Campus USP Butantã: the critical knowledge and the city

Abstract

The study aims to verify how the spatial relationship of the campus Armando Salles de Oliveira, Butantã campus from São Paulo University, with the city expresses a segregation now presented with different nuances from the time of its creation. Designed to be an autonomous, independent entity, aimed at developing knowledge, away from the urban center, now due to the growth of the city, it is within its tissue. But still appears as a segregated area of the city, albeit with several mutual interpenetration. The creation of the campus evinced the distinction of university knowledge as a representation of a technical-industrial city and a developed country. Beyond physical-spatial forms, its location and spatial arrangement as well as its relation with the city express representations of society, mentalities. Presently surrounded by the city with all its issues and peculiarities, the University City shows an urban situation that refers to condominium ideas as a way to remain isolated. With its own way of life, based on a particular internal order and coexistence between similar, the Butantã campus of USP demands on one hand to avoid the city’s problems around it and at the same time the campus cannot help being part of it. It is an invitation to reflect on what assumptions and reasons for this design, how it happens and what are its brands at the university-city and university-society relations.