a&e | the agenda | food | classifieds P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R | A U G U S T 2 - A U G U S T 8 , 2 0 1 2 | C I T Y PA P E R . N E T | 13
>>> continued on page 14
feature
Germantown Avenue is one of the oldest streets in Philly, with roots dating back to the late 1600s. Traveling the full length of the Avenue today is practically a primer in the city’s various economic castes: starting in recently gentrified Northern Liberties, the Avenue runs north and west through the amorphous area still known as the Badlands, then goes through
the naked city
Y
ou may know of the circular Praça Cantão, the plaza that serves as an entrance to the Favela Santa Marta. Rio de Janeiro is peppered with upwards of 1,000 favelas — Brazilian slums — clinging to the hills that run along the city. The Favela Santa Marta, nestled in the southern zone, is set on one of the steepest of these hills: The terrain is practically mountainous, and from far away it looks as if its buildings and shacks have been haphazardly stacked on top of each other. Even many people not familiar with Brazil may have heard of Favela Santa Marta because of the large-scale art projects of Dutch muralists Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn (aka Haas&Hahn). In 2006, after filming a documentary on favela hip-hop there, they moved to Rio, hired local youths as a paint crew, set up scaffolds and began painting massive murals. In 2010, Haas&Hahn finished their largest project in Favela Santa Marta. The results look as if a giant with a school-bus-sized paintbrush and a fondness for rainbows went to town on an entire block — brighthued diagonal rays stretch across 34 multistory houses and 75,000 square feet. Images of the Praça Cantão plaza went viral, appearing in the New York Times, Vogue Brazil and on countless design Tumblrs. Subsequently, Philly’s Mural Arts Program got in touch to see whether the pair were interested in seeing how their multi-building, bright-colored project translated to urban, post-industrial America, and in 2011 Haas&Hahn moved to North Philly, to begin an even larger project they called Philly Painting. Their plan: to completely paint three unbroken blocks of buildings along an odd, north-south kink in the usually diagonal Germantown Avenue. As of now, many façades have already been painted in a patchwork of rectangles. The shapes are simple, to fit onto a variety of structures, and easy to execute for a somewhat green paint crew partially drawn from the neighborhood; in addition, the colors of each building have been chosen by its owner. The hope is that they’ll eventually merge to form a continuous whole covering all of Germantown Avenue through the cross-streets of Alder, Huntingdon, Lehigh, Silver, Somerset and Cambria, down several side streets and perhaps even spilling over onto the pavement, crosswalks and light posts. You can anticipate the finished product looking like a bright tapestry under a magnifying glass. But the project is far from complete. And there are many reasons why.