São Paulo: Cities within cities, and the paradoxical architecture of aspiration
In the concrete jungle of the greatest megalopolis in the Americas
After a full day on air from Singapore, the first glimpse of São Paulo on the plane revealed a rippling concrete jungle - and ‘concrete jungle’ has never been used to better effect then here - smoothly extending the verdant rolling hills of the Brazilian countryside. Such was the scale of this metropolis that it dwarfed all the cities I had known growing up - twenty three million people, a figure that would put even New York to shame! Even though I already had some idea of the city, the idea of an endless modernist megalopolis still remains rather discordant with the popular dream of Brazil - of endless sunshine on the beach, of flip flops and short shorts, of funky samba and all day caipirinha with religious abandon.
São Paulo is the first city which I felt obligated to write of as ‘cities within a city’, one where one clearly cannot define a through-line of the city’s features if he insists on considering the city as a whole. Usually I have felt that you can reconcile the diversity of a metropolis with some overarching impression; however, for São Paulo, its identity lies in the fragmentation of itself, partly because it is cumbersomely large, and partly because of how much its urban fabric is emergent from the conflicts between its city-parts.
I. Cities within cities
What looks like a homogeneous mass of urbanization on the map quickly turns into a patchwork of neighborhoods with barely anything in common once one hits the road. The historic center of the city, the part I encountered first on the journey back from Guarulhos airport, is half in disrepair and thickly adorned with graffiti. At times one can catch a glimpse of a breathtaking building in Portuguese colonial style, with their magnificent classical pillars and ornate decorations, before being surrounded again with dilapidated, faded facades staggered on hostile pavements. After a series of tunnels, when one arrived in Vila Olimpia, the corporate district where I was staying, the scenery had been replaced by a barrage of glass towers. These towers were shiny, reflective and domineering, their pavements were manicured, and for once one could see some trees. To an outsider, it felt as if the tunnel had taken me to a completely different world, a difference far more fundamental than the usual diversity of neighboring areas elsewhere.
My impressions of Brazil had been marred with the precautions spread by other visitors surrounding dangers in the country. Such an idea of violence haunts the country as much as the vision of its sunny beaches: in fact, I don’t think an average Asian would know much about Brazil beyond beaches and street violence. Even the locals sometimes reinforced these ideas: on the first day, my colleague talked me out of going to the Pinacoteca so he doesn’t have to walk me through that particular neighborhood. This particular caution is why I must have perceived São Paulo as such a fragmented entity, since one had to be mindful all the time not to get inside a bad neighborhood; the city is fragmented not only physically, but also mentally through the social geography of safety. And so while I peacefully relax in the guarded comfort of Vila Olimpia, I sometimes dream of venturing out, imagining what it could be like on those hostile pavements at night, if I was a phantom for a moment.
The cosmopolitan-ness of the city manifests itself in more than the mere landscape, but also in its people. Brazil is a nation of immigrants, and São Paulo the center of it all. There are pockets of different ethnicities all over, one of the more famous one being the Japanese neighborhood of Liberdade1 - where the sushi is apparently splendid. Food is probably always the best indicator of diversity, and São Paulo has an offering that can rival the likes of New York: from rather authentic Italian and French fare to Chinese and Japanese, not mentioning the culinary traditions of other Brazilian states flocking over to the nation’s most important city.
The districts are further divided by the Latin American mantra of zero walkability. On the map, you can sometimes hazard a guess as to where neighborhoods begin and end purely from the sheers behemoths that are the highways criss-crossing them. Even the manicured pavements of the business district do not make it hospitable enough to walk - however, bikes are alright, as evidenced by the hordes of shirtless bikers cruising through the city center. Getting from one neighborhood to another, then, is a matter of having a car (or getting a taxi), which, by myself, is a rather tall hurdle; therefore, I contented myself with being confined to my workplace most of the time. Yet what little I have seen of São Paulo is, fortunately, remarkable enough.
II. Avenida Paulista
In many senses, Avenida Paulista feels like the crowning jewel of the city. This impression had been instilled in me since the moment I knew I was going to São Paulo and decided to do some Google searches; even the road’s name carried such a unsubtle self-importance2. Yet I could not rationalize what was so special about a (weekend-only) pedestrian road dominated by corporate buildings.
That is, until I arrived at Paulista the first time, as the roads around me cascaded down in a steep, San Franciscan descent, and the small roadside houses became almost diagonal. I then caught a glimpse of the radio towers, jutting out not from the ground but from the rooftop of the colossal buildings in Paulista, like giant trees breaking out of the foliage of a concrete jungle. They were boldly glittering as if their steel bodies weren’t of a sullen burgundy and their wires astray. They were rebellious, punkish spikes on the city’s electrifying headpiece, all while blending seamlessly with the damp impersonality of the modernist edifices they rest on. In that moment I felt as if standing amidst a Paulista Christ the Redeemer, a symbol at the highest part of town, but here it is not a monument to history, but a monument to a dizzyingly modernist and aspirational metropolis.
