In the morning we took the metro towards downtown. First we walked around green spaces Burle Marx designed around business buildings. Then we continued to the Catedral Metropolitana. Inside of the catedral we were greeted by towering arching walls. The walls were made of square cells that allowed light in without giving a view outside. In the cone shaped interior, four panels of stained glass lined the walls, floor to ceiling. Next we moved to our next stop, Escadaria Selarón. The steps were made by one man who traveled the world to get tiles to decorate each stair. Tiles were all colors and included images of all types. A few students walked to the top, but the majority chose to walk a few flights up and admire the rest from the shade to avoid the harsh sun. Finally, per Lawson’s request the group visited the Royal Portugese reading room, where a few students got yelled at for putting their water bottles on desks. The library was made of one large room, where books could be viewed multiple floors up. Later people ate lunch. The day also included the last classes of the trip. In class, drawing the revision of the park allowed us to try out hand at landscape design, through redesigning a park we visited earlier that week. Students each came up with very different new ideas, many with the goals of more shade, accessible pathways, and places for community activity. We ended our plants and human culture class learning about community gardens and children gardens, and what makes each of them successful. 

In the first green space we saw, the square beams of light shining through the roofs of the overhanging structures gave a really interesting look to the space that we hadn’t really experienced up to this point in the trip. It was also cool to see how these cutouts were not symmetrical in spacing and that they seemed sort of random. The chapel was a really cool experience, and students had varying views about the building. Some thought the inside was a really warm welcoming space that felt calming, whilst others believed the lack of light and repetitive nature of the textures in the walls and stained glass gave the inside a dark and isolated feeling. The Selaron steps had a distinctive look and felt very unique, although many people posing for pictures and stopping in the middle of where you walk cluttered the area. To Lawson, the steps remind her of the Magic Garden in Philadelphia because of the mosaic style covering a large street scale area. The library was beautiful, but it did not feel like a space that people could visit and use. Instead, it seemed more like a grand movie set.