I arrived at the airport – dazed after the red eye, and focused on finding cash, wifi, and maybe a sim card.  It was only after I had stopped to sort out what my ATM pin code would be on a keypad without letters, that I looked up to realize I had arrived into a site visit of sorts.  The airport itself could quite easily classify as Brutalist.  A combination of smooth cast finishes (perhaps pre-cast?) and bush-hammered characterized the space.  The introduction of space frame structures was curious as they were clearly not load-bearing but rather like a high-tech sort of finish strategy — a ceiling soffit and a signage infrastructure.

What was most striking of all though, was the enclosure strategy for the construction project of new escalators.  The incidental form of the sculptural fabric canopy created an amazing sort of tension between the hard, flat surfaces of the concrete, the angular, geometric forms of the space frames, and the more fluid nature of the fabric site enclosure.  Sure, it may have looked a bit cartoonish – almost like a student project. But there was something compelling in the way it was like a ghost of its future self – an abstract formal gesture of the future escalator.

São Paulo–Guarulhos International Airport

I wandered about the rest of the airport, wonderimg about movement joints, mechanical systems, the collage of finishes layered over time.  Sat next to a group of young Jehovah’s Witnesses on their way home from what sounded like a two-year missionary stay in Brazil. There was something stupidly comforting about sitting next to a group of english speakers to ease the transition in… or maybe not, mostly I was jealous that they seemed to be near fluent in portugeuse.

The taxi into the city took over an hour but I suppose given that I was traveling at the tail end of rush hour, it’s lucky that it only took that long.  For the most part I was happy to just sit in the backseat and stare out the window.  I think there’s something incredibly revealing about a city on the journey from the airport into the city.  Although I was so tired from the flight that I can’t say I took much of it in, save for the quick reminder of the recent Carnavale.