Oscar

The man just turned 100 last year and the entire country knows it. Quite a fine tribute for a mere architect. We found out that his house in Canaos was open to visitors from a lady at the gift shop of one of his museums in rio. It was a trick to find the address, but eventually a taxi took us there and dropped us off. We rang the bell unannounced and waited. After several minutes we slipped the gate and walked down the driveway. When we encountered the caretaker he wasnt so much upset that we got in but rather just questioned us on Niemeyer. When it seemed that we truly liked the guy he treated us as a best friend.


I sketched this plan. The one that at the top of this blog. It was an incredibly liberating experience; so diffrent from most plans drawn today. It had the feel of the hand to it versus today where so much of the work is so heavily modeled. Such amazing lines, and after seeing the curves of the mountains and beaches all around, the intesity of those hip shaking sambas, the curves found naturally all over this city. Niemeyer's house was a passionate and spiritually wakening.

The sketches do no justice and here are some more photos.

Landed in Rio

Ouro Preto

Before they saw us off to Rio they took us to the nearby town of Ouro Preto. Alejandre had gone to college here. They knew the town well. The town is famous for its colonial architecture which Brazilians believe to be more authentically local because it shrugs off some of the templates brought directly from Portugal and embraces a mixology of forms and elements. Hero to the area is was a mixed race bastard child of a famous local architect who despite becoming a cripple early in life was embraced by his father and given the opportunity to built in this booming gold town. I think it is that generosity, that embrace of all races and physical deformities and the mix of it, that is perhaps why Brazilians love this man so much. Who knows. the town is quite beautiful.


We really loved our time with these two. We listened to Bossa Nova the whole way to Ouro Preto and back. I truly hope that we have the opportunity to have them stay with us here in LA. We will see. And before i press on, one of the most astonishing things about Minas Gerais (the country province we are in) is that the food is nearly identical to Southern cooking. God Bless did i eat. Fried Chicken, Gravy, Greens, Corn, a type of homony made from some local plant since wheat is scarce, rice and beans. i mean on and on. It really impressed me how similar in many ways the music, our fat fightin' man with his mandolin in Belo and all of these greens and puddings ii was like being back on the Mississippi Delta foot stompin' and lickin' greasy fingers. This great Mix and how much our cultures have in common.

Belo

Paula and Alejandre, architects. So much of our love for Brazil is beacause these two were impeccable hosts.

and i drew their house which was a wonderful concrete structure from the 60's.

and they took us to this local bar.Where we heard traditional Brazilian Country music.
Astonishingly toward the end of the show this guy's mistress comes bellowing from the crowd cursing at him knocking over tables and swinging. The owner of the place and guy's wife was pissed, and started yelling. He jumps off the stage and chases her out of the joint waving his mandolin around. A typical night i am told...

They told us to go here.

RIO

Inhotim.2

The juxtaposition of landscape, architecture and art at times made your vision-mind swirl. All of these senses blended together in new ways and served as a vibrant counterpoint to the quiet banal of the traditional art gallery walls. Like how Sir John Soane had brought his bit of the Grand Journey back to his Brownstone on Lincoln's Inn Fields covering every nook of his tiny house, here the world of art is brought to Brazil and presented with equal intensity married to the landscape of this wild country.



This pavilion features handmade tiles by the artist Adriana Varejão. The building is quite well done so i sketched it.


In another pavilion is artwork by Doris Salcedo where with a heavy pressure machine chainlink is pressed into the sheetrock wall of the gallery space. The affect is astounding, beautiful, minimal and overwhelmingly powerful.

Inhotim

The contemporary art park Inhotim was the reason for our visit to Belo Horizonte. We had come to meet up with the executive architect for a pavilion that we had designed for an artist who was to be shown there. Set in a lush rainforest, Inhotim has all of these pavilions scattered about each holding artwork from a worldwide array of artists.

Brazil

Our stay in Argentina has come to an end. We pack up our things leave them at the airport and hop onto a flight to Brazil. We will be going to the countryside, beaches, and concrete jungles of Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janiero and Sao Paulo.

We flew into Brazil and the landscape dramatically changed. For years i had looked in wonder at the beautifully graphic forms of landscape architect Burle Marx and here flying over Brazil immediately his blobs of red and curves of green had context.


