elderly shelter
project.oficina.boracea

Projeto.Oficina.Boracea is the first homeless shelter in the city of São Paulo that focused on the welcoming of waste pickers, and the project was made to improve its facilities making it more cozy and humanized.
The goal of the proposal was to provide protection environments through the development of panels and partitions that could reconfigure the space and making it possible to have some privacy and retreat within the bedroom.
The changes provided a better quality of life for its users, and according to the managers of the shelter it had a positive impact on the reduction of quarrels, insomnia and even of diseases.
All improvements were conceived from the recycling and reuse of discarded materials, turning waste back into raw material. The logic of selective waste collection deserved to be subverted in this context so that this material would not have value only as raw material to be sold by weight, but something more.
This project unfolded in an income generation program called ‘Oficina de Artes Boracea’. The group that participated in the workshop left the shelter in a few months and lived for many years with the income generated by the sale of products made from newspaper recycling.