15.11.12

One of the curators of the 5th IABR appointed Secretary of Urban Development of São Paulo

Fernando de Mello Franco (right), Milton Braga and Marta Moreira (MMBB)

One of the first decisions of the newly elected mayor of São Paulo, Fernando Haddad, was to appoint the architect Fernando de Mello Franco as his Secretary for Urban Development. De Mello Franco is a member of the Curator Team of the 5th IABR: Making City.

Fernando de Mello Franco will be responsible for effecting one of Mayor Haddad's main campaign promises, the "Arco do Futuro", the bridge to the future. We are delighted to note that it is to be an architect who will actually be in charge of "making city" in the biggest metropolis of the southern hemisphere.

De Mello Franco is one of the founding partners of MMBB Arquitetos in São Paulo and currently the curator of the Instituto Urbem. He was a visiting professor at  Harvard. De Mello Franco has strong ties with the IABR. In 2007 he won the Biennale Award with the project "Watery Voids". In the 4th IABR, in 2009, he was one of the designers working on the project in the favela Paraisópolis that was set up as a collaboration of the IABR and SEHAB, the Municipality of São Paulo's Social Housing Department. He is actively engaged with the 5th IABR: Making City as a member of the international Curator Team and as the Atelier Master of the Atelier São Paulo, an initiative of the IABR and SEHAB in the context of the IABR Test Site São Paulo.