Learning From Brasília

LEARNING FROM BRASILIA PRESERVING MODERN HERITAGE IN THE METROPOLITAN CONTEXT

VITOR PESSOA COLOMBO ACCADEMIA DI ARCHITETTURA DI MENDRISIO WINTER 2013 PROF. ROBERTA GRIGNOLO

PRESERVING MODERN HERITAGE IN THE METROPOLITAN CONTEXT

WRITTEN BY VITOR PESSOA COLOMBO UNDER THE DIRECTION OF PROFESSOR ROBERTA GRIGNOLO ACCADEMIA DI ARCHITETTURA DI MENDRISIO WINTER 2013

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I : ORIGINS CULTURAL ANTHROPOPHAGY NEW STATE, NEW ARCHITECTURE PRESIDENT BOSSA NOVA BRASIS, BRASIL E BRASILIA

p. 7 p. 8 p. 9 p. 10

CHAPTER II : VISION

ILLUMINATION p. 15 MODERN UTOPIA p. 15 DESERT FLOWER p. 21 FRONTIER DEMOCRACY p. 25 RECEPTION p. 25 CHAPTER III : REALITY

FIRST SYMPTOMS p. 33 FRAGMENTED METROPOLIS p. 34

OBSOLESCENCE OF A CITY MODEL p. 37 OLD YOUNG CITY p. 41 FORCED PRESERVATION p. 42

REBIRTH ?

p. 44 SETOR NOROESTE p. 46

CONCLUSION ON HERITAGE p. 56 BIBLIOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION LOOKING FOR UTOPIA

It is very important in our days to study the complex mechanisms that shape cities, for the latter have become crucial in the development of modern civilisation. And now that the world is witnessing the fall of what we may call the tertiary urban model (or neoliberal city), such studies become even more relevant. Just as in the late 60’s, the ruling societal model is being contested by crowds of discontent citizens, but this time in a larger, global scale. Indeed, protests happen from Madrid to Santiago, and from London to New York. Once again, people talk about what Henri Lefebvre named the right to the city and ask themselves : what society (or city) do we want to live in ?

For these reasons this paper proposes to look back in time and revisit a singular urban experience realised in a period that, just like now, asked for considerable societal changes ; a project that was undertaken thanks to the enthusiasm, boldness and hope of people that wanted to promote a new society – the modern society – and made it to erect a whole city in only forty-two months : Brasília, the young capital of an emerging country. « Stop-point of a Latin American modernity cycle »1, Brasília is a paradigm of this vanguardist movement in Brazil and its biggest – and last – urban laboratory ever built.

But above all, it is a witness of modernism's achievements and failures, what allowed it to become historical heritage only twenty-seven years after its inauguration. Given this conjuncture, the capital patently acquires historical importance for conservation and urban studies. Indeed, its unique condition allows to address two issues of great interest : first, the question of heritage and how to deal with its preservation under the pressure of an ever changing societal context ; and second, the understanding of architecture's limits when it comes to effectively democratise life quality and promote social welfare (as promised by the modernist discourse).

Projected to be « different from any city with 500.000 inhabitants »2, Brasília was erected under the ideals of modernity, progress and unification in a country that was still very rural and fragmented by strong regional divergences. It was the new face of a country remodelling itself, trying to diminish the social inequities that have always divided its population, while introducing itself to the World. The new capital was born during an opportune moment, when Brazil started to enjoy fast economic growth and was becoming an urban, modern nation3. However, even though this modernity is quite evident in the architecture of the time (as well as in the arts and music), it is much less obvious in the social perspective. Ironically enough, the city that was to be the mark of national consolidation, social equity and common progress has grown one of the most segregated agglomerations in Brazil and, as a consequence, its violence levels are amongst the highest in the country.

In infrastructural terms, Brasília is clearly saturated. There is a chronic need for housing and collective transportation – it is important to remember that some of it is due to the underestimations and rigidity of the Pilot-plan. That is not to mention the lack of well-qualified public spaces, that are either over-dimensioned, abandoned, or typically replaced by peripheral shopping malls.

Evidently, the coup d'état of 1964 largely contributed to the capital's degradation, physically and psychologically speaking. Physically because the military government, in power until 19854, failed to respond to the strong rural exodus that resulted in the present satellite shanty towns and illegal occupations (common phenomenon in every 1

GORELIK, Adrián ; translated by ANTONIETA PEREIRA, Maria ; Das Vanguardas a Brasília ; Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais ; 2005 ; p. 9 2 Words from the final report by the jury that chose Costa's Pilot-plan; in COSTA COUTO, Ronaldo ; Brasília Kubitschek de Oliveira ; Record ; 2010 ; p. 118 3 According to IBGE report Tendências demográficas (2000), between 1950 and 1970 the proportion of people inhabiting cities escalated from 36% to 56% of the population, an increase of 33 million.

brazilian metropolis). And psychologically because the regime took profit of the scale and the monumentality of Brasília's open spaces to prevent dissident manifestations and to affirm its authoritarian power5.

Much of Brasília's present dysfunctions may be explained by its inability to adapt to an ever changing socio-economical and political context (two republics and one regime in 30 years). It is a child of modern movement sponsored by a strong state that now faces the post-modern, liberal condition of society. Basically, it is a city designed under fordist and keynesian ideas that, as if kept frozen through the decades, stayed intact until our times where societal and economical models differ entirely from those of the late 50's.

Brasilia struggles therefore with a serious dilemma, having to choose between keeping its celebrated modern heritage as it was initially conceived or intervening in it under the risk of denaturing its precious original design. This issue has fomented very controversial debates, some questioning the very value of modern movement's contributions to historical heritage in Latin America - as modernism doesn’t seem to be identified to the cultural background of a large majority of the population 6.

But although what started as Utopia became rather dystopia, Brasília remains a remarkable attempt to enhance the urban life quality and to redesign society, that deserves to be carefully considered. This paper will propose hereby to understand the gap between promises and actual realities of this unique capital ; a contemporary view over museum-city too often considered only by its aesthetic values – at the cost of forgetting the social goals that actually shaped modern design in general – aiming to bring forward urban issues that urge to be addressed. If society now more than ever needs a new Utopia, we should start by learning from the past experiences.

This paper will not be – and cannot be – a conventional analysis of architectural heritage because it treats not of a single building but of a whole city. Therefore, the work becomes much more sensible to sociological, economical and political trends that shape urban agglomerations. A multidisciplinary approach is indeed inevitable in order to understand the urban formation and the gap between visionary design and reality.

Aiming to establish an objective basis before founding a critical opinion about Brasília, the first chapters will consist of a set of facts that characterise the relevant period in Brazilian history and that delineate the Pilot-plan and its design ambitions. Only then will the author analyse the recent history (during the last decades) of the capital and its building process – not forgetting its eventual modifications and difficulties encountered on the way. Such empirical method could only recently be applied to this young city and, considering its experimental character, it is very important to keep record of its evolution through time. Moreover, the half century that separates us from the era of modernist euphoria can only allow a more sensible and less biased reading of this timely undertaking.

Accordingly, this work will start with a brief explanation of the historical context in which the capital was born (an inevitable step, considering the importance of that period's cultural emancipation and the intense participation of the State as client for vanguardist architecture). The following chapter will explain the Pilot-plan and the concepts that shaped it, as well as the first years of construction, the inauguration of the capital and its reception within the architectural milieu. The third chapter will begin the critical approach, considering the social and infrastructural problems and explaining the modifications done within the Pilot-plan. Finally, based on this collection of arguments, the author will risk a conclusion on the paradoxical situation of this city, that needs to adapt itself to the present context without compromising its built heritage.

4

In 1985, the first civil president was indirectly elected, while governors and mayors had already been elected by the population since 1982. But it is only in 1988, when the new constitution was approved, that direct elections for president were finally established.

5 For example, architecture critic Deyan Sudjic writes about the Three Powers' Square and qualifies Brasília as “una città che, con la sua stessa esistenza, offre un potente esempio degli usi politici dell'architettura” ; in SUDJIC, Dedjan ; Architettura e potere ; Laterza ; 2011 ; p. 152 6 As argued in HERNANDEZ, Felipe ; Patrimonio Arquitectónico y Sociedad en América Latina ; in Criterios de Intervención en el Patrimonio Arquitectónico del Siglo XX ; Ministerio de Cultura ; 2011 2

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CHAPTER I ORIGINS

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CHAPTER I ORIGINS

According to Kenneth Frampton, “in Brazil modern architecture had its origins in the mid-1920's partnership of Lucio Costa and Gregori Warchavchik, an émigré Russian architect who had been influenced by Futurism during his studies in Rome and who was responsible for the first cubistic houses in Brazil.” 7 In fact, that decade in Brazil witnessed a cultural revolution that was based on the combination of foreign vanguardist concepts with Brazilian sensuality. The arts, principally, started to reject the traditional aesthetic principles imported from European academicism, considered as signs of “imperialism” and of the prevailing status quo, to develop new styles more adapted to Brazilian identity – but still inspired from their european vanguardist counterparts.The unorthodox movements born during this period built the foundations for the next generations and eventually resulted in the construction of Brasília. This chapter intends to briefly explain the pivotal period between 1920 and 1960, in order to understand the timely conjuncture in which the new capital was born.

Cultural anthropophagy If on one hand, the flourishing of modernism in Brazil was largely determined by foreign influences (notably cubism, dadaism and surrealism), on the other hand, the artists' preoccupation to express Brazilianity made their oeuvre authentic and not mere copy. This attitude was clear in the works presented at the exhibition Semana da Arte, in 1922. There, a group composed of young intellectuals, artists, musicians and architects intended to promote a new approach to the arts in order to achieve a genuine Brazilian school – thus breaking with the traditional neo-colonialism and imported classicism. Although this exhibition didn't express any unity in terms of language and representation, it clearly showed a common purpose amongst the participants and resulted in the formation, a few years later, of influent artistic currents such as the Anthropophagous Movement.

