Arvon Director, Ariane Koek, was invited by the British Council to visit Brazil in her capacity as a literature development leader in the UK. We asked Ariane to record her time away. That record is published here, on the Arvon Blog, for the first time.

Sunday – December

When a helicopter parks on the roof opposite your hotel room, you know you have landed in a different world. What seems like pinpricks of blood in the night, are swarms of private helicopters buzzing across the skyline of Sao Paulo.

Founded in 1554, with over 10 million inhabitants, Sao Paulo is one of the largest cities on the planet. It is also one of the most violent. Cars with smoked windows snake through the streets, traffic jams last for hours and there’s a body guard posted on every corner. No wonder Sao Paulo’s privileged take to the air like in a Fellini film. The rich are so extremely rich that the city boasts the world’s second largest civilian use of helicopters. The buildings are so tall and square you feel as if you are in a Second Life New York, replete with mini Empire State buildings. Some of the high rise flats boast names like Lexington Avenue and Time Square to make your cultural confusion even more complete. They are bold columns holding up the sky, uniform in their height, their squareness and aspiration, but each building is also resolutely individual too: one has vermillion glass; another is embraced by black marble balconies; and there are a multitude of roof gardens spilling tendrils. . The message is pure Brazillian – individuality is for the masses. 

I’ve just had my first day here. I landed at 8am and was determined to seize the free time ahead of me. Julie Ellen Creative Director of the Scottish Playwrighting Studio is here too on this mission for the British Council to encourage the growth of a creative writing culture in Brazil. In an oral culture, in which music is highly advanced and literature plays second if not third or fourth fiddle, it feels like a responsibility neither of us can quite gauge.

So we take to the streets before the work begins and head towards the heartbeat of the city – Ibirapuera Park. It’s a huge green open space of over 2 million metres square, with two lakes, three museums and unusual architectural wonders. Like every Sunday in South America, the park is pure holiday: families feeding the giant carp which gasp for air in the 34 degrees heat; muscle bound men in micro shorts on rollerskates; balloons and candy floss festoon the air. And in the middle of it all, in this sweltering heat which sits on your skin like velvet, is the most unexpected sight of all: a skyscraping Christmas tree with baubles and a shining star. Size matters in this city where the small and tiny get swallowed whole.

A giant pink tongue licks the sky. It’s brazen and cartoon like. This is the famous auditorium, built by the great Brazillian architect Oscar Niemeyer who celebrates his 100th birthday on December 15th. The auditorium stands at the far corner of the park. From the back, it looks like a white concrete warehouse and promises nothing. Turn the corner, and the blank warehouse turns into a space ship, with Niemeyer’s trademark curves inspired by the mountains of his beloved Brazil. A yawning mouth invites you to step inside: and the enchantment doesn’t stop there. The interior dances too. Red sweeps of colour and light  bounce off every surface, it’s bewitching.  This is architecture is of  such intensity and sensuality that I feel as if my eyelids are being kissed…then licked.

Jump cut to later in the evening, and Julie and I are on the rooftop of the Unique Hotel. It’s a gigantic slice of water melon supported on either end by two columns. Built by Rhuy Okhtake a half  Brazillian, half Japanese architect who admires Niemeyer, it marries Oscar’s love of modernist curves with a Japanese restraint and purity. Niemeyer’s exuberant sensuality is held in check, but the building is no less powerful for it. Look up in the reception to the skylight 100s of metres above you, and you will see a glass ceiling on which water flows. The effect is magical.  Below, you are caught in ever changing rivulets and patterns of dancing watery light. If you then take the lift to the 17th floor to the Skye Bar, the skyline of Sao Paulo is presented as an infinite vista of skyscrapers and strobes. It has to be the most beautiful city scape I have ever seen, a panorama of jewel-like lights, studded by a panoply of high rise buildings and towers, alive with helicopters above and  humming with cars in the streets below. A crimson red swimming pool runs down the length of one side of the rooftop and appears to fall off the edge. Only when we look closely do we realise that we are not perching recklessly on a flat roof open to the world before us. There are huge glass panels holding us in: we are gawping goldfish in a bowl. And then we see the inescapable: the giant Christmas tree dominating the city with its winking baubles and  the star on top which is now a searchlight piercing the night sky in sweeping lighthouse rotations. You can go to the other side of the world and be in sweltering heat, but Christmas will always find you, wherever you are.