A Ocupação 9 de Julho is one of the symbols of the fight for dwelling in São Paulo, capable of bringing together sectors of the intellectual and financial elite around the cause.

Nowadays, it is one of the most active occupations in the center of São Paulo, hosting a weekly routine of educational activities and cultural programs open to the public.

To understand how the inhabitants, both current and future, perceive their city, we will use the following strategy: we set off ‘adrift’ with a large golden frame, so that during our wandering, we frame those urban elements that are important to them (an experience based on the work of O’Grady). Who have been the protagonists of this ‘A Vila do Mañá’ experience? On this occasion, during their wandering, they have reDISCOVERED places in their city, perhaps forgotten ones.
With ‘A Vila do Mañá’, the city in which they live is not an abstract idea, nor a series of small partial images; it begins to be understood as a much more complex and expansive environment, bringing us closer to the notion of habitat: the space that transcends its physical location in a territory where we fulfil our needs, establishing relationships with others and with the environment, both natural and built; involving processes in which it transforms, but in which we are also transformed.