The stench of rotting dog corpses used to waft through Mauro Quintanilha's Rio slum home. Outside stood a towering mound of detritus of every size and shape. It took a decade and lots of help from volunteers, but Quintanilha moved that stinking mountain. Now, where all the rot once piled up is a park with birds, butterflies and even monkeys. For his trouble, he has won a top international prize for urban renewal. "At the start, people thought I was crazy. They made fun of me," Quintanilha, a 55-year-old percussionist, told AFP.
"I had to clear 16 tons of trash which people had piled up above Vidigal," he said, referring to the slum that is home to some 25,000 people. The garbage stretched as far as Avenue Niemeyer, an elegant thoroughfare just a stone's throw from the beach. Although locals enjoy an unrivalled view over some of Rio's most plush districts, their favela, like most slums, lacks basic public services including waste disposal. "I was the resident living closest to the trash tips. There was everything - mattresses, refrigerators, tires - even the corpses of dogs. It stank and was really depressing - so I decided to act," said Quintanilha.
The ecological park - a "green oasis" for those behind its creation - is today a little corner of Rio where one can enjoy bird watching and go jogging. The site includes a small garden that has already produced some 700 kilos (1,500 pounds) of vegetables, aromatic plants and fruit which is shared out among residents. "To begin with, people kept on dumping their trash at nightfall. Little by little, we educated them by giving them plants from the garden. We transformed more than the site. We transformed the residents," says a delighted Quintanilha.
Armed with cuttings provided by Rio's Botanical Garden, he explains how he and his team were able to produce their award-winning creation, recycling everything they could along the way. Even toilet bowls proved useful: they are converted into large vases. Quintanilha also fashioned a table out of bicycle wheels and made bedsprings from plastic bottles, all for small change. Access to the "green oasis" is via a narrow staircase made of old tires filled with gravel leading up from the favela's main winding street filled with motorbike taxis.
What once served as a getaway route for drug traffickers until police moved in to "pacify" Vidigal in 2011 is now a tranquil spot with a jaw-dropping view over well-heeled beaches like those of Ipanema. Rio police began their slum pacification program in 2008, taking over dozens in the build-up to last year's World Cup as well as next year's Olympics. Few locals know about Quintanilha's initiative, which started to gain prominence in 2012 at the Rio+20 UN summit on sustainable development. Foreign officials have since visited the site. But it was the arrival in the favela of 32-year-old Brazilian architect Pedro Henrique de Cristo, who had just finished his studies at Harvard, which really brought the area to wider attention.
"I saw the residents here had pulled off a revolution. The favela dwellers are incredible but the space in which they live is inhuman and must be improved," says Cristo, now director of the site. "When we arrived, the park stretched over 1,100 square meters and in two-and-a-half years we increased it to 8,500 square meters," says Cristo, who is married to fellow Harvard architecture graduate Caroline Shannon. Cristo, Shannon and Quintanilha are hoping to create an environmental, arts and technology institute here next year - a million-dollar undertaking approved by the city but funded privately.
If they can raise the capital, the center will include a technical innovation center, a library, rooms for art and music instruction and even a restaurant which will serve dishes containing produce from the garden. The scheme will also include waste treatment and measures to control landslides. "The important thing is to create public spaces through education, democracy and leisure, especially for children, as an antidote to violence," says Cristo. The park and the project last month earned a prestigious SEED Award for urban architecture and design in Detroit, which Quintanilha and Cristo received in the United States.
Others are now following their example. "We have just found out that we are off to Cape Town in South Africa to come up with the design for an urban park there," says Cristo. "If everyone did what Quintanilha has done in other favelas - turn a dump into a park - it would be marvellous," says Ivonete Tavares, a 50-year-old Vidigal resident.
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