I look back down to the ground-level Paulista, a ten-lane plaza whose endless cars have been replaced by people for the Sunday. Even in juxtaposition with the imposing towers that grace its sidewalks, the road felt like an oversized concrete carpet upon which human activity is tolerated rather than embraced - which makes perfect sense when you imagine the hordes of automobiles that choke up its myriad lanes on a business day. Yet even the shelterless concrete and the garish sun couldn’t dim the Paulista energy in the slightest: at 2pm the road was chock-full of people walking around, a few honking bikes, assorted stalls brandishing their fuming churrasco and plastic buckets of Heineken and Corona. A few musically inclined Brasileiros set up their stalls to sing, sometimes so close to each other that their performances merge into a cacophony not least helped by their slightly antiquated speakers. The most popular musical performance of the bunch was a band playing Brazilian pop - a vaguely rockish genre to the effect of Oasis or Coldplay. Right next to it, an audience of half-naked people doing spin class - yes, in this weather - lends a certain hilarious dynamic rhythm to the show.
Mesmerizing and tantalizing are the sight of the huge buildings on the roadside - a feeling exacerbated by the fact that I couldn’t leave my phone out for taking photos for too long for fear of it being snatched. Anyway, it is hard to capture the glory of these buildings in hastily taken pictures from the ground - since their scale far exceeds the limit of camera capture. Most of the buildings are of similar height and similar size, as if it’s cut from the same 3D printer. Their edges are vertical, bulky and domineering. Their barrage of windows conformist, indifferent, and utterly incompatible with all the vibrant life force flowing on the street. They’re at the same time larger than life and agonizingly lifeless, like Goliaths to the Davids being hustling hawkers with petite colorful umbrellas on the road.
In a forest of monumental edifices, the smaller buildings stood out like monuments. The most striking of all must be the Art Museum, which, in it’s barebones glory, is no more than raw concrete: cracks and scrapings were visible as I walked up the stairs. A striking vertical red carpet adds a touch of severity to the washed-up surrounding - brutalism is the perfect word to capture this scene. Another notable candidate is an old mansion - the only example of classical European architecture to be found over the stretch. Finally, who could forget the Mequi 1000, McDonald’s flagship store celebrating 1000 outlets in the whole country, whose hilarious existence nonetheless fit very well with the ironically colorful impression of the stretch.
III. Crosshairs of aspirations
Yet, as is obvious from its particular architecture, Paulista had not always been the throbbing heart of the city. It is caught in the crossroads of last-century modernism: to its East, the historic legacy of Portuguese colonial edifices; to its West, the glistening glass skyscrapers of the new age. In São Paulo one can clearly sees how time has shifted the heart of the city, from the shifting sands of architectural fashion. One notices it even in the mundane changing of pavements: the non-existent, haggard and hostile pavements, with an occasional walker mired in gloom, slowly fade into manicured, orderly arrangements, more fertile with jovial pedestrians and bikers as you inch towards the modern part of the city.
The old quarter, or whatever fragments of it I got to witness, was a feast of murals and decorations. Here stand not only the classical Portuguese monuments like the Catedral da Sé and the Pinacoteca, but also towering skyscrapers, like the Martinelli Builidng, South America’s first skyscraper, and Banespao, Brazil’s own little Empire State. Littered between them are the ghosts of buildings and streets in disrepair. Such was a history not even past - remember that São Paulo only gained footing as the economic powerhouse of Brazil a hundred years ago. And yet the monuments in my periphery seemed so far away, as if someone had abandoned them. The city had tried to revitalize its historic center, but until now, it is still run-down, haunted with a reputation (fair or not) of vice and homelessness, and a general ‘don’t-go-if-you-don’t have-to’ cloud on the Paulistano3 conscience.
On the other hand, Paulistano modernity is defined by an expanse of blue glass, perhaps even more staggeringly so than other global cities from the sheer volume of corporate buildings. Such is the São Paulo I got to know the best, and these buildings are the focal points of my observation: they are simultaneously fascinating and mind-numbingly boring.
The contemporary glassy structures that dominate Itaim Bibi and Vila Olímpia are these almost inhuman monoliths of blue, somehow even less human than the modernist blocks. They seem to be constructed from the same principles: outrageous scale, cuboid frames with the ever so slight curvature, and an absolute, almost pious conformity. Out of context one would have thought that the architects couldn’t use anything but the most primitive 3D printer to design their creations, which one can’t really attribute to minimalism since the buildings are still so outward in their extravagance. These structures are of such an outsized stature compare to the roads below them (which, again, are designed for cars and therefore by no means small) that they feel like clumsy aliens trying to navigate a human landscape, their elephantine limbs flailing around the manicured gardens underneath them. Their archetype seemed to thrive on ludicrousness.
These skyscrapers’ only differentiating attribute compared to the modernist one in Paulista is their materials, specifically this blue-tinted glass that apparently Brazil’s developers have made synonymous with modernity. Yet instead of adding depth or diversity, they only intensify the monotony of the neighborhood, for the same material is plastered on to virtually every facade in that one street corner, bereft of any variations in hues or saturation. Amidst a sea of monochrome glass, one might wonder if there is any better visualization of the soullessness of corporate life, one that can make even the vibrancy of Brazil essentially vanish. What is there to be achieved by creating edifices so impersonal yet again?
