Good news and bad news today. First with the bad: to ensure a problem free trek through Africa and avoid diplomatic issues in, say, Namibia or some other remote land, my plans have changed for the time being. Instead of departing Sao Paulo tonight for my trans-Atlantic flight to Cape Town, South Africa, I will be returning to Chicago. The hiccup in traveling comes at a good time; allowing me to amend new pages to my full passport aside, general exhaustion from a somewhat insane schedule and the need to pickup more of my end of things with regards to Perspecta will make my ‘break from a break’ much needed. Not to mention, traveling with an undisclosed amount of currency for my eventual return to Iran (all forms of Western banking are strictly forbidden there and so travelers need to arrive with cash) has kept me more on edge than necessary.

As for the good news: a week before moving to Vienna and marking the beginning of the first leg of my travels (Eastern Europe) associated with the gracious endowment of the William Wirt Winchester Fellowship by the Yale School of Architecture, I was contacted by a junior staff member at Cynthia Davidson’s ANY Corp. to write a critique on Ben van Berkel and Zaha Hadid’s new additions to Chicago’s Millennium Park. Native to the city’s southside and generally interested in the intellectual well-being of the development of Chicago’s architectural discourse I accepted the challenge. I called upon a close friend, previous classmate, and overtly-eager-to-get-published vagabond Alexander Maymind to assist in the development of the article. Though there were times we swore never to work with one another again, in the end I’d like to think we had a good time struggling through the material we aimed to discuss.  For general background about the publication, an exerpt from ANY Corp’s website:

“Log is a journal of writing about contemporary architecture, cities, and the built environment, published by the Anyone Corporation. A forum for observations, speculations and ideas about all things current, Log examines the present with an architectural bent, an historical perspective, and a critical eye. It embodies its name; a log of events, a series of mono-logs becoming a kind of dia-log; Log is a reading of our spaces in and for our time.”

And a link to the Winter 2010 (LOG 18) installment (with a list of other contributors) can be found here: http://www.anycorp.com/log/log.php?id=41 .

29 cities, 90 cab rides, 30 train rides, 12 buses, 19 flights traversing 17,000 nautical miles (approximately 130 more miles on foot), 4 hotels, 10 hostels, and 10,753 hits to my blog later, I return to Chicago exactly 7 weeks after my departure.

As they say, we only part to meet again.

Fragments of Ibirapuera Park and the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo.

Yet another rainy day in this perpetually overcast city. After talking with some travelers who recently came from South Africa I became worried; lesser so by the fact that Cape Town and Joberg are two of the most unsafe cities (currently) in the world, but more on account of VISA related issues. Looking into it further, apparently American citizens are almost guaranteed to be denied admission to the country unless two full, blank pages remain in their passports. Unluckily for me, this late-learned fact may prevent, or in the least, delay the continuation of my trip. Early tomorrow I will contact the American Embassy, SouthAfrican Airlines, and my travel agent back in Chicago to confirm these issues and restructure my itinerary.

The bureaucratic problems of today forced me to cancel my plans with Angelo Bucci, a friend of the many architects I have met throughout the continent and famed Brazilian Contemporary architect/professor/writer. Our rendezvous will have to wait.

Another rainy day. Not much to report; to save on cab fare and sitting in traffic, I walked the city today and visited the two projects above. A quick dinner with my friend Mafalda and preparing for my last full day in Sao Paulo.

Tomorrow, lunch with Angelo Bucci and a visit to the “Central Park of Sao Paulo” for a few last buildings.

I’ve realized that even though you can clear a large patch of the rain forest and pave it over for a city, you can’t change the weather. Today was dramatically slowed by torrential downpour – the hold-on-to-a-light-pole type. I woke to the almost violent sound of rain beating on the rooftops of adjacent buildings. People in the hostel were generally at a loss, pacing about waiting for the rain to subside. In the meantime I sat on the porch with a new roommate, a Harvard grad who fled the US to wait out the economic downturn some 16 months back and is now a legal resident of Rio de Janeiro; I guess teaching English to favela kids and living from pay check to pay check is better than struggling through the recession (<– sarcasm). As soon as the rain let up I scurried off in search of a few museums. Sure enough the momentary pause in down pour was just that; I made it a few blocks before it picked up again and I just plowed on.

What I thought was no more than a mile and a half (the distance between my thumb and index finger on a map) was surely much more than that – or maybe the fact that every car that passed me sent another wave of water over my lower half just made it feel longer. Eventually I made it to the Sculpture Museum. The 2006 Prtizker laureate Paulo Mendes da Rocha is a welcome change from the otherwise very bland contemporary work seen throughout most of the city.

