SÃO PAULO ___ Buildings that Flutter

Brazil, Overview, Sao Paulo

Sao Paulo’s reputation is not one of great beauty.  In fact, the city’s “ugliness” was one consistent mention amongst the few people I spoke to about the city.   And upon arrival, the reasoning for this attitude became quickly clear.  Sao Paulo is a hard city, a sharp city.  It is widely packed with tall “modern” towers; many of them unambitious, or ambitious to a fault; buildings whose major conceit of “modernism” is an abundance of glass and right angles.

So during my first day in the city, I was stopped in my tracks as one of these office towers-out of a sea of dull, static blocks- fluttered.  Draped with a soft construction netting, the building was in the midst of some maintenance work.  The semi-obscured activity of the workers as they hung, suspended on the building’s facade tucked beneath this netting was compelling enough – the facade gained a new space of occupation.  But it was the subtle flickering of this new fluid layer against the hard edges of the building that was most powerful.

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Barely visible, workers move about within this new, temporary layer of the facade.

Av Faria Lima

The softness of the netting adds a new silhouette and shape to the building.
Metro Faria Lima

The construction netting skims the building’s future surface.