In 1928, the first number of the magazine Revista de Antropofagia was published, containing the Anthropophagous Movement's manifesto. Led by the famous writer Oswald de Andrade, it called both for the rescue of native culture and the combination of the latter with progressive foreign ideas. The name is an allusion to indigenous folklore, where anthropophagy was a way to absorb the skills of a great adversary : similarly, the young Brazilian vanguardists were “devouring” useful foreign concepts and techniques, re-elaborating them and producing an adapted, tropical version of such currents. This process will characterise Brazilian modernism in general : from the cubist geometries in Tarsila do Amaral's paintings to the Jazz notes in Bossa Nova, the marriage of foreign and local elements is ubiquitous.

But more important than the aesthetic renewal itself was the participation of the arts, for the first time, in political issues – a patent characteristic of modern movement. In this regard, sociologist Santuza Cambraia Naves explains how, while the previous generations of artists considered themselves “gifted with an 'inspiration' different from the common mortals” and built palaces and precious objects for the élite, the new vanguards rejected “the aura of artists and [assumed] the identity of 'technicians'.” 8 Cambraia adds : “ the artist becomes an artisan like any other – or designer, as in the case of the Bauhaus –, a craftsman of houses and objects that, being industrially fabricated, become accessible to all social classes.” 9 This close relation to politics will be key for the emancipation of modern architecture in Brazil, as we will see.

7

.FRAMPTON, Kenneth ; Modern Architecture, A Critical History ; Thames & Hudson ; 2007 ; p. 254 CAMBRAIA NAVES, Santuza ; Novos Experimentos Culturais nos Anos 1940/50 : Propostas de Democratisação da Arte no Brasil ; in FERREIRA, Jorge (curator) ; de ALMEIDA NEVES DELGADO, Lucilia (curator) ; O Brasil Republicano ; Civilização Brasileira ; 2011 ; p. 276 9 Ibid.

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New State, new architecture Since Getúlio Vargas took power with his 1930 revolution, the so called New State also found very important to define Brazilianity – specially because it was in their interests that the jung Nationalstaat could affirm its nationalist values, and the arts were always an efficient mean of communication. So began a strong support and promotion of artistic movements that explored the national identity. The Exhibition of the New State in 1938 displayed a large variety of works sponsored by the state, amongst which the project for the Education and Health Ministry – first modernist building to be erected in Brazil, designed by no less than Lucio Costa.

Clearly for the architectural field, this period was a pivot : the state started to order a considerable amount of buildings and, specially, started to acknowledge the urgency to address the rising urban issues.10 This conjuncture represented a great opportunity for the modernists to establish themselves in the architectural scene, although they had to face fierce opposition from the academicians and neo-colonialists. The latter were outraged by modernists' denial of ornaments and preference for “raw” materials in the name of functionality and affordability ; the traditionalists did not understand or share the actual ethic, and not aesthetic, character of the new constructions.

But this aspect ended playing in favour of the modernists, whose sensibility to societal needs certainly proved them prepared to address the complex problems intrinsic to the growth of cities – something that the other traditional movements had never really approached, focusing rather on the scale of the building itself and of its classicist details. Moreover, it was in the government's interest to raise its popularity by financing projects of social concern.

Considering these facts, it is important to note how “modern Brazilian architecture is established, as opposed to Europe, birthplace of the movement, through state assignments.”11 Indeed, the governmental effort to modernise the country, supported by the consistent economic development of the 1930's, is striking. And this trend will continue all the way to Brasília, which evidently could not be without heavy state sponsoring.

Another singular fact intrinsic to Brazilian modernism is that those who defended the architectural renewal kept simultaneously a close relation with the old, traditional edifices. When the SPHAN12 was founded in the 30's, it counted with personalities such as Carlos Leão, Oscar Niemeyer and Lucio Costa himself ; and it was rather common for these figures to look for inspiration in historical towns, in their search for the national “cultural roots”. Niemeyer, for example, always remembers how he appreciates the curves of Barroco Mineiro in Ouro Preto and reinterprets them in his projects.

But more than inspiration, modernists found in heritage the very arguments needed to promote their ideas. The notion that good architecture expressed the spirit of its epoch, together with a functionalist reading of colonial art, supported Lucio Costa's idea that “modern architecture was the legitimate heir to the tradition of the master builders from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century.”13 Therefore, at the same time SPHAN advocated the preservation of historical sites and monuments, it condemned any later reproduction of the old style, what was considered to be against the “fundamental principles of architecture” – even in the case of projects within a historic centre.

10

The 1930's represent the real beginning of Brazilian industrialisation and urbanisation processes. Cities like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (the capital at that time) started to saturate as they became poles of migration for people leaving the countryside and looking for jobs – it is relevant to mention the new-born workers' legislation protected quite well the proletariat in the cities, but not enough in the countryside.

11 CAVALCANTI, Lauro ; Moderno e Brasileiro ; Jorge Zahar Editor ; 2006 ; p. 12 12 Serviço do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional, the organisation in charge of legally protecting the national heritage.

13 PESSÔA, José ; CALDEIRA, Marta ; The Telephone on the Eighteenth - Century Table: How Brazilian Modern Architects Conceived the Preservation of Historic City Centers ; in Future Anterior ; vol. 6 ; n° 2 ; pp. 32-47 ; 2009 ; p.35 8

In this regard, the organisation's power to veto interventions next to constructions listed in the national heritage definitely served modernists well : it favoured the new architecture for it found harmony with its context not through fallacious imitations but rather through the “qualitative evenness in the cityscape of architectural objects from different times.”14 On the other way, the group also worked on the valorisation of monuments that were being englobed by the growing urban tissues, using town planning as a tool for the new architecture to protect and dialogue with historical cityscapes and to qualify urban spaces.

We notice that, decades before the Venice Charter, these vanguardists had already an honest approach towards heritage and were breaking new ground establishing a relation between modern movement and History ; the former operated as a bridge between the old and the new. By the words of Lauro Cavalcanti, Brazilian modernists achieved “the dream of any revolutionary : the control of erudite and popular milieus, besides the acknowledgement of their knowledge over past and future.” 15 When the new republican government took place in 1945, Brazil was already consolidating its cultural identity. The public became much more receptive to the vanguards, now associated to progress. Constructivist movements were rising, Brazilian folk music was booming (thanks to the radio) and Pampulha – one of Niemeyer's most acclaimed works – was finished, defining the premises of the young Brazilian modern architecture. It is hence under an atmosphere of artistic emancipation that the country re-democratised itself and entered in what is globally called the “golden years”.

President Bossa Nova The second republic (1945-1964) was characterised by constant political quarrels : typically between progressive urban movements and conservative agrarian lobbies, between protectionists and liberals. But it was also crowned with a remarkable project of national unification that led to the construction of the new capital. The man who put into practice this difficult task was Juscelino Kubitschek; or “president Bossa Nova” as they called him – for his mandate coincided with the rise of this genre, whose nonchalance reflected people's optimism during that time.

Kubitschek's government is without doubt the most significant event during these two decades. He described his period in power with three words : movement, action and development. Besides being the only one to have lasted the five years of presidency, he led the country through an economical boom fostered by the installation of new foreign industries and the huge expansion of infrastructures (from roads to electricity lines). Also, the population had their life quality enhanced, thanks to the new industries' products and the state's engagement to modernise the country. Some say there is a Brazil before and another after Juscelino Kubitschek.

A turning point for Kubitschek's political stance was when, on his way back from a trip to the United States in 1948, the future president realised how retrograde and underdeveloped his country still was. But he could very well see the potential in the “sleeping giant”. The idea was clear : update the industry and build infrastructure to develop this sector, so that Brazil would be no longer a giant farm depending on the exportation of low value products, conducted by a dissimulated agrarian oligarchy. This surely created political conflicts but the man was a good enough strategist to obtain strong support for his reforms16, including the relocation of the capital. The president's charisma and political articulation were indeed crucial to obtain the conditions that allowed the historic undertaking.

14

PESSÔA ; CALDEIRA ; 2009 ; p.36 CAVALCANTI ; 2006 ; p. 15 16 Kubitschek was able to join the forces of two main parties (his, the PSD, and the PTB) at the same time he got the sympathy of influent opposition figures (UDN) in Goiás that were seduced by the idea of a new capital located in the interior of Brazil.

15

In this regard, one should know Brasília was not always part of Kubitschek's agenda ; it joined his Plan of National Goals only during the election campaign, before it became the “great task for national integration” 17. According to writer Ronaldo Costa Couto, the enthusiastic commitment to the Constitution expressed during Kubitschek's campaign discourses led one of his listeners to pose a delicate question : in April 1955, in the small town of Jataí18, a young man asked if Juscelino would apply the 1946 Constitution article that ordered the capital to be transferred to the Central Plateau. For a minute, Juscelino wandered, then he answered : “I will integrally follow the Constitution. During my quinquennium, I will change the Government's seat and will build a new capital.” The room trembled with applauses 19.

Brasis, Brasil e Brasília “Today, being no longer Empire, but Federal Republic, Brazil remains a contiguous group of Brazils. […] China does not offer as much ethnic plurality as Brazil...” 20 With these words, anthropologist Gilberto Freyre described, how, in 1960, the nation presented a great variety of cultures. Likewise, in 1959, geographer Moisés Gicovatte observed that, “ethnically, economically, historically and culturally, [Brazil formed] an archipelago.”21 These deep divergences between regions were often translated into political disputes that divided the country and made it harder for any collective manoeuvre to happen. This complex conjuncture gave great appeal to Kubitschek's discourse of national integration.

