As announced in the previous article, the warehouses 2 and 3 at Pier Mauá (Av. Rodrigues Alves) in Rio de Janeiro will be the venue for the next Velo-city conference 2018, which will take place from 12 to 15 June.

The entire area, which will host this year’s conference edition, is part of the project Porto Maravilha. This started in 2009 thanks to the boost of the Olympic Games and it has been based on a private-public partnership (PPP), the most important in the country at the moment. The transformations that are changing the face of the Port Area (Região Portuária) are impressive. The project covers an area of 5 Million m² and it aims at recovering the historical and cultural heritage, creating a new infrastructure system and attracting the interest of investors. A crucial aspect of the project is the regeneration of Avenida Rodrigues Alves, where the warehouses are located. There, in the stretch of the boulevard called Orla Conde, the old buildings got a new life. Some of them are still used as passenger terminals, but others have a totally new purpose. For example, the warehouse number 1 became a YouTube Space and the warehouses 2 and 3 are the perfect space for numerous events. Besides, the aspect of the whole boulevard is now profoundly changed thanks to the works initiated in 2014. A massive transformation in this respect has been the demolition of 4.900 meters of the Elevado da Perimetral (Elevated Road of Perimetral), which enabled the creation of a no traffic area with sidewalks, the building of a new cycle path, the construction of a Light Rail Tram system and the designing a human-sized district. In fact, the idea behind the project is to implement a new urban model so as to promote public transports, give the possibility of living close to the work place and create more spaces for pedestrians and cyclists.

The renovation of the boulevard is complemented by the refurbishment of square Mauá, perhaps the main symbol of the regeneration of the area.

The square hosts the Rio Art Museum, a space dedicated to culture and art that was inaugurated in 2013 and the Museum of Tomorrow (Museu do Amanhã), a futuristic building designed by the architect Santiago Calatrava. These changes allowed to create an attractive space devoted exclusively to pedestrians and cyclists in order to revive the area not only for tourists, but also for the same cariocas. 

Source: Rio Prefeitura, http://portomaravilha.com.br/