I cabbed it home and was greeted by Mafalda who insisted we go to an all-you-can-eat Sushi place with a mixed group of new tenants (two girls from Boston, two girls from London, two guys from Liverpool, and three natives of the city). 600 Reals later, the new motley crew was nearly incapacitated from imminent mercury poisoning. I would say the night ended well at that point, however the cab broke down on the way home and so a new Brazilian friend, Alberto and I pushed this old man’s beaten up old taxi some 5 blocks in the rain; when he got it started finally, he just drove off. We walked home soaked again.

The rain will continue throughout the duration of my stay here in Sao Paulo, so expect a slower than normal tour of the city.

When I got to the Brasilia International Airport, things were in more disarray than usual; I thought nothing of it at first until I realized that all flights in and out of Chile were canceled. I opened up the New York Times on my phone and sure enough, an earthquake 400x that of the one that hit Haiti ripped through Chile. It’s odd how this trip has been especially plagued with disasters: two days before my departure Port-au-Prince is annihilated; two days after I leave Caracas, political unrest spills into the streets; while expelling demons from my ill-ridden body in Quito, a string of baby earthquakes jiggle the city; as I arrive to Cusco, thousands of stranded people are being helicoptered from the now partially washed away Inca trail and the flooded Machu Picchu; while in Buenos Aires and Montevideo record high heat waves pounded the cities below; and now this. Mother nature and I have been shadowboxing for months now and either she is just too feeble an opponent or I am just lucky as hell.

Regardless, I arrived in Sao Paolo with no troubles. After checking in at the hostel, I sat in their patio to enjoy that post-flight, back-ache-from-oversized-backpack-relieving cigarette on the patio when this bubbly Portuguese girl named Mafalda introduced herself and asked if I would care to join her and her Chilean friend Rodrigo (pictured above in a totally ad hoc photo op; I often get a lot of guff for never taking touristy pictures of myself and so this should briefly appease those who insist on on such pictures) a brief tour of the black market street market of Marzo 25, some nearby museums and the Mercado Municipal. Knowing I would have likely loafed around alone otherwise, I gratefully agreed. We left immediately and within the hour became good friends. It’s strange to think that in the comfort of your own home/neighborhood/city how incredibly easy it is to dismiss people and places you don’t know, taking refuge in the familiar; I was never overtly social or outgoing but traveling has seemingly loosened me up, I can’t help but realize. The company was much appreciated, however it happened to come to being.

Several hours and a few passing rainstorms later we came back ‘home’ to rest before dinner. Around 8 PM I woke up to Mafalda and Rodrigo standing over my bed waiting for me to wake up; I was late. Creepy bastards. Groggy and confused I hopped up and we went off to a neighborhood Churrasco and got stupid full on grilled meats. 90 minutes of gorging later, we crawled back to the hostel where there was news of some sort of epic party outside of the city. Everyone was quick to sign up and when I asked (like an old man, mind you) when we would return, I simply got the answer, “before noon tomorrow.” Exhausted from another long day on my feet, I accredited my inability to participate on account of work and stayed behind.

Sao Paolo can only be described as the NYC of South America – an incredible sprawl of architecture and a varied demographic to match. My first impression – possibly on account of good company and good eats – has been a very positive one, plus there is no Oscar Niemeyer in sight (ok, I’m done hating). This is the concrete jungle I have been yearning for.

Tomorrow, the Museu de Arte de Sao Paolo and the Museu de Arte Moderna.

The message of today is more of the same from yesterday. I somewhat intentionally skipped some of the farther out projects, for example the Palacio da Alvorada, because after seeing the work shown above, I simply couldn’t stomach to encounter more whimsy. I’ve come to the conclusion that Niemeyer’s work falls into one of two camps: trite and comical structural expressionism plastered (no puns intended) onto relatively banal glass boxes and juvenile massing that makes itself accessible to a broad, under-educated and uninformed general populace. This isn’t architecture and you don’t need more than three flights and two days to see it and dismiss it.

Leaving for Sao Paolo in the morning – my last stop in South America.

In a city sparse with sidewalks and for some reason, taxis, today offers little in terms of excitement. I essentially woke up and just walked for hours up and down the main axis of Brasilia, taking in its austerity and attempting to space out the buildings worth seeing over the length of my stay.

I was supposed to meet a friend here, an architect named Daniel Mangabeira and his partner, but there seem to be some issues with communication that may prevent our rendezvous; regardless, tomorrow will bring a sweeping tour of the rest of Niemeyer’s disasters.

Early in the morning I descended from the top bunk of a cramped room, heavy with the stench of hungover travelers. Happily I was leaving my hostel in Rio. I had breakfast with the few people I became friends with – a young German environmental engineer working with the Nicaraguan government and in Brazil on vacation, and the medical student from Chicago who saved me from imminent robbery – and took off for the airport.

