I only saw the sun for three hours during the six days I spent in Rio de Janeiro last August. My one and only stroll down Copacabana beach took place under a rain storm, while three-meter waves pounded the shore. I was lucky to even get a view of the city (above) from the top of the Corcovado. The last week of my one-month research trip in Brazil may have been anything but sun-kissed, but I didn’t need to get a tan to think Rio de Janeiro is today in a great place to become South America’s main design destination.

I say this three days before the International Olympic Committee decides the host city for the 2016 Olympics; running against Madrid, Chicago and Tokyo, Rio – and Brazil – is aiming high with its Olympic bid, as Alexei Barrionuevo tells in his recent New York Times article. What stroke me most about this piece was the following paragraph:

Rio is seeking to become the next Barcelona, Spain, a city that used the 1992 Olympic Games to improve its infrastructure and transform itself into a more popular destination for tourism and international events. Officials here say a Rio Olympics could help broaden the Games’ appeal to a wider and more youthful South American audience, while stamping Rio and Brazil with a seal of international approval.

This comparison is particularly fortunate: 1992 was Spain’s “golden year”, when Barcelona hosted the Olympics, Seville the World’s Fair and Madrid was European Capital of Culture. By then Spain was no longer the backward, southern European nation of before. Brazil doesn’t have to wait for 2016 to prove how far it has come: every day new statistics and news express the country’s social and economic progress, made possible by a burgeoning economy and political stability. Those changes are also expressed in its industry, design and – in what is the focus of my thesis research – its design community.

I’m not the first to say Brazil is a creative powerhouse of the 21st century, but I’d like today to make the case for Rio de Janeiro to be its new center. After losing its importance in the 1960s, as Brasília became the country’s administrative capital and São Paulo its industrial, financial and cultural heart, Rio went through some rough times. The derelict state of its downtown is an evidence of how it has been emptied of power, money and stamina.

There are however signs of a slow rebound – and I’m not talking about Olympic bid billboards. Expanding areas of downtown are now home to galleries, bars and restaurants. An ambitious new recovery plan has been announced for the city’s old harbor, which be the new address of Instituto Europeo di Design‘s Rio branch (after it was denied to be housed in the legendary Urca Casino – thanks Filipe Chagas for pointing that out).

These are only a few hints on how Rio de Janeiro can be South America’s answer to Europe’s Barcelona: a cosmopolitan and tolerant city of incomparable natural beauty, known for its joie de vivre. Somewhere to call home that is large enough to feel urban, but not incommensurable and burdensome. These may not be the only requirements for the “creative class” to come here from all over the world, as it did in the past – after all, Rio (and Brazil) still has many problems to solve, crime being its most critical.

It also has a history in design: ESDI, South America’s first design school, opened in 1963; some of the country’s most interesting designers and studios are also based here. But as I often heard during my rainy week, São Paulo is where the real money is, so that’s where most people have been going – making it the world’s third largest megalopolis. Rio’s other handicap is the virtual absence of local industries; most are based around São Paulo or in the southern states of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina. But in our post-industrial world of digital connections and low-cost airlines, does proximity to industry matter most than closeness to other designers and creative professionals?

If Justin McGuirk’s London Design Festival review in The Guardian is anything to go by, no. Much like London, Barcelona, even Berlin, Lisbon or Cape Town (all differences considered), Rio doesn’t need industry to become a – and not necessarily Brazilian – “design hothouse”, an “international hub of ideas and dissemination”, a design capital for Brazil or for the whole of South America. It just needs to get its act together, honor its past, improve the living and safety conditions of its inhabitants and become an exciting city to live in – as it once was. The time has come for Rio de Janeiro to aim higher.

In his latest and highly critical Folha de São Paulo op-ed piece, Kennedy Alencar says Rio not only deserves the Olympics, but also a generous and intelligent elite that can lead a discussion about the city’s future. Rio’s designers should also be part of this discussion. The local design community is already beginning to do just that, as this video for last year’s Brazil Design Weekand this manifesto show. And it should be taken seriously. In the next few weeks, I’ll be posting profiles of people I’ve met there, who have been contributing to this creative reawakening.

Brazil is currently living its most fascinating moment in history, which may have its highpoint in seven years’ time. Rio should be the host city to that and to many other celebrations.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 29th, 2009 at 11:01 pm and is filed under Rio de Janeiro. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.