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Brasília—Young, Different, and Growing Up Fast

By Awake! correspondent in Brazil

WHERE in the world could you telephone the designer who drew the original plans for your country’s capital city? Where could you meet the architect who designed and supervised the construction of the capital’s first government buildings? And where can you walk through the capital and know for sure that anyone you see who is over 40 years old was not born there? In Brasília, the capital of Brazil—a young, unique city that deserves a closer look.a

Prolonged Prologue

It takes about an hour and a half to fly from São Paulo to Brasília. Comfortable buses make the trip in some 12 hours. I opted for the bus trip. It gave me plenty of time to read up on the city’s history.

Ever since the time of the first organized rebellion against Portuguese rule at the end of the 18th century, there existed the desire to construct a new capital in Brazil. Shortly after Brazil’s independence in 1822, Brazilian statesman José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva suggested naming this future capital Brasília, a name that 17th-century mapmakers had already used to designate the entire country.

In 1891, the country’s new constitution spelled out that 5,400 square miles [14,000 square kilometers] of savannas should be staked out on the Central Highland Plain. There, some 600 miles [1,000 km] from the coast, the new capital was to be constructed. Politicians reasoned that moving the capital inland from Rio de Janeiro would spur the development of the country’s huge interior. Yet, another 50 years passed without a move. Finally, in 1955, Brasília’s prolonged prologue ended, and an action-packed opening chapter was about to begin.

A Contest and a Plan

That year, presidential candidate Juscelino Kubitschek vowed that if he was elected, the new capital would be a fact before his five-year term as president was over. In April 1956, Kubitschek was elected.

Some months earlier, the government had announced a contest: Architects, engineers, and city planners in Brazil were invited to design a plan for the layout of the new capital. Within a few months, 26 candidates sent in their version of the ideal capital. In March 1957, an international jury announced the winner: urban planner Lúcio Costa.

Unlike the other candidates’ entries, Costa’s consisted of a few sketches and a handful of pages with text scribbled in longhand—an entire city in a manila envelope! He apologized to the jury for the scant outline but added: “If it is not valid, then it will be easy to eliminate, and I shall not have wasted mine or anybody else’s time.” The jury, though, liked his plan and judged it to be “clear, direct and fundamentally simple.” What did his plan propose, and how did it turn into a city of concrete?

An “Airplane” in the Dust

A good way to find out is to visit the Museu Vivo da Memória Candanga (Live Museum of Candango Memory). Since the museum is housed in what served as the capital’s first hospital, this building is literally the cradle of Brasília. The first babies born in Brasília 40 years ago began their life right here. Today, though, the former hospital tells the story of Brasília’s birth and childhood. It is a story, reads one museum display, of “Dust, Canvas and Concrete.”

Laureti Machado, a museum staff member, first walks me through the “dust” period. She pauses in front of a picture, taken in 1957, of two dirt roads that cut through a savanna, forming an intersection in the middle of nowhere. “This photo,” she says, “captures the very first step in the city’s construction.” Then, looking at Costa’s sketches, we see how the urbanist bent one of those roads so that when workers, called candangos,b later carved this arc in the savanna, the shape of an airplane emerged from the dust.

That singular shape remains Brasília’s layout: An airplane with its cockpit pointing toward the east and its arched wings stretching north and south. The buildings housing the three branches of government occupy the cockpit, the business district makes up the body, and the residential areas form the wings.

From Canvas to Concrete

The museum’s “canvas” and “concrete” sections relate how workers all over Brazil sold their belongings to make the journey to the construction site. ‘My father bought a truck, packed up our whole family—more than 20 people—and drove 19 days to get here,’ recalls a worker who arrived in August 1957. Others traveled by bus or oxcart or hitchhiked. In all, 60,000 workers arrived.

This construction army, living in canvas shelters, was badly needed because the city’s inauguration date had been set for April 21, 1960. That meant that the engineers, technicians, and construction workers had to deliver a capital city in 1,000 days—an epic task! Yet, when inauguration day came around, the workers had beaten the calendar. The world’s youngest capital had risen from the dust of the savanna.

First and Only

Admiration for the city and its builders is still very much alive in the office of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Brasília. “There exists no other example of a city plan carried out as faithfully as Costa’s plan,” UNESCO’s cultural attaché, Dr. Briane E. Bicca, tells me. “That is one reason why Brasília is the world’s first and only 20th-century city on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.”c

Brasília is also the only city on that list that is still under construction. This poses a challenge, says Dr. Bicca. “How can we preserve the original city plan while the city is changing?” While alive, architect Lúcio Costa, though in his 90’s, still confronted that challenge. He kept an eye on new constructions, making sure they did not desecrate his layout. When Costa learned, for instance, of plans to construct an urban railroad in Brasília, he insisted that the trains run underground.