The soaring concrete cantilevers of Belo Horizonte airport and we had arrived into Brazil.


Development in Brazil has been moving at an astonishing speed. This city 30 years ago was fields and sparse single family residences. Between then and now the city filled completely with a carpet of single family, then 4-5 story apartments, and now with 20-30 story towers. It is interesting to see Los Angeles make just now a partial conversion from single family and all the trouble that comes with that. Then you see a place like this, a place with serious growth and it is just amazing to see how it has evolved.


I like the lines of the streets, every country does it slightly different. Do not be fooled by the order of the streets, ladies of the night stand under trees...Where ever you go in Brazil there are always several orders working at any given moment or place.

Siphon

Throughout Argentina when you go out to a big beef dinner and you ask for some sparkling water often they will bring to you this fantastic contraption wrapped in metal gauze that will squirt water out of its nozzle by pressing a lever. Last seen in the U.S.A. by the 3 stooges with Moe squirting Larry in the eye, in Argentina they still use them often. And we fell in love. So last week we went to the market in San Telmo and we bought one. A brilliant blue one- oh so gorgeous.

Upon bringing it back we promptly filled it full of soda water, pressed the lever and waited for it to work. Well- it did not work. And after a bit of digging we find these things are basically a dead technology where these bottles were factory filled of water then gas. But its so pretty- and we are not the type to have decorations. It must work to be loved. The shocking thing is that no one on the internet seems to be curious to get these things working. Everyone just wants to look at them- suckers. But after a long talk with my engineer father and a winded discussion of Boyle's Law i think we have a strategy that is only moderately dangerous. It is based on the original patent:

our siphon

Palermo Soho

The buildings are cracked with vines of trees growing atop window cornices hold bits of facade together. Skinny/Tall metal and wooden doors punctuate the low one-story buildings with a showy presence indicative of a prosperous neighborhood, but now betrayed through neglect- rusted and chipped. The streets are still broad though and the trees have grown full. Light filters through the large tree canopies bringing the summer temperature down several degrees. Far from the main boulevards and lush with vegetation the air is free from much of the diesel smog one finds throughout the city.

It is a neighborhood that has gone full circle and now stands poised to take advantage of its obsolescence. Encouraged by low rents and the area's character designers and inventors have been moving into Palermo Soho for the last decade or so. They work in the backrooms and courtyards of these old houses and use their front rooms as showrooms.

One benefit of the 2002 economic meltdown was that for the smaller designers the marketplace was awash in cheap talented labor. With the multinational companies gone, the little guy found his day and Palermo sprang to life with tiny shops each of great creative vision and uniqueness. Today it is a mixture of crumbling buildings and sleek storefronts, each an adventure to look through their wares and to meander through the backrooms and courtyards.

Upsala Glacier

Who loves glaciers! So we went back. Early in the morning we boarded a boat. We were the last on the boat and the only seats they had available was in the Captains Quarters. No more hiking- we were traveling in style. The largest and most impressive was Upsala which looses something like 200 meters a year. The lake was full of icebergs.




We stopped in a nearby inlet to have lunch. While staring at the fjord, we experimented with many different types of music from my ipod to match the view. This was our result. Strangely guitars sound good in mountain wilderness better than other single instruments, but there is something bigger about Jazz. The music is Krupa and Rich.

The W Trail

We hiked a trail called the "W". We left from Pudeto (bottom left) and ended in Hostel de Torres (top right). We were 8 days hiking. 85 kilometers.

TO GLACIER GREY
Along a long glacial lake for 11km; It was to our left. Ice drifted along the shore. Everyone carried big packs. And when we arrived at our camp we were tired. We stayed in a lodge that night. It was surrounded by delicate trees and small transparent icebergs.

We had smuggled cheese, salami, sardines, and wine into Chile. You would think that this is a lite comment, but they actually had checked our tire compartment and everything when we crossed, they were serious! Fortunately for us, we were not serious and they never checked our purses. We snacked well. It was the last good eating for a while.


TO CAMPO ITALIANO
The thunder we heard in our campsite was actually avalanches from the peaks surrounding. We camped under a short tree canopy that barely protected us from the howling winds that swept through the Valle Frances.