As a matter of a fact, Brazil had suffered from regional imbalances since the colonial times, and Juscelino identified the urgency to attenuate such differences. He understood that the transfer of the capital to the interior of the country could play a significant role in this task : the new city would become an epicentre of regional development, offering services, jobs and leisure to a population that was still living in rough rural conditions.

If the Constitution of 1891 and its later version of 1946 already included a chapter ordering to found a new capital within the Central Plateau, no previous president had ever taken any concrete measures for the transition. Certainly because it was only by the time of Kubitschek's presidency that appeared two determinant factors permitting such transition : first, the technical studies of the Central Plateau carried during the previous government by major general José Pessoa, who identified the best site for the undertaking and started the legal process to acquire the land ; and second, the recent industrial technologies that allowed a completely new use of the territory, whose distances suddenly became easier to overcome. This way, the technical, economical and societal conditions were finally orchestrated to justify the polemic move.

It was no easy task but, roughly two centuries after the first proposal to found a new capital in the interior22, Juscelino Kubitschek got the approval of the legal act n° 2.874 : it defined the territory to be occupied by Brasília (Federal District) and authorised the government to build the necessary infrastructure and constitute the agency responsible for the constructions (NOVACAP). Now they just needed someone to design the city that was to symbolise national union and democratic progress.

17

MARIA LOSADA MOREIRA, Vânia ; Os Anos JK : Industrialisação e modelo oligárquico de desenvolvimento rural ; in FERREIRA ; de ALMEIDA NEVES DELGADO ; O Brasil Republicano ; Civilização Brasileira ; 2011 ; p. 159 18 Situated in the state of Goiás, central region of Brazil.

19 Event's narrative and quote extracted from COSTA COUTO, Ronaldo ; Brasília Kubitschek de Oliveira ; Record ; 2010 ; pp. 60-61 20 FREYRE, Gilberto ; Brasis, Brasil e Brasília ; Biblioteca Virtual Gilberto Freyre ; PDF document ; p. 1 21 GICOVATTE, Moisés ; quoted in MARIA LOSADA MOREIRA ; in FERREIRA ; de ALMEIDA NEVES DELGADO ; 2011 ; p. 157 22 Although the need to occupy the inner territory had already been noted during the XVIIth century, it was the indenpendist movement led by Tiradentes, in the 1780's, that first called for the founding of the capital in the interior.

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CHAPTER II VISION

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CHAPTER II VISION

In 1957, an international jury was commissioned by Juscelino Kubitschek to choose the best project to guide the construction of Brasília. They came across a curious proposal, whose design material was rather limited but was supported by a long text, very well articulated. While going through it, the jury was progressively seduced by its vanguardist concepts and later had no doubt about their decision. It was Lucio Costa's Pilot-plan. The present chapter intends to delineate the famous scheme, in order to understand the rhetorical basis on which Brasília was erected. Further, it will describe the construction years until the inauguration – period when the seeds of social tensions in the capital were germinated. Finally, it will describe the young city's first impressions within the public and the intellectual milieu, which were quite contrasting.

Illumination “First of all I must apologise to the directors of the Urbanising Company and the jury of this Competition for the summary manner in which this plan for the new capital is suggested ; then, too, I must justify it.

“I did not plan to compete and, actually, I am not competing, – I am just disposing of a possible solution, that was not sought but appeared, so to speak, ready-made.”23 Lucio Costa never denied the almost-accidental circumstances under which he applied to the competition. “I wasn't interested in the competition. When I was coming back by sea [from the United States], I started to get interested in Brasília. I arrived, less than two months before the deadline, and a solution appeared that seemed valid to me. I developed the idea and presented it in the last minute, on the last day.” He admits it himself, it was partly an “illumination”24.

These facts, however, do not take any value from the material presented. The work was indeed remarkable, consisting of a cohesive narrative punctually illustrated by precise sketches. Unlike the others, he did not recur to speculative detailed plans but rather to a discourse, a global strategy. It is this very aspect of his proposal that ended pleasing the jury; they appreciated Costa's approach to the problem, going from the general strategy to the detail, and not vice-versa 25. In addition, the foundation of a city ex nihilo was very compatible with the modernist concepts suggested by the selected Pilot-plan – as it needed total freedom to establish its rationality and efficiency.

Modern Utopia “At that time, we were all convinced that this new architecture that we were doing, this new approach, was something connected to social renewal. It seemed that the world, the new society, just as the new architecture, […] were bonded one to another.” 26 The city imagined by Lucio Costa, a follower of Le Corbusier even before they first met in 193627, was planned according to the revolutionary principles of the Athens Charter and the garden city. Therefore, a rational zoning plan disposed the different activities in 23

Quote extracted by the author from Lucio Costa's competition panels disposed at the Espaço Lucio Costa in Brasília (2012).

24 NOBRE, Ana Luiza (curator) ; Encontros : Lucio Costa ; Azougue ; 2010 ; pp. 237-238 25 BALDUCCI, Alessandro (curator) ; BRUZZESE, Antonella (curator) ; DORIGATI Remo (curator) ; SPINELLI, Luigi (curator) ; Brasilia, a Utopia Come True / Un'Utopia Realizzata 1960-2010 ; Mondadori Electa ; 2010 ; p. 25 26 NOBRE ; 2010 ; p. 137 27 When Le Corbusier was called for advice during the construction of the Education and Health Ministry, in Rio de Janeiro.

their specific areas, defined by “scales” (see fig. 1). They were : the residential scale, the monumental scale (governmental and public buildings), the gregarian scale (commercial activities and transportation hubs) and, finally, the bucolic scale (green areas permeating and connecting the other scales).

Fig. 1 : The four scales of Brasília (source : mdc.arq.br)

The main elements structuring the city are the two crossing axes that represent the “primary gesture of the one who marks a place or takes possession of it” 28. But Lucio Costa doesn't hide that the great perspectives of Parisian boulevards inspired him 29.

Functionally, both axes operate as spines for the motorised circulation, connecting the different areas (or “scales”) of the Pilot-plan. Clearly, the mobility is based on the personal car – paradigm of modernity – and the city is designed accordingly. The curved geometry of the North-South axis results of the site's topographic conditions ; but it also distinguishes the Residential from the Monumental Axis, which remains a straight line fading into the bigness of the Central Plateau (see figs. 2-4).

The Monumental Axis contains all the governmental buildings, as well as those of public interest such as the Cathedral, the National Theatre or the recently finished National Library. The balance obtained by the precise position of these buildings in space, given by perspective and compositional studies (notably Niemeyer's Palace of Congress, see figs. 5-7), largely contributes to define the monumental scale.

At the point where both axes meet, there is a bus terminal (see fig. 8). People who come to Brasília by these means arrive hence directly at the core of the city. Its centrality makes of it a hub, an infrastructural articulation from which the visitor can go anywhere. Indeed, this crossing point connects the city centre to the residential wings ; it is the link between the four different scales.

One of the greatest experiences made in Brasília is the Superquadra (“Super-block”) ; it represents a real change in urban living, that becomes there a totally new experience : generous green spaces surround the buildings and offer an agreeable common space, propitious for social interaction. Here, the the vegetation plays an important role framing the blocks, that are no longer delineated by 28 29

From Lucio Costa's competition panels (2012).

NOBRE ; 2010 ; p. 173

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Fig. 2 : «The primary gesture of the one who marks a place or takes possession of it.» Two axes organise the spatiality and functioning of Brasília. (source : Espaço Lucio Costa, 2012)

Fig. 3 : Final execution plan for BrasĂ­lia by Lucio Costa, circa 1959. (source : jobim.org)

Fig. 4 : The Monumetal Axis, a straight line extended over the Central Plateau. (Picture by Alfredo Colombo, circa 1970) 18

Figs. 5-7 : Niemeyer’s Perspective studies for the Square of the Three Powers. The level and the position of each building is precisely established. For instance, the Congress is slightly under ground level so that it allows visual contact between the road and the square. (source : NIEMEYER ; 2006)

Fig. 8 : The central bus terminal, where both axes meet. (Picture by Alfredo Colombo, circa 1970)

buildings but by trees. The ground-floor, liberated by the ubiquitous pilotis, is a fluid public space democratically shared. The constructions have a fixed height of three or six floors (an allusion to the maximum height before the lift came, making it more human30).

The name Superquadra comes from its dimensions : the block's length – 240m, plus 20m of vegetation on each side – is around three times longer than the conventional block's. The idea is to conjugate the imposing monumental scale with the intimate residential scale (see fig. 9). The size of the residential blocks is hence adjusted to the dimensions of Brasília ; they represent the transitional scale between monumental and bucolic.

Fig. 9: Lucio Costa's Superquadras. (Picture by Alfredo Colombo, circa 1970)

Each group of four Superquadras composes a Neighbourhood Unit. Similarly to Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation, it is allegedly an autonomous, living cell within the city, but closer to the ground. The Neighbourhood Units were planned to be equipped with a cinema, a church, a health-care centre, a club, small shops, a library, four primary schools (one for each Superquadra) and a high-school (see figs. 10, 11). But the plans were not realised and today most of these units don't have all of these common services.

Although Costa's city is clearly influenced by corbusean concepts, it has its particularities, namely how the architect addresses density. While the Unité has seventeen floors with an upper-terrace and the Plan voisin proposes high-rise schemes, Lucio Costa preferred to limit the residential buildings to six floors and locate all the services outside, in the green spaces – opting thus for single-use buildings, a tradition still predominant in Brazil. This generosity emphasises his preoccupation to achieve a warm, human spatiality that he believed was crucial for the social life within the Superquadras.