Panoramic View

It is time for a city tour. Even if you are a first-time visitor, you will have few problems finding your way around. There are two main avenues, and the city’s bus station is located at the point where these avenues cross. One avenue runs from west to east (from the “airplane’s” tail to the cockpit) and gives you access to hotels, theaters, banks, and stores. The other one runs from north to south (from one wingtip to the other) and takes you through the residential areas.

The best location to see what Brasília looks like is from the Television Tower, a 730-foot [224-meter]-high structure situated in the body of the airplane just behind the wings. The free elevator ride raises you 250 feet [75 meters] aboveground and gives you a panoramic view of the city’s center, called Plano Piloto. As you gaze at the city’s sweeping lawns, so wide and empty that the sky can touch them, you are struck by Brasília’s spaciousness. In fact, landscape designer Roberto Burle-Marx has laid out Brasília’s parks and lawns with such generosity that the city claims to have more green space per inhabitant than any other capital in the world.

Toward the east stretches a wide, grassy mall bordered by a road on either side. Along the roads stand 17 identical buildings. Each of these box-shaped structures houses a different government department. At the end of the mall rises Brasília’s signature: two identical domes, one upright and one inverted, sitting at the feet of two 28-story buildings that are home to the National Congress, Brazil’s legislature.

The shape of the National Congress may remind you a bit of the United Nations headquarters in New York—and not without reason. One of the architects who had a hand in planning the UN buildings was Oscar Niemeyer—the same Brazilian architect who designed this National Congress and nearly all of Brasília’s other main buildings. Some of his finest designs, such as the Foreign Ministry (Palacio Itamaraty) and the Ministry of Justice (Palacio da Justiça), stand near the twin towers of the National Congress.

Why You Can’t Get Lost

Brasília is, however, more than an architectural park. It is also a well-arranged home to thousands of people. As we drive through the city’s residential section, Paulo, a lawyer living in Brasília, comments: “Most people who moved to Brasília find this orderliness a welcome respite from the urban chaos they were used to in other cities.”

Brasília’s residents live in apartment buildings. A group of such buildings arrayed around a courtyard form a superblock. Rows of superblocks fill the city’s north and south wings. Home addresses are easily located. “N-102-L,” for instance, is found in the city’s north wing, superblock 102, residential building L. And if you remember that block numbers increase (from 102-116) as you drive toward the wingtips, you can hardly go wrong.

To combine order with coziness, residential buildings are no taller than six stories. That way, said Senhor Costa, a child playing in the courtyard is within earshot when mother calls from her apartment window: “Manoel, vem cá!” (Manuel, come here!)

Growing Pains

Though Brasília prides itself on being a city built according to plan, the city’s blueprint overlooked the workers who cemented Brasília together. It was assumed that after the capital’s inauguration, the workers would pick up their hammers and trowels and return to their places of origin. But returning to a region without hospitals, schools, or employment obviously did not appeal to the workers. They preferred to stay in Brasília—but where?

They could not afford the high-rent apartments that they had built, so they settled around Brasília’s greenbelt. Before long, several cities bigger than Brasília had sprung up. Today, only 400,000 people live in the planned city, and numerous apartments remain unoccupied; but nearly 2 million residents have settled in the unplanned satellite towns. Despite the city plan’s egalitarian intentions, differences in income have zoned the population into completely separate cities.

Unforeseen explosive population growth and class barriers are, in turn, fostering crime and other socio-economic problems common to any city. Brazil’s young capital is suffering growing pains. Well-arranged streets and innovative architecture are clearly not enough to change people’s hearts and behavior.

“The Heart of Brazil”?

Billboards lining Brasília’s beltway remind incoming travelers that they are about to enter “The Heart of Brazil.” The slogan has a point: Though not located in the country’s geographic center, Brasília sits at an almost equal distance from all major cities in the country. What, though, about the deeper meaning of that slogan? Is Brasília really Brazilian at heart? Opinions vary. Only a visit to this unique city can answer that question for you. Keep in mind, though, that you should not judge Brasília in a hurry. Give the city some time to reveal itself because, as one resident remarked, “Brasília seduz gradualmente.” (Brasília seduces gradually.)

[Footnotes]

[Picture on page 15]

A story of “Dust, Canvas and Concrete”

[Credit Line]

Arquivo Público do Distrito Federal

[Picture on page 15]

Parade of the “candangos”

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Arquivo Público do Distrito Federal

[Picture on page 16, 17]

Panoramic view of Brasília

1. Ministries

2. Congressional office buildings

3. Supreme Court

4. Plaza of the Three Powers

5. Executive offices

[Credit Line]

Secretaria de Turismo, Brasília

[Picture on page 18]

Green-space champion among world capitals