I didn’t quite know what to expect from Brasilia before arriving there. I had heard things about the city from every point on the spectrum of good and bad. Because of this, I did my best to go with a completely open mind and form an opinion of my own based on experience.
The flight there went very smoothly. It was nice to take off from Rio and see the haphazard streets running into the mountain and then seeing the hyper-organized grid system of Brasilia from the sky. Although we didn’t see the “plane” plan because we were flying in from the south, the contrast of the two major Brazilian cities was still very interesting. After landing, we took a cab to a hotel. Due to our almost nonexistent Portuguese knowledge, we arrived at the wrong hotel. Our cab had left already, but luckily for us, the man at the from desk told us our real hotel was just around the corner. The hotel was clean, safe, and even included breakfast; a perfect place for a one night stay. The biggest downside to the night, however, was that there was absolutely no food within walking distance except a not so safe looking food truck. We had to skip the group dinner due to our flight as well, so we went to bed sans dinner in the capital city.
The next morning’s breakfast made up for the lost meal and we were on our way. It was immediately evident that the city was not designed around the pedestrian. However, it was not completely ignorant to the fact that they exist like most information about the city suggests. There were sidewalks, crosswalks, and cars were slightly less determined to run a person over than in Rio. The conclusion I came to seemed pretty clear. This was a city designed in the modernist era from a completely blank slate. Utopian organization schemes and technology were the biggest influences at the time. Therefore, the city had an obvious Utopian plan with major political buildings along the main axis with supplementary and residential going off a secondary cross-axis. I believe, for a country’s capital city, this organization works very well and puts on the facade of a pristine system that governments strive toward. The influence of technology also explains the sparseness of infrastructure for the pedestrian. Cars and buses definitely have the priority. The major axis is essentially a highway and works very efficiently at moving traffic quickly through the city. If you live in the surrounding area and know the bus routes, you would have no problem getting to work in a timely manner and not have to worry about parking. The sheer amount of buses was astounding. Bikers are next on the priority list for infrastructure. There is a bike path in one large loop along the interior perimeter of the axis. It was nicely paved, separated from the highway, and even had some nice landscape along it. On nice days, this would also be a very viable method of getting to and from work. As I mentioned, pedestrians were last on the list with thin sidewalks right next to the highway with almost no landscape. This still seemed alright because the workers only used the sidewalks for short distances to a bus stop or a food stand during lunch. The city is designed around the capital city worker, rather than the tourist. To me, this just means it’s a more efficient and less crowded organization that a fast paced political city needs.
Of course, I cannot leave my man Niemeyer out of this post. I have been a fan of his for some time. He made a name for himself as a modernist architect without following the very strict recipe that was given to him by his contemporaries. He turned the concrete white box with glass into something sensual and graceful. He took what worked in one building and tweaked what didn’t in his next project. They aren’t just carbon copies plopped into a site and called great architecture. He also utilized the great Roberto Burle Marx to create interactive and memorable landscapes rather than just flat, barely designed landscapes.
I also enjoyed how he uses local artists in his designs and gives them the space to do an entire facade instead of just a sculpture or installation. He does this with the national theater shown below. (The national library is below that).
I have also heard criticism about his spherical buildings and the lack of design effort put into the interior. I saw this in the memorial we saw in Rio, but this museum was pretty interesting on the inside. Things couldn’t be hung on the exterior walls, but there were nice sweeping curved walls that made up for the space. There was also a curved ramp to provide an upper level gallery which used an inverted half-sphere for light hung from the ceiling. The Metropolitan Cathedral was my favorite in the city. That may be because it was one of the few I was able to enter, but it was moving. It seems small and pretty dark from the exterior, but that only makes what is inside that much more exhilarating. The entry makes you descend into the ground a few feet into a short dark corridor and then you emerge into a seemingly floating structure. The melodic voices of the worshipers fill the space and light explodes through the stained glass windows. I could have stayed in there the whole day and not regretted a thing and I believe that is one of the main goals of a religious building to move people and make them feel comfortable to stay.
We did have to move on from that beautiful space and visit the political core of the city. I also really enjoyed the next building. It was the Ministry of foreign affairs and it was a twist on the modernist concrete and glass box. He uses faceted arched for the exterior and offsets the glass box inside. Marx brings the water all the way up to the glass to make it seem like a bobber floating under a concrete cage. The congress building (below ministry on page) was also nice in that it combines all the political “typologies” Niemeyer sets up along the axis. Because it is the center of the government, it is also the only building that occupies the middle of the axis. He has the flat box at the base like the ministry of foreign affairs, the spherical forms like his museum, and the office towers on top like the other ministries lining the axis.
More sketches of the supreme court buildings and other monuments.