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NOBRE ; 2010 ; p. 206

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Figs. 10, 11 : On the left, the diagram illustrates Costa's project where four Superquadras compose a Neighbourhood Unit (not all equipments have been realised). Specifications : 1 Cinema / 2 - Small shops / 3 - Church / 4 – High-school / 5 - Green area (20m surrounding and physically defining the block) / 6 – Public school / 7 – Kindergarten. (source : arcoweb.com.br) On the right, a plan illustrates the blocks 107, 108, 307 and 308, the first unit to be realised, serving as model. (source : arcoweb.com.br)

Speaking of social interaction, there were supposed to be three different types of buildings, that would consequently house three different social layers within a same Neighbourhood Unit. They would be distinguished not only by apartment sizes but also by the choice of the materials employed. People from different backgrounds would then share the generous open-spaces and send their kids to the same school. But in the end, mainly one type of housing was reproduced, attending rather the higher or middle classes, aborting hence these social ideals.

To summarise, Brasília is composed of two axes – the monumental and the residential – that are articulated by an infrastructural node marking the city centre. Situated around it, the business district holds hotels, banks, commerce, hospitals and other tertiary activities, all of which constitute the gregarian scale. The latter, along with the monumental scale, is connected to the Neighbourhood Units through large high-speed avenues that have no traffic lights nor road crossing (specificities of Costa's design), allowing a fast commute between home and work. A garden city par excellence, it benefits of large green areas that unify and connect the spaces between buildings, fusing bucolic to urban.

Over these facts, it is notable how Brasília always operated in a centripetal logic, even from the sketch. Child of modernism, it proposes a strong hierarchy between centre and periphery – a relation nowadays analog to that between Pilot-plan and satellitetowns, most of which are dormitory cities. In this regard, the project estimated to welcome 500.000 people within the Pilot-plan while the exceeding population would be located in satellite-towns – indeed predicted by Costa. But the latter should have had their development guided by governmental planning, what rarely happened. Such aspects concerning the saturation of the Pilot-plan will be addressed on the next chapter ; now we will see how the project took form.

Desert flower In the 1950's, for most people Goiás was synonym of the end of the world ; it was a place no one had been to or really knew what it looked like. The state where the new capital was to be erected had always been, since the “crab-like” colonisation 31, a remote land. President Juscelino Kubitschek dramatically compared his first site visit to Tomé Souza's arrival in Salvador, in the year of 1549, to found the colonial capital. One 31

Denomination used by Frei Vicente de Salvador in 1627, explaining how Brazil was almost exclusively populated along the coast.

can imagine the access to such desolate lands (see fig. 12) was rather difficult, and it surely posed logistic problems. Therefore the first works consisted of building infrastructural connections to the rest of the country, starting with a proper landing runway32 and the road Brasília-Anápolis (the nearest city, main gate to Brasília during the next years). Until then, it was quite an adventure to get there, as the site had no safe runway and those who went by car had to find their own way in the open cerrado33. Given this complex situation, the technical support of the military forces was crucial34.

Fig. 12 : Aerial view of the new capital's site, then a very desolate place (1958). On the picture, one can see the Monumental Axis and the Southern Wing had already been traced on the land. (source : RODRIGUES ; 1972)

The logistic was indeed complex and this is why, at the earliest stage of construction, three distinct areas were established in order to locate the different actors that would participate in the biggest worksite of the century. The first, Cidade Livre (“Free Town”, see fig. 13, 14) was occupied by private entrepreneurs that wanted to sell services of any kind (exempt from taxation) to the workers during the construction period. It was also the arrival point of those who came independently to find work and needed a place to stay. The Cidade Livre was supposed to be torn down after the construction of Brasília, but as many other unexpected things, it did not happen – it became instead an important agglomerate, now called Núcleo Bandeirante. The second area was occupied by NOVACAP ; there one could find great amount of dwellings, the main hospital and the chief-administration. The third area was destined for the private construction companies, where they could base their own administration and staff.

32

Initially most of the material, and some personnel, arrived by plane.

The biome present in the state of Goiás, similar to the savanna.

34 For geopolitical reasons, the Army welcomed the transfer of the capital to a place less vulnerable that could foster a better occupation of the national territory. In fact, since the participation of major general José Pessoa, the Army had been very collaborative.

33

22

Figs. 13, 14 : The “Free Town”, now called Núcleo Bandeirante, circa 1958. The initial constructions were all in wood – as this settlement was supposed to be torn down after Brasília's construction. (sources : RODRIGUES ; 1972 / Marcel Gautherot, in BURGI, TITAN ; 2010)

Another issue, more delicate, was to find good enough arguments to convince Brazilians to go to that place so far away, leaving friends and family. Although there were financial advantages (high salaries and lands offered), the lack of daily facilities such as electricity and even running water was very discouraging. Surely, there was some resistance from public administrators that didn't want to exchange the coastal Rio de Janeiro for the arid Brasília.But even if the initial situation was quite spartan, pioneers were motivated by the notion that they were being part of something important. Oscar Niemeyer writes, in 1961 : “f irst came that depression after having moved, many of us from an advanced city to that huge hinterland. Then, the nostalgia of the distance, the absence of family and friends, of the atmosphere we used to live in […]

We felt, on the other hand, that we were collaborating to an important work ; a city that was arising like a flower in that rough desert land. It is this feeling that permitted us to conclude in three years a task notable by its proportions and complexity […]”35.

On a less romantic perspective, the construction of the new capital relied at some point on the exploitation of the workforce – in order to keep up to what is called the “rhythm of Brasília”. It is surprisingly unusual to find any written document on the daily life of the men who are at very the base of Brasília's erection. Mostly from the countryside of the northeast region, these workers had often never seen the tools they started using and proved real capacity to learn and adapt themselves. And it was tough. The typical workday went from 12h to 24h36 and many took pills everyday to resist the somnolence. In addition to the fatigue, security measures were rarely taken and this resulted in numerous deaths. The most dangerous worksite was the National Congress' annex, known as the “28” (for it has twenty-eight storeys, see fig. 15) ; despite of its height, it had no element preventing the workers from falling and many died there37. Justified by the extreme rush – all that mattered was to finish in time – and the higher salaries38, the constructions kept going.

Even though the work conditions were harsh and protests severely repressed 39, people kept coming in great numbers, hoping to find there a life changing opportunity. At a point that, already in 1958, there was shortage of jobs and housing units. Under these 35

NIEMEYER, Oscar ; Minha Experiência em Brasília ; Revan ; 2006 ; pp. 11-12 LINS RIBEIRO, Gustavo ; O Capital da Esperança ; Universidade de Brasília ; 2008 ; p. 177 37 LINS RIBEIRO ; 2008 ; p. 167 38 Author Gustavo Lins Ribeiro talks about a vicious cycle where the workforce, looking to make as much money as possible during the construction of Brasília, ends up accepting the barely legal working conditions in exchange of a salary much higher than what they could earn in their home town.

39 The police officers randomly engaged to enforce the law during the construction of Brasília are known to have imposed fear rather than respect. One of the most violent episodes happened in 1959 when the police opened fire against rallying workers that asked for better food. (COSTA COUTO Ronaldo ; Brasília Kubitschek de Oliveira ; Record ; 2010 ; p. 105) 36

circumstances the agency NOVACAP started to redirect the migrants to other centres (Such as São Paulo) and to engage only single men as too many workers had come with their family, augmenting the needs for housing. Also, the first satellite-town, Taguatinga, was created in hastiness, offering precarious dwellings. But this was not enough ; newcomers kept arriving and, finding no possible shelter 40, they inaugurated the well-known phenomenon of illegal occupations in Brasília (see figs .16, 17).

Fig. 15 : The National Congress under construction, known as the “28”, circa 1958. (Picture by Alfredo Colombo)

Figs. 16, 17 : Illegal occupations, circa 1959. Such settlements would be described as Sacolândia (literally, “Bag-land”), for the precarious houses were covered with cement bags left over from the constructions. (source : Marcel Gautherot, in BURGI, TITAN ; 2010)

40

The few remaing units were expensive, over-populated dwellings in the “free city”.

24

Frontier Democracy People liked to banter that Mineiros gave orders, Paulistas earned money and Nordestinos executed41. What was originally a pleasantry actually depicted rather well how the tasks were distributed, naturally keeping the same old regional hierarchy in Brazil. Such hierarchy was however attenuated by the rough working and living conditions everyone shared ; site worker or engineer, they were all confronted to dirt, heat and sometimes venomous snakes42. It is what David Epstein called “frontier democracy” : an apparent fading of social differentiators43.

During the first construction years, this factor was of great help to motivate all the workers and to create a certain team spirit consolidating all levels of the hierarchy. But as the city appeared and the spaces started to become better defined, so did the social differences. The architecture itself, as it was progressively built and occupied, started playing the role of social differentiator ; its language, strange to the major public, connoted certain luxury and provoked unease within those from a humble background. After the inauguration, Niemeyer wrote : “We sadly saw that the atmosphere had changed completely, losing that human solidarity that characterised it before, that gave us the impression to live in a different world, in the world new and just we had always wished.

We used to live, during that period, like a big family, without prejudices or inequalities. We used to live in similar houses, eat in the same restaurants, frequent the same leisure locals.

“Even our clothes were similar. An atmosphere of confraternity, resulting of common discomfort, united us. Now everything changed, and we feel that vanity and egoism are present here and we are returning, step by step, to the habits and prejudices of the bourgeoisie we so much hate.

“We started to worry about our clothing and to frequent places of luxury and discrimination. We see our companions – the humblest – only swiftly and we feel that a class barrier separates us again. Our houses lost that proletarian aspect that attracted us before, […] and the comfort we usufruct today – although modest – scares them and intimidates them, stopping them at our door-step, as if they were waiting for an indispensable invitation.”44 Analysing the construction process of Brasilia, we may suggest that since its embryonal stage the new capital presented social tensions. Dissimulated in the beginning, they became apparent through the built spatial conditions and then emphasised by a societal behaviour that, as opposed to the architecture, was by no means modern or progressive. In parallel, rushed by a herculean deadline, the capital's erection required conspicuous exploitation of the workforce – what was covered by the legal liberties enjoyed by NOVACAP45. The democratic city seemed to emerge out of a forced, non-democratic process. In fact, many will call Brasília an authoritarian city, be it because of the working conditions or because of the very architectural language employed.

