The ephemeral in Rio de Janeiro's suburbs: Micro-practices of resistance.

This article looks at ephemeral situations adopted in the appropriation of public spaces in Olaria, Ramos and Bonsucesso, suburbs of the city of Rio de Janeiro. These situations were revealed in the context of teaching Urban Design in the Architecture and Urbanism course, motivated by concerns about a coherent intervention that considers the city's contemporary complexities. Our approach stemmed from a spatial analysis on a micro scale, that allows observing the effects of Urban Form for those who experience it, considering the relationship between materiality and daily events. The theoretical basis of the research is the concept of singularity, understood as the result of inventiveness to adapt to the urban condition, dominated by hegemonic processes, which creates density in the urban environment and permanence for local agents. Given the multiple ephemeral singular situations found in our investigation, we also incorporated the concept of ephemeral architecture into our theoretical-methodological framework as a fleeting, organic and flexible spatiality, that requires few financial or human resources, and relies on bottom-up action. In contrast, with the already studied micro-practices, we consider the peculiarity of ephemeral situations in Rio de Janeiro's suburbs involving socioeconomic characteristics. This opens the door for ephemeral architecture to contribute towards urban social and spatial inclusion. For that reason, however, we must consider the difficulty for Urban Design to deal with informality, environmental and landscape decay, as well as precarious infrastructure. For that reason, it is important to include a system of design rules to guide spatial appropriation, organizing public space by private activities and the exchange of working practices with circulation flows, as well as adopting solutions to deal with the daily reinstallation of devices.