Ibirapuera Park, Sao Paolo
November 16th 2009 10:17
It’s a relatively short distance from Avenida Paolista down to Ibirapuera Park, but it’s a long journey, both in terms of the country it covers, and in terms of the land that lies at the end of it.
Between the noisy, fast-paced, crowded, densely built-up avenue to the quiet green spaces of Ibirapuera lie the fenced wilds of Trianon Park, smart blocks lined with luxury hotels, mean streets lined with the cardboard shelters of the homeless, a perilous roundabout and a massive stone monument to the building of Brazil.
Ibirapuera Park is to Sao Paolo as Central Park is to New York – an escape to nature in the middle of the city. I visited it at dusk and its paths and tracks were still teeming with joggers, skaters and cyclists. Kids played on its vast lawns. Couples strolled by its lakes. Its car parks were still filled with tour buses and tourists’ cameras flashed desperately in the fading light.
Ibirapuera is one of many Brazilian parks and gardens designed by the prolific and multi-talented Ernesto Burle Marx, whose career as a sculptor, painter, designer and landscape architect spanned almost the entire 20th century. It is for his gardens, however, that he is best known. Featuring indigenous plants and trees, Burle Marx created landscapes that were truly Brazilian.
Burle Marx often collaborated with the patriarch of modern Brazilian architecture Oscar Niemeyer, creating a lush, green setting for his somewhat stark buildings, like the Museu Afro Brasil which sits against a tiny slice of rainforest in Ibirapruera Park.
Ibirapuera, Sao Paolo's Central Park
Between the noisy, fast-paced, crowded, densely built-up avenue to the quiet green spaces of Ibirapuera lie the fenced wilds of Trianon Park, smart blocks lined with luxury hotels, mean streets lined with the cardboard shelters of the homeless, a perilous roundabout and a massive stone monument to the building of Brazil.
The monument to the building of Brazil
Ibirapuera Park is to Sao Paolo as Central Park is to New York – an escape to nature in the middle of the city. I visited it at dusk and its paths and tracks were still teeming with joggers, skaters and cyclists. Kids played on its vast lawns. Couples strolled by its lakes. Its car parks were still filled with tour buses and tourists’ cameras flashed desperately in the fading light.
The lake in Ibirapuera Park
Ibirapuera is one of many Brazilian parks and gardens designed by the prolific and multi-talented Ernesto Burle Marx, whose career as a sculptor, painter, designer and landscape architect spanned almost the entire 20th century. It is for his gardens, however, that he is best known. Featuring indigenous plants and trees, Burle Marx created landscapes that were truly Brazilian.
Native Brazilian plants and trees in Ibirapuera Park
Burle Marx often collaborated with the patriarch of modern Brazilian architecture Oscar Niemeyer, creating a lush, green setting for his somewhat stark buildings, like the Museu Afro Brasil which sits against a tiny slice of rainforest in Ibirapruera Park.
Museu Afro Brasil
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