Reception The inauguration of Brasília happened on April 21 st, 1960. Although much of the public administration was still located in the old capital, notably the Foreign Relations Ministry 41

A Mineiro is someone from the state of Minas Gerais (like Kubitschek) ; a Paulista is from São Paulo (most of the construction companies) ; a Nordestino is from the norheastern region, the poorest in Brazil.

42 Even the president was almost bit by a Jararaca during one of his weekly visits.

43 LINS RIBEIRO ; 2008 ; p. 185 44 NIEMEYER ; 2006 ; pp. 35-36 45 By the legal act that created it in 1956, NOVACAP enjoyed financial and legal liberties that were key to maintain the “rhythm of Brasília” and inaugurate it in time. Basically, it had an open-check and independently administrated the matters within the Federal District (by then no longer belonging to Goiás).

and the embassies, many buildings had been completed by then, namely : the National Congress complex, the Plateau's Palace, the Supreme Federal Court, the presidential palace, eleven ministerial buildings, three thousand housing units, the bus terminal, a public hospital, schools, the Public Press building, a hotel, a provisory airport and a yacht club. Also, the electricity and sewer systems were operative, and more buildings were under way (such as the National Theatre and the Cathedral) 46.

From “capital of hope”47 to “a hurried city”48, Brasília gave rise to very diverse opinions.

The public opinion tended to be positive : besides numerous eulogies from political figures (from Fidel Castro to Dwight D. Eisenhower), the outstanding approval of Juscelino Kubitschek's presidency could only result in the support of the Brazilian citizens, led by a wave of hope, trust and optimism generated by the “golden years”.

But not everybody was happy ; especially between those who had to move from Rio de Janeiro. Within the circle of intellectuals and architects, much criticism arose as well, some times rather fervently.

Amongst the optimists, there was above all Le Corbusier, who said “here [in Brasília] there is invention. That's good.”49 He was always pleased by Niemeyer's sensual curves, saying they reminded the sinuosity of Rio's hills. Another partisan, more moderate, was André Chastel, who affirmed the new capital was “the conclusion of the chaotic – even if ingenious – experiments with the city in Brazil. It [was] the projection into the future of a social, monumental and architectural utopia that is necessary to Brazilian culture.”50 But there were also great names amongst the critics ; namely architect and historian Bruno Zevi and anthropologist Gilberto Freyre. While the former pointed out pricipally pragmatic flaws, the latter insisted on the sociological consequences of that new architectural language.

To start, Zevi attacked the city's hurry to be erected, causing massive costs (social and financial) and lacking of proper regional planning 51. Additionally, he questioned the inflexible, “military rigour” of the Pilot-plan52, which indeed consists of two strictly defined, non-extensible elements (the monumental axis and the residential wing). In his later publication Storia dell'architettura moderna, he commented on Niemeyer's buildings : “ La sua generosità non salva però dall'arbitrio e da un'anacronistica mania di 'grandeur' gli edifici, artificiosi e stucchevoli, avvolti da epidermidi dilettantistiche oppure incapsulati da vistose cadenze di portici intercambiabili, avulsi dai contenuti.”53 Freyre, based on his strong ethnographical knowledge of Brazilian cultures, condemned how Brasília ignored traditional and regional aspects to impose modernist aesthetics instead. He considered this experience “a warning for all 'Brazils' in phase of modernisation or urbanisation” and denounced the lack of multidisciplinary roundtable discussions, manifested by Kubitschek's “dictatorial way of creating Brasília” 54.

Such discussions didn't happen because, in order to gather professionals from many different fields and get them to agree over a solution, to much time would have been required ; thirty years instead of three. President Kubitschek had a national integration goal that he wanted to achieve – not willing to postpone it to the next government and risking the abandonment of the project. Apparently, the main problem was the very idea of creating a city ex nihilo in only three years, in a “hurry”.

Anticipating Freyre's remarks, in an article for Casabella in 1958, Ernersto Rodgers wrote how, in the quest for a national architecture Brasília resulted in “ahistorical”, 46

COSTA COUTO ; 2010 ; pp. 166-167 French Minister of Culture André Malraux, during his visit in 1959.

48 ZEVI, Bruno ; Brasilia troppo in fretta ; 1959 ; in BALDUCCI ; BRUZZESE ; DORIGATI ; SPINELLI ; 2010 ; p. 148 (?)

49 NOBRE ; 2010 ; p. 184 50 In BALDUCCI ; BRUZZESE ; DORIGATI ; SPINELLI ; 2010 ; p. 148 51 In BALDUCCI ; BRUZZESE ; DORIGATI ; SPINELLI ; 2010 ; p. 150-152 52 COSTA COUTO ; 2010 ; p. 211 53 ZEVI, Bruno ; Storia dell'Architettura Moderna ; Einaudi ; 1996 ; p. 390 54 COSTA COUTO ; 2010 ; pp. 210-212 47

26

“irrational” and “surreal” forms, imported from Europe after all 55. Paradoxically, the city designed by two anthropophagists may have lacked of their claimed brazilianity. In fact, many people (humble or rich) had a hard time adapting to the new arrangement of public spaces ; the typical street, dense, with its angles and small squares was substituted by a constantly open green area – very different from the usual spaces of conviviality56.

This criticism on the architectural language chosen for Brasília will continue through the decades. Kenneth Frampton, for example, described this period as when “Niemeyer broke with the informal functionality on which his fluid plan forms had been based, to concentrate on the creation of pure form : to move closer, that is, to the NeoClassical tradition.”57 Further, he also criticises the disregard for local climate conditions : “in contrast to the adjustable brise-soleil judisciously applied, some twenty years before, to the north façade of the Ministry of Education, the curtain walls at Brasília were left unshielded from the sun, although faced with heat-absorbent glass.” 58 For the anecdote, the refined curtain walls Frampton talks about are now carelessly perforated by air-conditioning devices (see figs. 18, 19).

Figs. 18, 19 : The absence of any solar protection in the façade resulted in the later (and inadequate) addition of air-conditioning installations. (Pictures by the author, National Congress building, 2012)

If it is true that the architecture of Brasília suffered from some contextual incoherences, notably related to climate and the human appropriation of space, it would be too extreme to affirm it is not Brazilian – and that modernism has nothing to do in with Latin American cultures – as some critics did. In this radical case, Rome should be Greek and Angkor should be Indian. Of course, Brazilian modernism was born thanks to foreign influences ; but then, as we saw in the previous chapter, it found its authenticity in the combination of foreign and national elements. For instance, the capital finds its Brazilianity in its scale and in its sensual curves, which surely ignored the boring rigour of that time's northern architecture (with the exception of a few organicists).The same process of cultural hybridisation has happened worldwide and has always shaped architecture, which never feared reinterpretations.

It is noticeable how controversial Oscar Niemeyer's work became after the construction of Brasília. In the modest opinion of this author, although Niemeyer was very engaged politically (he was a member of the Communist Party) his architecture was, in the opposite, completely apolitical. His only commitment to the architectural form was to find beauty, to cause “surprise” – and never indifference. And he did so by pushing the new construction technologies beyond their limits, attaining a level of delicacy and refinement of concrete that still today is a prowess. To better understand his position, here follow some of his words : 55

In BALDUCCI ; BRUZZESE ; DORIGATI ; SPINELLI ; 2010 ; p. 148 CAVALCANTI ; 2006 ; p. 220 57 FRAMPTON ; 2007 ; p. 256 58 FRAMPTON ; 2007 ; p. 257 56

“I am in favour of an almost unlimited plastic freedom, which is not obediently subordinated to the reasons of technique or functionality, but that is constituted, in the first place, of an invitation to the imagination, to the new and beautiful forms, capable of surprising and moving for what they represent is new and creative […]. Of course, this freedom cannot be indiscriminately used. In urban locations, for example, I am in favour of its limitation, or, specifically, for the preservation of the unity and harmony of the ensemble, rejecting solutions that do not integrate themselves plastically, even if the latter are of high architectural level. With this objective, in Brasília, within the urban sectors I referred to, we fixed volumes, open-spaces, heights, external finishing materials etc., having in mind to prevent that that city grow, as do the other modern cities, under a regime of disharmony and confusion. But, for the individual houses and the buildings surrounded by open-spaces, we guaranteed total freedom of conception, within, of course, the rules of proportion that the architecture demanded. […]

“Architecture never based on the radical impositions of functionalism, but, rather, on the search for new and different solutions, logic if possible, following the constructive system. This, fearing not the contradictions between form and technique or function, certain that only the beautiful, unexpected, harmonious solutions remain. With such objective, I accept all artifices, all commitments, convicted that architecture does not consist of a simple engineering question, but of a manifestation from the spirit, the imagination and the poetry”59 But he was also amongst the first to acknowledge the rising social issues and the patent gap between the idealised Pilot-plan and the actual reality. Aware that architecture alone could not – and cannot – solve societal problems by itself, he “sadly saw that the existing social conditions conflicted at that point with the spirit of the Pilotplan, creating problems that were impossible to resolve on paper, even calling for – as some more naïve suggested – a social architecture that leads to nothing without a socialist base.”60 On this collection of thoughts, we may suggest Niemeyer was not a typical modern architect, but rather a poet of concrete, reinterpreting with his sculptural architecture the curves of Brazilian baroque and, his favourite, those of the “beloved woman”.

Sceptic about modernism's promises of a better world, he preferred to be fully committed to society as a conscious citizen, and not as an architect.

