Artistically Transforming Communities

Dre Urhahn and Jeroen Koolhaas are both artists that share in their creative painting keynote how an artistically aesthetic project can completely remake a city. Both Urhahn and Koolhaas tell their stories about how they used painting to revolutionize the appearance and feel of run-down urban locales in cities such as Brazil's Rio de Janeiro.

Koolhaas and Urhahn teamed up to bring more color to the houses in Rio de Janeiro. While Rio de Janeiro underwent on-going civil wars between drug gangs and police forces, Urhahn and Koolhaas used neighborhood barbecues and art projects to strengthen a sense of community in the city. "We learned that during those times," Urhahn says, "people in communities really stick together." The team's first project was to paint a boy flying a kite in front of a sky blue background on three joining homes. The second project turned a concrete neighborhood into a street flooded with streaks of rainbow colors.