Coming into land at Brasilia was meant to be the highlight of my latest swing through Brazil. I had arrived at So Paulo airport early and flirted outrageously with the frumpy check in girl to ensure that I got a window seat that wasn't over the wing. I was looking forward to seeing the city slowly take form through the early morning clouds and to be able to brag, for months to come, that indeed I had been to the governmental center of Brazil and that indeed it did look like an airplane from the sky. However, the vagaries ofseat allocation had left me marooned in the middle seat and as we came into land the only view I had as I craned my neck, and camera, towards the window, were the heaving breasts of the girl next to me who was, thankfully, deeply engrossed in the latest gossip magazine and oblivious to me leering. Brasilia has a population °foyer 1 million and is the de-facto capital of Brazil. It is located in the Central-West Region of Brazil. The city was planned and constructed in the late 50's and early 60's during the government of President Juscelino Kubitschek. The idea behind it was to fill the great void in the deserted Central-West Region and to attract settlers in an effort to integrate this region with the coastal areas. The city was carefully planned by some of Brazil's most famous architects after an aerial survey of the region. Many people might say that it's a pity that Mr. Niemeyer and friends hadn't conducted their survey on a commercial flight (as I had just attempted to do) or things might have turned out a little more aesthetically appealing. People don't seem to live in Conceived as a utopian capital city that would metamorphose Brazilian society into Brasilia in the true sense of the a new social order, Brasilia is the apotheosis word—they exist on a more of the modernist belief in architecture as an agent of change. It is a city with no past or profound and yettransient level, rational future, a melting pot of architectural moving from place to place like thinking and styles and a deeply strange place to visit. In my mind, it is as far from Brazil smoke blown from a guttering as Blackpool, England, is from Rio. candle. The history ofBrasilia is by now a familiar one. Commissioned, designed and largely built within the five-year presidential term of PHILIP BLAZDELL Juscelino Kubitschek (1956-61), the city fulfilled Brazil's long-standing objective to have an inland capital that would simultaneously signal its break from European dependence (embodied in the coastal cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo) and act as a spur to development of the country's vast interior. Laid out on a previously uninhabited site (selected with the aid ofU.S. surveyors) according to a plan by Lficio Costa, Brazil's elder statesman of modern architecture, and boasting buildings by Oscar Niemeyer, a disciple of Le Corbusier and a former student of Costa, Brasilia represented a modernizing leap for South America. Along the two main axes sketched by Costa—a straight, ceremonial north-south axis, site of the major government buildings, and a longer, curving east-west axis for the city's
Sorely you must he joking, Mr. Niemeyer
Adgustir A
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BRAZZIL -OCTOBER 2001