The ideal city?

Brasilia for me has been a wonderfully relaxing change of pace and lifestyle. I stayed with very good family friends with whom I toured the city (mostly from the passenger seat of a car).



Brasilia was built from scratch in the late 50´s and the masterplan was designed by Lucio Costa. It became the capital of Brazil in 1960. Monumentality, segregation and speed are the first impressions of the city. The private automobile rules here and there are separate sectors for apartments, hotels, houses, mansions, and offices.

View of the eje monumental.

Cathedral of Brasilia, Oscar Niemeyer, 1970

Brasilia´s monumental architecture left me feeling rather empty. One quickly gets over the initial shock of the expressive shapes, curves and scale of Niemeyer´s buildings and realizes that their formalism makes them feel like sculptures with little relation to the city or Brasilia´s climate. There is a very Brazilian contradiction evident here. Buildings constructed to imitate a machine aesthetic were built using low-tech construction methods by poor migrant workers from the North-East. Unfortunately, the promise of an equal city for all who built it never came true and despite Brasilia´s wealth a large amount of the population lives in poor settlements in the `satellite cities'.

I am now in Chile, having arrived in a somewhat removed state of mind - having gone directly from the discoteca to the airport for an early morning flight.