Project implementation: Brazil
Project development: Brazil
Students: Caroline Jahn, Fabiane Calistro, Guilherme Staub, Yan Kruchin
Between Margins: A City in Layers is a project that seeks to reconcile Porto Alegre with Lake Guaíba, redefining one of its greatest symbols of separation: the Mauá Wall. Porto Alegre has always been shaped by its relationship with water—a presence that, over time, has become both an identity and a challenge. Once a space for gathering and leisure, Guaíba is now also a physical and symbolic boundary, marked by floods that expose the vulnerability of urban infrastructure to climate change.
Built as a barrier against flooding, the wall ended up separating the city from its shoreline, transforming contact with water into an absence. By trying to contain the river, the city contained itself, relegating the lake to an inaccessible backdrop. The proposal recognizes this rupture and seeks to transform it into an opportunity: it reconfigures the wall not as a barrier, but as a seam between the natural and the constructed, between past and future.
The project redesigns this rigid border as a space for gathering, circulation, and permanence. An elevated promenade connects the Historic Center to Cais Mauá, restoring pedestrian prominence and offering spaces for leisure, contemplation, and active mobility. Green strips and bike paths run along the route, aiding urban drainage and providing environmental comfort, while the pier's warehouses are reactivated as cultural, gastronomic, and community hubs.
Its materiality reinforces these principles: a lightweight and sustainable structure, made of engineered wood and prefabricated modules, with green infrastructure solutions – such as rain gardens, permeable pavements, and native vegetation – increasing urban resilience in the face of extreme events.
Entre Margens doesn't erase history: it recognizes the city's layers, its boundaries, and contradictions. The Mauá Wall remains—but now, it's ground. It's a path. It's a city.