a city in black & white.....
Brasilia, Brazil's inland federal capital, built from scratch 50 years ago, on a high plateau of the Central West, an extreme & extremely strange 20th century example of modern architecture & urban planning. Officially declared Brazil's new capital in April 1960, it was conceived by architect Oscar Niemeyer, urban planner Lucio Costa & landscape architect Burle Marx ( by commission of then president Juscelino Kubitscheck) & built with the labour of millions of poor peasants in only 3 years. A city of colourless monolithical federal buildings, dominated by Oscar Niemeyer's architecture, widely spaced along a broad relatively treeless avenue....and numbered blocks of identical apt buildings (called Super Quadras) branching out north & south, like aeroplane wings, from the base of the shaft that is Esplanada dos Ministerios. It seems designed to maximize efficiency without consideration for the heart & soul that constitutes human urban inhabitancy. Located beside a huge artificial lake, whereas the avenue of federal bldgs is a concrete wilderness with little shelter or shade from the hot sun, the residential Quadras are surrounded by ecological parks & green space & carry a calming air of tranqulity, stillness & silence. But on the streets & pathways that run through the Quadras.....no people. Feels a bit like a tropical ghost town of uniform towers.
a city in black & white.....
Brasilia, Brazil's inland federal capital, built from scratch 50 years ago, on a high plateau of the Central West, an extreme & extremely strange 20th century example of modern architecture & urban planning. Officially declared Brazil's new capital in April 1960, it was conceived by architect Oscar Niemeyer, urban planner Lucio Costa & landscape architect Burle Marx ( by commission of then president Juscelino Kubitscheck) & built with the labour of millions of poor peasants in only 3 years. A city of colourless monolithical federal buildings, dominated by Oscar Niemeyer's architecture, widely spaced along a broad relatively treeless avenue....and numbered blocks of identical apt buildings (called Super Quadras) branching out north & south, like aeroplane wings, from the base of the shaft that is Esplanada dos Ministerios. It seems designed to maximize efficiency without consideration for the heart & soul that constitutes human urban inhabitancy. Located beside a huge artificial lake, whereas the avenue of federal bldgs is a concrete wilderness with little shelter or shade from the hot sun, the residential Quadras are surrounded by ecological parks & green space & carry a calming air of tranqulity, stillness & silence. But on the streets & pathways that run through the Quadras.....no people. Feels a bit like a tropical ghost town of uniform towers.