A Design-Focused São Paulo List

We’ve never been to Brazil’s sprawling financial capital known for its Modernist architecture, but when cultural consultant Rab Messina (who-once interned with us at Cookie mag!) told us she’d recently been there on a design-focused binge, we wanted to know how she did it. —Y.E.

If there’s one thing the world has learned from the recent presidential elections in Brazil—where a surprisingly narrow runoff between leftist Lula and Trumpian Jair Bolsonaro gave the former a ticket back to the Planalto Palace—it’s that the country is not a monolith. You could paint Rio de Janeiro as a haven of chill, a Southern California of sorts, while Goiás is more Texas-like. And São Paulo, a beast of nearly 13 million people? I’ve said the same thing for the 15 years I’ve been visiting the city: Sampa is like New York City, but better…because instead of New Yorkers, it’s full of Brazilians. But just like NYC, productivity is the name of the game: Paulistas (those who hail from the state of São Paulo) and Paulistanos (those born in the state’s capital, also named São Paulo) often joke that São Paulo works so the rest of Brazil can play —the state, the richest in the nation, is the financial engine of the country, producing 32 percent of its GDP all by itself.