Sometimes it felt as if Brazil had inextricably connected its vibrant colors, the stuff of murals and colonialism, to dangerous neighborhoods; therefore, it tried to compensate by building a vision of modernity so sterile and emotionless that it could erase the past - as if with these glass cases the nation is constructing an impervious monument of its past to herald its future, away from the chaos it had created. Such is the process of urban transformation that can only make the divide between neighborhoods sharper over time: the old wasting away, and the new terribly apathetic; hence, cities within cities, till time immemorial.
In searching for the ‘Brazilian’ spirit - if there is ever such a thing - this is where I find it so hard to reconcile two opposing points. Before coming here I had been assured that Brazilians are the most welcoming, open and warm people you will ever meet, and they have indeed lived up to that expectation. And not purely in the stereotypical carioca bohemian carnaval dancers; even my colleagues, the businessmen of Faria Lima who had acquired the reputation of being slightly uptight, are endlessly hospitable. However, this hospitality seems to have been completely lost in translation when it comes to architecture. The Brazilian brazenness of half-naked men and women in the dazzling sun in the park, the expressiveness and flamboyance of their movements, their mellifluous command of the easy-going Portuguese: all these charming qualities seemed to be lost in a cold, alien landscape.
Yet through that endless shirking of the past, one thing remained constant: the grandiosity in which everything finds itself. The shifting sands of architecture are relentless. In this concrete jungle, buildings overgrow each other like trees competing for light, an evolutionary desire that seem to have overridden all their capacities for stylistic innovations. Bigger, taller, more imposing. I wonder what colossal structures would replace the glass monoliths once they go out of fashion - maybe, somewhere, there might be a grand metamorphosis in the making.
IV. The glass case
For the majority of the time I sat in a wall-to-ceiling glass case, which afforded me a breathtaking vista of the city. When you view São Paulo from such a vantage point, it felt almost as if the city had been designed to be gazed at from above. The gigantic highways on the sides of the Tietê river, almost an impenetrable fortress at ground level, become two swathes of rhythmically undulating, parallel currents in red and gold, like a dim discotheque screen. Here one can fully appreciate the beauty of the concrete jungle; their varying heights combined with the city’s hilly terrain to create a gigantic concrete bas-relief, which at ground level was substituted with haywire pavements and soulless facades.
Because walking is highly impractical outside of very small distances, and even rather discouraged with the petty crime situation, I unfortunately have seen most other parts of São Paulo through car windows. The view of São Paulo from the car is inconvenient, but one can hardly argue that it is inauthentic, since even when travelling a small distance, one would be faced with the abysmal Paulistano traffic, and when you’re on the highway, there is no escape. There, an air-conditioned car with the radio blasting Brazilian funk is a tiny body of calmness from the dreary traffic beyond. I have been talking about São Paulo in all macro terms - fittingly so since such a city would constantly overwhelm you. Yet the view from the car is like a snapshot, and in its limitation, the more picturesque and intimate side of the city lurks - even just briefly.
On the streets of São Paulo, shades of sandy beige and plaster white dominates. Tall apartment buildings, either in a quasi-baroque style with ornate decorations, or trendy minimalist blocks in desert-like palettes, dominate the sides of the grand avenue. Their linear features blend seamlessly into the sky, pale blue and flourishing with sunlight. On the ground, a brick red stretch separates the two opposing lanes, on which a bunch of half-naked men are riding their bikes. There were reasonable foliage in the fancier areas, but the moment you get past that, trees seemed to have petrified aside from a few feeble survivors, and the brazen sun started to hit the concrete surfaces with unabashed resolution. Alongside the avenue were stretches of car repair shops and diners, some more walled up, some more austere and open. But hardly had I imagined myself being in an American suburbia, then humongous skyscrapers started to loom in the background, and the city had returned.
Sometimes, the brilliant purple of the blooming jacaranda helped to break up the monotony of colors monotony of colors - these flowers possess a demure tenderness, a profundity I struggle to discern from the city. Whenever I spot some in a corner, I felt a gentle sense of relief - as if nature had decided to preserve some colors in an otherwise daunting landscape.
When I remember São Paulo now, the foremost image in my mind still remains of the formidable concrete jungle, the imposing and oppressive geometries, and the faded colors. It’s fascinating how the city, already a behemoth, seems unable to contain itself, constantly yearning for the grandness of monuments, yet the monuments it creates are so impersonal, alienating. How endless avenues and neglected pavements put everyone inside relentless traffic. How at odds that urban fabric is to its people’s exuberant spirit. My Brazilian friends had no answer to this - they were as unemotional about the city as me.
Is it necessary to forsake refinement for progress? That’s a question only the city can answer for itself.
Sao Paulo is the largest Japanese community out of Japan, a rather fascinating piece of history if one just notices what a sheer geographical distance separate the two countries.
As you might easily guess it literally means “Avenue of Sao Paulo’s people.“
Apparently there’s a distinction between Paulista (of the state of Sao Paulo) and Paulistano (of Sao Paulo city) which I’ve been told only Paulistanos care about - but well I’m following it!