Rio!

Rio de Janeiro, always everyone's favorite Brazilian city. I really enjoyed it but probably liked Sao Paulo more. Again we toured a highrise rooftop to see the city's landscape. In contrast to Sao Paulo, Rio is ringed by mountains and beaches so that adds to the city's landscape making it feel denser and more closed in. Then there are the infamous favelas that live on the hillsides crashing into the city. 

Also again in true Brazilian style lots of open air walls and rooftop gardens. Burle Marx is a highly regarded landscape designer from Brazil and is responsible for, if not influential for all, of Rio's landscaping. 

This museum, again by Oscar Niemeyer, is located in a small suburbanish town adjacent to Rio. The mayor of that town commissioned Niemeyer to do the museum as a way to create an icon for his city and create a destination point.

We also visited the botanical gardens in Rio and got a view of all of the tropical plants in the region which were beautiful. I could do a whole album of floral pictures just from this.

Lastly, we visited Burle Marx's estate that he donated to the state. He lived and worked here for year's and it felt very Jungle Book-esque. Very beautiful, very lush and so hot! The building in the above photo was his private studio that he built from parts of a building demolished in downtown Rio. There were many interventions in the estate that are made from building parts that he salvaged, which gave it a really dynamic feeling of built work and garden/nature.