Um bairro novo significa passeios novos

I just moved this week to Bom Retiro. Great place, great people, great location, other district, new adventure somehow...you got that. But it means that I get to try new paths as well. Yesterday my hunt for a second-hand bike and the good weather took me walking through the Centro Civico, down to Juvevê and the Centro.

The Centro Civico is this collection of institutional buildings: justice, administration, municipal prefecture... The district is the Central Administrative District, acting for both the city of Curitiba and the state of Paraná - of which Curitiba is the capital. It is possible to walk between the buildings, although some have fences and guards and you feel quicly that you are overwelmed, on the edge of lost, between the high edifices and their reflections in the brilliant glassy facades... It is both messy and very straight forward planning. I came walking somehow from the 'back-door' of the site and had the feeling of a dedale, but landing on Candido Abreu, I realise that there is a central plan, a centralised design - a street, straight and wide leading up to a huge building with the Brazilian flag waving over it. But still in between, a square of lawn, a praça with trees, colourful buildings gives the mixed feeling between a social/communistic centralised power planning and a chill, relaxed spirit valuing light, warmth and colours.

Facades in Centro Civico

Official axis and buildings - many cars, a centralised design and a flag

Municipal hall of the city - decorated with the Araucaria and the Farol do saber

Avenida Candido Abreu could maybe compared as São Paulo's Avenida Paulista, smaller scale of course. But the principle of having office buildings, institutions and banks running along one axis; lunches, bistros and restaurants in the small houses in between. It is a straight cut in the city, going from the Centro Civico to Centro, down town, landing just in front of the shopping Mueller and the Praça Dezenove de Dezembro.

Candido Abreu seen from the Centro Civico and down

Japanese looking bridge, at the crossing of the cycling path from the parcs and the avenida Candido Abreu

This square was inaugurated as a commemoration of the political emancipation of the state of Paraná, the 19th December 1853, from the state of São Paulo. Paraná was dismantelled from SP, in order to constitute its own commercial and trade region, and apparently as well as there is link to the earlier participation in the Liberal Revolution of 1842 (but didn't quite get the story yet there).

Walking then up avenida João Gualberto, through Juvevê, small architectonic surprises appear along the axis (remember...? The tubo express, development axis - with high rise buildings...?). Old reminescence from a previous architectural (colonial, I assume) style and period in the city, a church out of use and lost between high building in construction and some shaggy houses with graffitis, a german looking villa...

Blue villa

Not used but still a beautiful planted garden...