I arrived to Brasilia, thankfully some degrees cooler than RJ and, upon first impulse, infinitely more rational. In the 60′s Lúcio Costa won a competition for the urban plan of what would be Brazil’s new capital – to what degree the city was built from the actual design I’m unsure, however the primary highways and governmental districts scream rationalism. Because the city isn’t necessarily set up for tourism per se – it seems like most visitors are diplomats or businessmen – I had to get a hotel. Never have air conditioning, cable TV, and a concierge been so gratefully appreciated.

Though storm clouds were fast approaching in the vast skies that so perfecetly framed the prisms making up the city’s skyline, I decided to head out and see what I could. I made it as far as the first of Oscar Niemeyer’s cultural projects on the western tip of the Federal District before I decided to trek back to the hotel.

And no, I still can’t stomach the cartoonish parody of architecture that is Oscar Niemeyer, but this trip will finally allow me the chance to confirm my suspicions. A good friend and great architect, Harris Ford, once told me in a time of (my) utter despair at Yale, “you know, Parsa, it’s just as important and valuable to know what you don’t like in [this world].” Those words always stuck with me, and I have found it to be one of the great aphorisms of our discipline.

Damn you delicious, local bar-b-query and the aftermath of digesting your greasy treats; alas sickness has caught up to me once again on this trip. Having to cancel my plans for the day, I decided to instead take a breather and draw the day away.

In the morning several people at the hostel were on their way to one of the famous ‘Favela Tours’ organized by the local tourism industry and tried to convince me to join. Although I am desperately interested to see the organization and layout of some of the worst/most dangerous communities in the Western hemisphere, out of good conscious I simply couldn’t bring myself to do it. There is something far too subhuman about paying to essentially vacation in someone else’s poverty – previous visitors compared it, enthusiastically that is, as visiting a zoo. How sad. Some people justified it by claiming to be funding the improvement of the neighborhood they were visiting, but as ill-logic and short-sightedness seem to be an incurable plague, they fail to realize the companys heading the tours have no incentive to fix the favelas for their business would then simply disappear. But low and behold, today, as well as tomorrow and the next, a steady stream of clientele will pour into the ghettos of Brazil snapping away thousands of pictures and reinforce proof of the failed project of humanity.

In other news a professor from the University of Tehran’s School of Architecture recently got in touch with me regarding my research from 2008 – which lead to the eventual exhibition in the Yale School of Architecture – on the topic of Iranian architecture. More specifically, the project was named “Aberrance + Autonomy: The Origins of a New Formal Language”, and it has generated some interest back in my motherland; though nothing is definite, there are some talks about inviting me to give a series of lectures to discuss the motivation for the project and its outcome.

Or perhaps all some elaborate ploy to imprison me? Knowing the duplicitous nature of an Islamist government, it very well may be both.

The famous O Cristo Redento , panoramic views of Rio de Janeiro, facades of modern projects by Brazilian Modernist Lucio Costa, and a more contemporary work by an architect whose name I don’t remember.

This morning I woke up to a new resident in my room, a medical student from Chicago named Walter. Luckily he was on his way to go see the aforementioned statue of Christ overlooking Rio so after a quick breakfast we headed out. An hour long bus ride on route 583, one of the most unsafe and rickety rides I have ever had the pleasure of taking, we arrived at the small train station that takes you up the mountain and to the monument. In all the journey from our hostel to under the uncertain eyes of Christ took just over three hours. It was perhaps one of the best sunblocks I have ever seen.

After a long decent, my new travel companion and I found a small Brazilian meat joint and enjoyed a quick lunch before heading off the the Centro district. The other day Leonardo outlined a tour of what could be described as the city’s downtown to see the ‘famous’ buildings and fragments of urban planning left behind by the Brazilian Modernists – most notably, Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer (though supposedly Corbusier had a hand in some of the planning as well).

This part of the city, less like a dilapidated beach resort from the 80′s than the rest of Rio, was booming with traces of the city’s colonized past, relics of the Modernist era, a Beaux-Arts attempt at urban planning, and an incredibly diverse demographics. The first thing that caught my eye was the contemporary project pictured above, which, excuse the somewhat internal reference that mostly my Yale colleagues would get – damn it Alex, this could have been your project for Tom Beeby’s studio. I took my camera out somewhat oblivious to the seedy gentlemen in my vicinity when one quickly approached me from behind; before he had a chance to grab what was in my hand, enter Walter with a swift shoulder charge to block my impending theft. Ah…the relief of having a companion. As the miscreant ran off, we realized we would have to be on our guard more in this area of town. From that point forth paranoia and teamwork got us through the rest of the day with no problems. We returned to our neighborhood in Copacabana and found a little BBQ steak and chicken joint along the water to finish off a busy day.

Largely exhausting my checklist of things to see in the city, tomorrow will be spent visiting Pão de Açúcar to get some photographs for a friend back in NYC, drawing and repacking before I am off to Brasilia.