Creative Capital

From the planned city of Belo Horizonte to rural art parks, the landlocked Brazilian state of Minas Gerais is a design lover's dream.

- By Michael Snyder

Invenção da Cor, Penetrável Magic Square #5, De Luxe (1977), an art installation by Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica at the outdoor art center Inhotim

IT WAS A FRIDAY NIGHT in June, and the Mercado Novo, or New Market, in the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte, was buzzing with activity despite the early-winter chill. Clusters of 20-somethings, illuminated by fairy lights strung up high in the building's soaring modernist atrium, chatted over craft beer and potent Caipirinhas. Tiny storefronts lined the narrow aisles of the market's upper floors, showcasing ceramics, clothes, and accessories from young designers and the food for which the surrounding state of Minas Gerais is justly famous.

Near the back of the market, I met Rafael Quick, a graphic designer and cofounder of the market's culinary flagship, Cozinha Tupís, to taste some of his restaurant's decadent dishes, like chewy-crisp cheese and corn fritters and silky slices of cow tongue under a pavé of green tomatoes. At the time of the restaurant's founding in 2018, Quick told me, the market mostly died at night when the vegetable stands and print studios on the first two floors closed. Founded in 1962 as an extension of the nearby Central Market-itself a dizzying cornucopia of Mineiro cheese, wine, coffee, and crafts-the Mercado Novo never quite took off. Quick's restaurant, which sources its ingredients from the vendors downstairs, helped change that. Within a year of its opening, 100 new businesses had sprung up, transforming the Mercado Novo into an incubator for the cooks, brewers, artists, and designers who make Belo Horizonte, Brazil's sixth-largest city, into one of the country's most vibrant creative hubs. "Instead of looking abroad," Quick told me that night, "we decided to start here and see what we can do."