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.

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

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

The construction netting skims the building’s future surface.