Monumental murals: Haas&Hahn reinvent Rio de Janiero’s favelas

A new project brings technicolour cool to Rio de Janeiro's densely populated favelas. Dutch artists Haas&Hahn present their interventionist mural projects at an exhibition in New York's Storefront for Art and Architecture entitled: Painting Urbanism: Learning from Rio. 

The show displays back-lit photographs and documentary videos of huge-scale rainbow murals painted directly onto apartment block walls in Rio. In collaboration with local residents and youth, the project was a process of inspired urban renewal and community driven; painters were paid and taught how to use different kinds of materials. The resulting murals offer critical ways to reclaim and transform public and private urban spaces. Looking to the future, the exhibition shows proposal paintings for similar urban intervention projects for New York and other cities across the globe.

As urban landscapes sprawl across the world, navigating today’s mega-cities is currently the focus of hot debate and the subject of The Endless City and Living in the Endless City, exciting new books co-authored by Ricky Burdett and Deyan Sudjic.

Follow the link to Favela Painting for further details of the Haas&Hahn’s ongoing work.