Curitiba
— — the city that built its bus stops like cathedrals.
Not only on a wall.
“A planned city on the high plain of southern Brazil, about 900 metres up and a hundred kilometres back from the coast. Tubular glass bus stations along the spine roads, an opera house of welded steel and wire above an old quarry, and a botanical garden that holds the orchids of the Mata Atlântica under a long iron-and-glass nave. A city that wrote its own design brief and kept it.
Curitiba, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Curitiba is the capital of the state of Paraná, on the planalto of southern Brazil, about 105 km inland from the Atlantic port of Paranaguá and roughly 934 metres above sea level. The municipal population is near 1.8 million, with a metro of about 3.6 million. The city was effectively re-planned in 1965 under the Plano Diretor led by Jaime Lerner and the IPPUC, which set down the structural axes that still carry the bus network today. The climate is humid subtropical, with cool winters by Brazilian standards.
The Rede Integrada de Transporte, opened in 1974, was the first full bus rapid transit system in the world and the direct model for Bogotá's TransMilenio and dozens of later networks. Its tubular boarding stations, raised to bus-floor height for level entry, are a Curitiba signature. The Jardim Botânico, opened in 1991 above a former quarry, holds a 458 square-metre iron-and-glass greenhouse on the model of the Crystal Palace. The Ópera de Arame, also from 1992, is a welded steel theatre with seating for around 1,572 above a small lake.
Afonso Pena International Airport sits in São José dos Pinhais, about 18 km southeast of the centre. The Linha Turismo, a dedicated double-decker route, links most of the parks and museums on a loop that runs Tuesday through Sunday. The Oscar Niemeyer Museum, known locally as the Olho, holds rotating shows of Brazilian modernism and the architect's own drawings. The dry, cooler months from May to August are the steadiest weather window; the wet summer months from December to February are warm and frequently storm-broken in the late afternoon.