At night we read from torches strapped to our heads. I was reading this ridiculously thick somewhat bad fiction and had the pleasure of tearing out the pages as i went. Books are typically sacrosanct with me, but on a 8 day hike- everything must remain useful. I thought of burning socks, but Hisako would not let me.


TO CAMPO BRITANICO
The hike up the Valle Frances must be one of the most magnificent day hikes in the world. Up and up, you climb pass a rushing river, over boulders; to your left a massive peak constantly sheds snow in impressive waterfalls of snow. Through brilliant green Patagonian forest you climb until reaching a crest you step onto a very slight dome of granite. The trees, unable to take hold in this stone surface give you a 360 panorama of a new vista. One that surpasses all yet on the climb, for you now stand in a huge bowl of green rimmed with tall rounded peaks all the way around.

The climb up the bowl past Camp Britanico is straight up. Its not quite rock climbing, but its best to have all four limbs touching the ground. After the trees thin out, big clumps of tundra moss- a panoply of greens coat the slope. Tundra eventually gives way to loose mounds of sharp rocks.

The view is large and strange. The mountains are not like mountains. They have this concrete plasticity- parabolic slopes, rounded peaks. Truly strange outcropping teeming with character and personality- it must be amazing to stand on top of these things...

But the best i can do is climb what i can climb. There is only one other couple i see. As they go down they say i am the last one up here and to be careful going up or down. I am way past the last lookout. I take in a long moment.


TO REFUGIO CUERNOS
Everyday held new surprises. After the monumentality of the ring of peaks above Britanico, this cloudy misty day and low green hills beyond was subdued. A light rain turned up the contrast on all the black and white pebbles disappearing into the silty white/blue glacial lake. The subdued turned sublime when we stopped to soak all of this in. The place had this Zen like-no-mindedness about it- a mandala consciousness, the widest range of consciousnesses. In the distance low clouds were moving quickly out of the Valle Frances and dissipating in animate forms over the lake. A saucer, a dragon clawing...

There is a bit by Herman Hesse that takes hold, "The surrender to nature's irrational, strangely confused formations produces in us a feeling of inner harmony with the forces responsible for these phenomena...the boundaries separating us from nature begin to quiver and dissolve...we are unable to decide whether the images on our retina are the result of impressions coming from without or from within...we discover to what extent we are creative, to what extent our soul partakes of the constant creation of the world."

We stayed there for an hour. I skipped rocks, Hisako was picking little rocks and matching them with larger rocks of the same pattern- an experiment in camouflage. The lake was entrancing not only to us. A group of Australians threw down their packs stripped down and jumped in. You should have heard them howl!

There were many river crossings, but the hike was mellow. We talked about what our business should be when we return back to Los Angeles. We joked that we were on a business retreat. The refugio at Cuernos was very nice and many people were there. We sat in the cabin drinking wine and reading, watching the chef make homemade bread. The dinner was delicious and we went to bed very satisfied. The night was strange and ominous, however, with massive wind gusts rushing through the valley. We could hear the wind as it came rolling through the valley like a runaway bus sweeping through clumbs of trees with great ripping sounds getting louder and louder until it hit the tent. Everything shook violently. We slept in fits.


TO LAS TORRES
The last leg of our hike ended with the park's big attraction- the spiring granite Torres (Towers). Our campsite was in a pasture, but the setting was beautiful and the sun shined on us. A day hike up to the torres was mostly a scramble over boulders and talis piles. The vertical hike was pretty substantial, but the reward was magnificent. I hung out on a rock projecting into the small lake at the base of the tower, laid down and just looked at those massive rocks. Wondering who in their right minds would climb that thing. Of course it was an Italian who summited first in 1963.

We have a lot of time on our hands since the hiking is over. We lay on the grass and hang out in our tent thankful for such an amazing journey.


DRIVE BACK TO EL CALAFATE
Since Miho drove the rental car back, we have to take a bus back into Argentina. We did not really tell them where to pick us up, so we were very curious to know if we would have a ride. It worked out. One bus took us to the border and another picked us up. Its a weird crossroads.