Likewise, when interviewed in 1987, Lucio Costa argued that Brasília had not the ambitions to resolve Brazil's social problems, nor could architecture change that ; it was a problem of the whole society. In the end, “Brasília was a city of public officials, designed to be the Capital of the Republic. We reasoned, indeed, in terms of a small bourgeoisie and not of a poorly paid proletariat.” 61 And he added that the best critique had actually been done twenty years before the inauguration, by professor Hudnut in one of José Luís Sert's book, making ridicule of the cartesian concept of city where everything is precisely ordered. Hudnut defended the urban planner's task was limited to guide the city's development, and not to force it to happen. Although Costa agreed, this was hard to apply to a city that needed to be born out of nothing in only three years ; that didn't have any pre-existing metabolism, which needed to be preimposed62.

Hurried, authoritarian, poorly planned : we understand, by the end of this chapter, that the very construction process of Brasília took considerable part in germinating the seeds of societal conditions that, in the end, made it not very different from the other Brazilian cities (as it was supposed to be). It seems the capital's claimed Brazilianity is found not in its architecture but, instead, in its socio-spatial configurations.

59

NIEMEYER ; 2006 ; pp. 25-26, 28 NIEMEYER ; 2006 ; p. 32 61 NOBRE ; 2010 ; p. 178 62 NOBRE ; 2010 ; pp. 51-52 60

28

Thus, before we address the eventual social impacts of the Pilot-plan's architecture, it is of prime importance to remember the complicated delivery that brought it to light, inflicting durable consequences in the morphology of the capital. From the beginning, the exceeding proletarian mass started to occupy the periphery of the still unborn city, revealing a phenomenon of polarisation that, as we will see, has been degrading Brazilian urban centres in general. Costa and Niemeyer said it themselves, there could be no solution led by architecture alone ; the problem was political.

30

CHAPTER III REALITY

32

CHAPTER III REALITY

With the end of Juscelino Kubitschek's presidency, starts a period of austerity caused by the huge public expenses on infrastructure and specifically Brasília, remarkably slowing down the constructions' rhythm. On top of that, the new president, Jânio Quadros, was clearly not in favour of the transfer of the capital, what delayed the remaining works and even brought back to discussion the relocation itself. Under a wave of political instability, Quadros resigned after only a few months in power ; the tensions continued until 1964, when the fragile democracy gave place to a repressive military regime – which resumed the task of erecting Brasília and activating it as new capital in 1970.

Quite ironically, the new capital was consolidated by people whose values differed completely from those promoted before the inauguration : oppressive leaders from 64 to 85 and then uncommitted, corrupt leaders from 85 until now. What was the capital of hope became capital of delusion. But not just the people in power changed ; the ruling economical models also evolved and had deep impacts on city planning : the former keynesian approach where the state is at the base of planning administration gave place to the neoliberal model where free markets “naturally” administrate urban spaces, guided by the fluctuant interests of capital. Such conjuncture resulted in social dysfunctions evidenced by the explosion of unplanned satellite-towns and the escalation of poverty.

The immeasurable demographic growth started to put pressure on the Pilot-plan, at a point it had to call for UNESCO's heritage shield in order to be protected. But, as we will see, this protection did not prevent inevitable modifications, at the same time it had some unpredicted consequences.

This paper will not insist on the flaws of the model proposed by modernist city planners in general as many authors, like Franco La Cecla 63 or Françoise Choay64, have already demonstrated the problems typically caused by the so-called “rational” zoning – not to mention the crisis of modernism evidenced by the movements of 1968 65. However, there are two specific aspects of the idealised garden city that manifestly conflict with the specific metropolitan condition of Brasília, in two different scales, macro and micro : (1) sparse territorial occupation, in a macro-scale, and (2) the definition of common / private spaces, in a micro-scale. It is important to precise that Brasília, the project of which aimed at a “bucolic” and “bureaucratic” city, is in reality one of the biggest agglomerations in Brazil, now counting more than 2'500'000 inhabitants. Of course, the pressure on the Pilot-plan for further land occupation and zoning concessions just got worse with time, together with individual adjustments within the Superquadras.

Under these circumstances, this chapter proposes to analyse the modifications that happened through time, from the larger territorial scale to the smaller scale of the Super-blocks' residential buildings, in order to understand the realities of Brasília unveiled from the idealised plans' mask.

First symptoms The major issue concerning Brasília's construction and development is clearly the explosive demographic growth that has taken place there, since the very first day until now. Such growth is explained by the fact that, from the beginning, Brasília became an “Eldorado” for all those that lived in precarious conditions in the central parts of Brazil.

63

Contro l'Architettura ; 2008 l'Urbanisme : Utopies et Réalités ; 1965 65 As suggested by David Harvey, amongst others.

64

One may say the new capital was victim of its own promise to bring progress and wealth to the hinterlands of Brazil, underestimating the real numbers of people it would have to deal with.

This polarisation caused by the concentration of wealth and services is certainly not a phenomenon uniquely found in Brasília – but common to all cities in Latin America –; the particularity here is the speed at which the Federal District's population increased.

For example, while São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro waited about four hundred years to reach two million inhabitants, in Brasília it took only forty, the growth occurring ten times faster66. The government was clearly not expecting such strong migrations ; on the contrary, it had planned to keep only one third of the workforce employed from 1957 to 1960 in the capital, while the rest would have been employed in the agricultural sector or sent back home 67. And to make it worse, because the capital was typically a tertiary city with very little industry and the building sector started to shrink, it became impossible to offer enough jobs to absorb the exceeding contingent.

What followed was a patent process of exclusion, where the poorest were constrained to settle in peripheral areas, often illegally occupying land before the impotent eyes of the state – that chose to legalise many of these occupations, an inevitable palliative solution. Later, these would become actual satellite-towns. On top of that, another factor came to consolidate the already spontaneous socio-spatial segregation when, in 1965, the Pilot-plan's housing units were put on the free market 68 : it definitely pushed the lower classes far from the centre, which became unaffordable. In parallel, the government started to distribute land around the Plan, but always keeping a considerable distance from it, around 25 km, establishing a kind of “sanitary belt”.

At this point, we understand that the scattered, stretched morphology of Brasília's present metropolitan area is the direct result of bad regional planning, magnified by an unexpectedly high migration and market influences in the organisation of space.

Fragmented metropolis If we analyse how the capital's conurbation evolved through time (see figs. 20-25), we understand that, from the beginning, the territory was sparsely and punctually occupied by small agglomerations situated around the Pilot-plan's worksite. While Milton Santos blames this apparently random territorial occupation on land speculation and on the state's preference to private capital's interests rather than social's 69, geographer Aldo Paviani calls it the polynuclear model of urban settlements. According to him, it was consolidated during the regime, that saw in it the potential to impose government's control over the territory. He explains : “Another specificity of Brasília is the fact that it consists in a polynuclear city with large unoccupied spaces, a true urban constellation, deriving from a planned 'peripherisation'. On the contrary of the other metropolises which incorporated neighbourhoods, suburbs, 'conurbanising' with close municipalities, in a true knitting of the metropolitan tissue, Brasília planned the distance between the nuclei, trying to escape from the conurbation and chaos of the traditional cities.70 […]

66

COSTA COUTO ; 2010 ; p. 336 CAVALCANTI ; 2006 ; p. 219 68 Ibid.

69 Santos explains how the metropolitan regions started to be planned according to the interests of capital and the governments started to build infrastructures accordingly. The “economical city” prevailed over the “social city” under the pretext of “modernisation” - what in the case of underdeveloped countries usually happened with the “faint of citizenship and the implantation of strong regimes”. In SANTOS Milton ; A Urbanização Brasileira ; Universidade de São Paulo ; 2009 ; pp. 105-107, p. 116 70 PAVIANI Aldo ; Brasília a Metrópole em Crise ; Universidade de Brasília ; 2010 ; p.101 67

34

1 Brazlândia 2 Planaltina 3 Cruzeiro 4 Candangolândia 5 Cidade Livre

1958

1 Brazlândia 2 Planaltina 3 Cruzeiro 4 Candangolândia 5 Cidade Livre 6 Taguatinga 7 Sobradinho

1960

1 Brazlândia 2 Planaltina 3 Cruzeiro 4 Candangolândia 5 Cidade Livre 6 Taguatinga 7 Sobradinho 8 Gama

1964

1 Brazlândia 2 Planaltina 3 Cruzeiro 4 Candangolândia 5 Cidade Livre 6 Taguatinga 7 Sobradinho 8 Gama 9 Guará 10 Ceilândia

1975

1 Brazlândia 2 Planaltina 3 Cruzeiro 4 Candangolândia 5 Cidade Livre 6 Taguatinga 7 Sobradinho 8 Gama 9 Guará 10 Ceilândia 11 Paranoá 12 Lago Norte

1986

1 Brazlândia 2 Planaltina 3 Cruzeiro 4 Candangolândia 5 Cidade Livre 6 Taguatinga 7 Sobradinho 8 Gama 9 Guará 10 Ceilândia 11 Paranoá 12 Lago Norte 13 São Sebastião 14 Santa Maria 15 Riacho Fundo 16 Recanto das Emas 17 Samambaia

1997

Figs. 20-25 : These plans show the urban evolution of Brasília, which apparently has always followed what Paviani describes as the polynuclear model of urban settlements. (source : BALDUCCI ; BRUZZESE ; DORIGATI ; SPINELLI ; 2010) 36

“By fragmenting the city, creating multiple nuclei, popular manifestations are discouraged, the single-family house ideology is stimulated, the beauty of the administrative neighbourhood is emphasised, the heritage is protected, the image of landscape is frozen, pantheons and ostentatious ideological signs arise. […]

