This research pamphlet collects the work of students from architecture, urban design, and the liberal arts at University of Michigan who have investigated -- to cite Michel de Certeau -- the urban space of Rio as a ‘practiced place’ in both the cultural imagination and embodied experience. The primary site of research was the downtown port area of Rio, currently undergoing extensive redevelopment in parallel with the 2016 Olympics. The site-driven planning and design proposals presented here aim to test modes of democratic public space and dense urbanism that might incorporate social collectives and rapid ecological change.