and the Intention layer, which seeks to understand how each localized intervention shapes the whole.
In a context where automobiles dominate the dynamics, the project seeks strategies that restore the pedestrian’s protagonism. Among these strategies is the design of a route that softens the proximity between people and vehicles; that articulates movement with opportunities for pause through areas with a contemplative atmosphere and inviting places for rest and permanence equipped with suitable urban furniture; and that offers safety, shade, and protection, enveloping pedestrians within green areas.
Running along a 5-meter-wide asphalt path commonly used by pedestrians, the concept takes the opposite approach to the rigid, linear logic of the parking layout: it proposes the creation of a route defined by fluidity and rhythm, capable of breaking the hardness of the existing landscape and revealing new ways of experiencing it. In this sense, the proposal’s language centers on the design of the ground plane and the overhead plane, leaving the lateral planes open to views and natural ventilation. This configuration suggests a new scale of interaction between pedestrians and landscape, using these elements as the basis for an intervention that is striking, even if temporary.
Within this conceptual framework — particularly in dialogue with the Network of Elements layer — the project unfolds. Starting from the lower plane, planters and their finishes are incorporated as central components of the new route, merging with the pavement through a single color — the characteristic red of the Network of Elements — which extends continuously from the ground to the top of the planters. The same tone is applied to the curved urban furniture placed along the path. The result is a scenic, vibrant, and expressive route that stands out against the asphalt.
Movement is echoed in the upper plane through lightweight translucent polycarbonate canopies arranged in an alternating rhythm, with varying inclinations along the route, creating a visual cadence that accompanies the journey’s fluidity.
The planters, with carefully designed landscaping, form a green layer that enriches the surroundings and contributes to the local microclimate, offering shade, thermal comfort, and a more welcoming visual experience. Meanwhile, climbing plants grow along the structure’s pillars and anchor themselves to metal meshes on the canopy, allowing the route to evolve naturally over time as vegetation grows and transforms the landscape. This gradual naturalization not only softens the rigidity of the context but also strengthens the relationship between people and place, creating a more sensory and receptive environment.
The decision to use a structure in a tone closely aligned with the red of the pavement and planters reinforces the chromatic and formal unity of the project, consolidating the intervention as an articulated and recognizable element within the landscape.
Construction began in October 2024 and was completed in January 2025. What was once an arid, exposed, and unsafe path became a route more attuned to the pedestrian scale, with proper infrastructure and safety. By becoming a fluid, shaded, and sensorial route, the intervention contributes directly to goals of sustainability, inclusion, and the activation of potential open spaces, fostering a more connected, welcoming, and vibrant environment for everyone who moves through the facilities of Cidade Center Norte.