“The urban sprawl, to sum up, contains a geopolitical control : initiatives by oppressed and revindicating masses are attenuated (and, until recently, the exercise of citizenship was forbidden).”71 As a result, we can read at present three distinct zones within Brasília's metropolitan area: “Brasília is one only from a functional point of view, but, from the spatial organisation point of view, the city is divided, with evident socio-spatial segregation. The 'éliticised' Pilot-plan became the centre of the metropolis, or, as we have already denominated, Brasília 1. On the other side, the biggest parcel of the city, which we'll denominate Brasília 2, is the most populated and has the biggest human potential (it also is the more problematic part of the capital). It has not received the same attention given to the centre of the metropolis. Finally, Brasília 3, the periphery of Goiás, housing option for the impoverished population, whose problems have been delegated not to the Federal District's government but to Goiás'.”72 It is noticeable that, on the contrary of what had been predicted by the initial plans, the transfer of the capital did not bring, at least for the first decades, the promised regional development to the country's hinterlands. Actually, this development was not regional but rather punctual. There is in fact a clear contrast between the very well planned centre and the unmanageable, unplanned periphery that continues to spread itself over the Plateau. For instance, while some areas in the Pilot-plan present an HDI that goes up to 0.945 (higher than Norway's), the surroundings' HDI may go down to 0.760 (comparable to that of third world countries). Brasília is indeed one of the most unequal cities in Brazil and in the World : in 2010 it was ranked the 16 th most socially inequitable city in the world and the 4th most unequal city in Brazil.73 Looking closer at Brasília's process of metropolitan genesis, we may suppose the “three Brasílias” described by Paviani have actually been there since the first works to erect Brasília, in the shape of (1) worksite, (2) formal workers' settlements and (3) inhabitants of the cerrado that converged independently under the economical influence of the future capital and started the informal settlements, gradually expanding the stain of poverty – now beyond the Federal District's limits. These entities went through a parallel – but surely not independent – development ; a simultaneous growth of the planned and the unplanned city that had important consequences on the shape of Brasília's urban agglomeration, and eventually on the Pilot-plan, as it has suffered constant pressure from the surroundings.

Obsolescence of a city model It was just a matter of time until inevitable changes in the Pilot-plan could take place.

They were: (1) additional housing zones, (2) transformation of the W3 74 service street 71

PAVIANI ; 2010 ; pp. 76-77 PAVIANI ; 2010 ; p. 86 73 Human Development Index and ranking figures extracted from MALDONALDO, Raquel ; Brasília contrasta riqueza e desigualdade após quase 50 anos de existência ; UOL Notícias ; April 15th 2010 74 Being a city rationally organised, Lucio Costa opted for a type of street denomination that reflected the precision of the capital's blocks and zoning, in their relation to the two main axes. Hence the street names aquire certain « mathematical » character, like the W3 : third street situated west of the residential axis, that is divided in two sections (north or south of the monumental axis).

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into a large commercial / residential avenue, (3) reconfiguration of the Neighbourhood Units' commercial streets, and (4) the installation, for safety reasons, of fences around some residential buildings75 contradicting the free circulation suggested by the pilotis.

We will now have a closer look into these modifications.

The additional residential areas had quite obvious reasons to be built, as “it became more and more difficult to justify an extremely expensive urban structure, with enormous empty areas amongst its constituent elements.” 76 So were created two rows of Superquadras (see fig. 26), the 400's (with the “economic” three-storeys buildings on pilotis) and the 700's (with single family houses). At first, this measure helped to keep the central areas affordable to the lower income households ; but in the end market forces presided over the value of land, making the Pilot-plan once again unaffordable to the humblest. We understand here how the density issues were accentuated by an over-heated real state market, which benefited from the scarce offer of dwellings per hectare established by the garden city model.

Fig. 26 : Two additional residential zones were necessary to respond to the high demand for housing. In red, the 400's row ; in green, the 700's row. (image edited by the author)

In this regard, Aldo Paviani points to the surprising way the inhabitants are distributed over the Federal District's territory, where the density indicators are lower in the city centre (Pilot-plan) and higher in the periphery (satellite-towns) 77. This fact is uniquely found in Brasília, whose central public spaces enjoy a generosity that only a city integrally planned and financed by the state could afford. In terms of numbers, Lucio Costa claims this model can house up to 500 inhabitants per hectare78, while other sources estimate rather 280 inhabitants per hectare79 (which is indeed a low density for urban areas).

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These modifications were described in : de HOLANDA, Frederico ; The Morphology of Brasília : an Evaluation ; in DOCOMOMO ; Conference Proceedings : Fifth International DOCOMOMO Conference, Vision and Reality, Social Aspects of Architecture and Urban Planning in the Modern Movement ; DOCOMOMO ; 1998 ; pp. 266-269 76 de HOLANDA ; in DOCOMOMO ; 1998 ; p. 268 77 PAVIANI ; 2010 ; p. 75 78 COSTA Lucio ; Brasília Revisitada ; 1987 79 Information collected in The Density Atlas website 38

The changes in the character of the W3 avenue indicate the impossibility to maintain a strict, rational zoning, as the city has its own metabolism that evolves through time.

Originally, the commercial activities should only happen in two areas : in the business district (regionally) and in between Superquadras (locally). In one of his competition panels, Costa describes the W3 and L2 roads as follows : “For truck traffic a secondary, independent road system with grade crossings and good traffic signals was established but without crossing or interfering in any way with the main system, except above the sports sector.”80 What happened in reality is that “instead of being a road which would constitute a sort of perimeter ring of the Pilot-plan, it became the only long distance avenue which had buildings on both sides, located very near the traffic lanes.

This contradicted one of the basic principles of modernistic design, namely the radical separation of spaces for circulation from activities-adapted spaces. […] Shopping, as well as services, constituted, in the W3, a mix of local, district and central land uses, what increased the diversity which has always to be present in consolidated urban streets.”81 In the case of the modifications done in the local shopping streets, Frederico de Holanda offers an excellent explanation : “Between two rows of shops there should exist only a service road, and the shops should open only to the interior of the residential superblocks. This was coherent with the idea of the Neighbourhood Unit and its alleged self sufficiency : local shopping was supposed to be used only by residents in the super-blocks close to that commerce.

Modernistic designers believed in the autonomy of bits of the urban tissue as a real, or at least desirable, fact concerning both functional and sociological attributes of city structure.

“In Brasília such fallacy was once more demonstrated. Shops turned their front to the street, and their backs to the interior of the superblocks, from the very beginning. This created, in the south wing, a very unpleasant sort of “backyard landscape” facing the residential buildings.

It was clear that even the most 'local' urban service, is already urban, and not local, in the sense that it already relates to the city as a whole, and not to its immediate surroundings.”82 As for the last set of modifications, concerning the change in character of the residential buildings' ground floor, it is clearly the reflection of a segregated society, socially and spatially. It is striking how in Brazil the idea of common spaces is controversial : basically, if a given space it is monitored and shared between social equals, it may be conceivable ; but when it becomes a truly democratic space (ideally, a public space) many issues like security and privacy arise. The sad truth is that Brazil is a country in which social tensions have reached a point where they actually condition architecture, with the insertion of inevitable security features like fences, cameras, door-keeper's room, accompanied by a clear distinction between private and public spaces – tending to prioritise the private, as the public realm has long been abandoned by both government and citizens. Thus, the ideal of a liberated groundfloor, democratically shared by people from diverse backgrounds, stayed on the paper ; again, the societal conjuncture was not ready to receive such modern concepts.

In addition to the obsolescence of the pilotis (which became merely formal elements) the recent buildings erected in the Superquadras, instead of expressing the constructional logic of concrete and steel, are poorly cladded with artifices to please a specific clientele and have no longer the honest character of the initial residential blocks (see figs. 27, 28).

The increasing number of modifications in the Pilot-plan, combined with the private speculation over land, called for the attention of specialists who certainly showed concern about the integrity of Lucio Costa's plan. Its historical value as the 80

From Lucio Costa's competition panels (2012). de HOLANDA ; in DOCOMOMO ; 1998 ; p. 269 82 de HOLANDA ; in DOCOMOMO ; 1998 ; p. 269 81

Fig. 27 : Changes at ground level - strong definition of private / public spaces and the obstruction of the ground-floor, as opposed to the concept of the garden city. (Picture by the author, 2012)

Fig. 28 : The new architectural language employed differs completely from the constructional principles that guided the original buildings in the Superquadras. (Picture by the author, 2012) 40

materialisation – and experience – of modern planning was unanimously acknowledged, and many remembered how Belo Horizonte, once a city representative of the Belle Époque period, had completely lost its historical identity because of misguided later interventions. José Aparecido de Oliveira, who was appointed as Federal District's Governor in 1985, explains the atmosphere of concern back then : “I thought the first thing I should do was to turn Brasília into a work of preservation not only of architecture, urbanism and landscape, but an internationally recognised proposal, in order to contain the real state speculation, which is always denaturing the best urban projects.

“If we hadn't protected the Pilot-plan, I have no doubt that the city would have already been denatured.”83 Old young city In 1987, Brasília became the youngest site to be listed in the UNESCO's World Heritage list (see protected area on fig. 29) ; an undertaking well received by architects around the globe. That same year, Lucio Costa published a document entitled Brasília Revisitada, which acknowledged the capital's need to adapt but reminded that Brasília was “historical by its own birth, what not only [justified] but [demanded] the preservation, for the future generations, of the fundamental characteristics that made it singular.”84 With this publication, Costa contributed in establishing the guidelines for respectful future interventions within the Pilot-plan and the area around it.

