This work adopts fragmentation as a method of analysis and design, understood as a strategy to comprehend urban complexity through its parts. Based on this approach, a superposition is established between fragmented elements from the concrete sphere — such as viaducts, blank walls, voids, squares, and open grounds — and the invisible sphere — represented by the categories from Italo Calvino’s book Invisible Cities. The reading of the city thus unfolds between the tangible and the intangible, between physical space and symbolic meaning. Through four design essays, the work proposes hypotheses for urban intervention in the central region of São Paulo that articulate these two dimensions, seeking possible connections between urban fragments and revealing new layers of meaning within the city’s fabric. The categorical overlapping of elements becomes, therefore, a tool for both interpretation and creation.

Keywords:fragmentation, intervention, urban poetics, public space, urban elements, invisible cities, Italo Calvino.