Very aware of the housing scarcity and the consequent expulsion of the poorest from central neighbourhoods, Brasília Revisitada proposed six new zones where “economical blocks” could be erected – amongst which four are situated in the protected heritage area (see fig. 30). Such extensions, according to Costa, could only happen if they followed the garden city principles established in the Pilot-plan (hence proposing constructions over pilotis with a maximum height of three or six floors depending on the area). This decision was above all a result of the need to define and plan these areas, which had in some cases already been informally occupied : for example in the sector C, it was in fact a tool to break the progressive expansion that “interfered in an inadequate and disastrous way with the monumental scale close by.”85

Fig. 29, 30 : On the left, the area considered Wolrd Heritage is evidenced by the orange line. On the right, the six zones assigned by Lucio Costa are evidenced by different colours – red for zone A, yellow for zone B, orange for zone C, pink for zone D, purple for zone E and green for zone F. (sources: museuvirtualbrasilia.org.br / politicaeconomia.com) 83

COSTA COUTO ; 2010 ; p. 335 COSTA ; 1987 85 Ibid.

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But more than anything, Lucio Costa insisted that “a population limit should be considered for the federal capital, in order not to denature the latter's prime function – political-administrative – that is at its origin. Brasília has no interest in being a metropolis. As our socio-economical structure induces the migration of the poor to the big urban centres, it is essential to think immediately about the development, in areas close to the capital, of industrial poles capable of absorbing, as possible, this migration with sufficient job offers.”86 Although this author disagrees with Costa's authoritarian measures of migration control for the sake of the preservation of his “bucolic” city (what would basically require a Brazilian “wall of shame” around the capital), it is true that the key to resolve Brasília's saturation is in the improvement of the surroundings. This would attenuate the polarisation of wealth by redistributing job opportunities and services over the territory, in a more equal manner.

However, going back to the “bucolic” aspect of Brasília, while it is reasonable to defend the existing Superquadras that indeed revolutionised the way people live in the city, it is rather unreasonable to plan the future of the capital on a basis that repeats the same model which has already been proved expensive, exclusive and unsustainable.

It is understandable that plans do not always work ; but it is not understandable to make the same mistake twice by denying reality in the name of nostalgic ideals. Even less if it implies blunting democracy, as we will see.

Forced preservation There are diverging opinions about the UNESCO's protection of the Pilot-plan. This paper has repeatedly remembered the historical importance of Brasília as a paradigm of modernist planning and as a rare urban laboratory. But it is also important to understand that, as a city, it assumes different responsibilities than if it were a single building, for its scale allows considerable influences over socio-political parameters.

This unstable condition surely calls for flexibility.

Numerous authors have denounced the conditions and the reasons to maintain Brasília under UNESCO's tutelage. According to them, the aesthetic dimensions were over-rated, at the expense of the societal, functional dimensions. Jorge Francisconi and Sônia Cordeiro criticise how the UNESCO's directives prevent any pragmatic modifications in infrastructure, like sidewalks in the commercial sectors or the increase in population density in order to make the extension of public transit economically viable87. More fervently, Hernandez condemns the “alarming conditions [imposed by ICOMOS] for the inclusion of Brasília in the heritage list, which require that Brazilian authorities adopt a legislation that ensures the protection of Costa and Niemeyer's creation in order to avoid the latter's transformation, without understanding that the transformations that have happened are part of the natural evolution of every city.”88 The primary intention consisting in protecting the national heritage was valid ; it is the way the task has been undertaken that led to unexpected consequences. Ignez Ferreira and Marcia Mathieu explain that “by containing the growth of the planned city, the urban agglomerate was created without any planning.” And they add “the paradigms of 'good living' changed through the years. Preservation cannot mean the petrification of the protected site, which is affected by time and by the conditions of the place where it is located.”89 Curiously, at the same moment Brazilian citizens regained their democracy, the UNESCO heritage label passed, discouraging any further discussion on the future of the Pilot-plan other than Lucio Costa's 1987 document. It was as if from the moment people became able again to express their thoughts, and ask for change, the capital 86

COSTA ; 1987 GUILHERME FRANCISCONI, Jorge, TAVEIRA de CAMARGO CORDEIRO, Sônia Helena ; Evolutions of Forms and Functions in the Plano Piloto – Brasília, DF ; in DOCOMOMO ; 1998 ; p. 276 88 HERNANDEZ ; 2011 ; p. 73 89 FERREIRA Ignez C. B., MATHIEU Marcia R. de A. ; Preservação do Patrimônio e Formação da Area Metropolitana de Brasília ; 2011 ; pp. 13, 18 87

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needed a new way to preserve its city model ; and it seems that the heritage label did the job.

Because of its scale, Brasília becomes much more susceptible to individual actions that, dispersed in space, are very hard to control. This is why a special monitoring tool, politically based, was employed. The city founded under democratic ideals has actually never elected its Governor (who is still appointed by the Federal Government instead of a democratic election) and has no representatives to bring local interests to debate in the legislative chamber. Lucio Costa shared his opinion on this delicate situation : “Under the present circumstances, I think the creation of a chamber of representatives here would be a disaster, because it will easily denature the idea, what still remains of the conception of Brasília. Proposals to break the super-blocks, change the heights, will immediately rise. But, on the other side, the population has to participate, be the owner of the city. It would be interesting to create a system where Brasília and the satellites, divided in areas, would have neighbourhood associations that, legally, routinely, through commissions of five to six representatives, would be able to contact the authorities, in order to express the inhabitants' claims and hear what the Government pretends to do. In the capital of the Republic, I think the governor should be elected by the Federal Government, because if the governor was directly elected, then you would have that quantity of interested people that, once elected, would make their friends' life easy.”90 Such legislative tool of control over the territory was established in the very beginning, soon after the capital's inauguration. Sarah Feldman explains how restrictive and contradictory the new legislation actually was, regarding discussions held in the CIAMs' : “[...] it was a legislation formulated to render viable a single, monolithic project, and even more than that, a finished, fixed project. Its formulation did not allow for the urban dynamics and mutability of living circumstances, considerations which inspired the founding of the CIAM meetings and steered their discussions and propositions. Quite the contrary, the Brasília legislation ossified Lucio Costa's project by not admitting changes or urban expansion. By conceiving a law as an instrument that congeals an urban situation, it subverted all of the postulates about legislation introduced at the CIAM meetings which aimed at radically changing the great urban centres.” 91 Apparently, it has been a constant political battle to maintain the Pilot-plan as initially designed. It can be quite paradoxical if we consider that not even the state really followed the plans, abandoning the construction of equipments in the Neighbourhood Units or simply forgetting to plant the vegetation that justified the existence of the generous open-spaces. Even those who have advocated the full respect to the plans eventually showed some nonchalance towards it.

Recently, an interesting survey has been done by CODEPLAN, the Planning Company of the Federal District, that interviewed over 1'700 people in Brasília in order to inquire into the public opinion about the UNESCO's heritage label 92. While 56% agreed that “only the heritage label would guarantee future generations to see Brasília as it was designed”, 58% considered the label “an obstacle to the city's growth”.

Even though it is difficult to obtain a clear opinion on the balance between benefits and inconveniences brought by the protection of the Pilot-plan, we can say nevertheless that it emphasised the Plan's centrality and monumentality, relatively to its surroundings. The celebrated monumental scale prevailed over the others – residential, gregarian and bucolic –, more related to the routine of those living there.

90

NOBRE ; 2010 ; p. 84 FELDMAN, Sarah ; A Legal System for Urbanism : the Modern Movement's Unseen Face ; in DOCOMOMO ; 2000 ; p. 81 92 CODEPLAN ; Pesquisa sobre o Tombamento de Brasília ; 2012

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The tensions around the heritage preservation seem to be of particular concern in the Brazilian capital, if compared to other modern cities counting in UNESCO's list – like Tel Aviv, Le Havre or Chandigarh. If we look at UNESCO's threat indicators (see figs.

31-33), Brasília clearly presents the most unstable situation ; and it got to a point where an ICOMOS commission came in 2012 to evaluate wether the capital still deserved its place in the World Heritage List93.

Brasília could certainly learn from the other modernistic cities, starting with the actual promotion of heritage and campaigns to make the population aware of the importance of such cultural legacy. A good example of this is Le Havre, where the municipality approached merchants and dwellers in the new centre to explain the historical value of those singular post-war concrete buildings – which were often not well identified with the population.

Regarding urban growth, the “White City” of Tel Aviv and the Brazilian capital share a similar condition, in a way that both face the pressure of an expanding periphery. But in the case of Tel Aviv, there is more flexibility in terms of planning, what facilitates the densification of central areas. For example, within defined limitations, interventions may be done in the historic city and even additional floors may be applied to some protected buildings – surely, under the monitoring of specialists 94. However, Tel Aviv is not always exemplary in the way it deals with its urban tissue : as we can see now, the historical centre is being surrounded by a ring of skyscrapers that completely change the relation between Patrick Geddes' city and its landscape context. Intervening in the vicinity of historical sites is obviously a delicate task, and much attention to the dialog between old and new is required.

The most similar case to the Brazilian capital is certainly Chandigarh. Like Brasília, it was erected ex nihilo, while Tel Aviv and specially Le Havre were sites already inhabited. As Geddes would never have thought, Brasília and Chandigarh were born out of a stroke, being no product of history but of modern man's power of creation. In terms of architecture, Frampton explains how both cities recur to a “conceptual schism between the isolated monumentality of the government centre and the rest of the city”95. But maybe the most striking similarity is how both have their heritage threatened by a booming periphery – the result of major social issues, lack of urban planning and a corrupt government. Apparently in these developing countries, heritage preservation also includes social strategies ; the former cannot happen without the latter.

Rebirth ?

With the end of the regime, the academic institutions recovered their freedom to carry critical studies. This led to a better understanding of the conditions of Brasília's metropolitan region and to the acknowledgement of the negative aspects of a scattered urban tissue. New projects emerged, breaking with the regime's geopolitical strategy of territorial control and consolidating the fragmented metropolis. Finally, more attention started to be given to the surroundings of the Pilot-plan. For example the Aguas Claras project, which, by now consolidated, establishes an urban continuity from the central plan until Taguatinga, offering not only new houses but also services and commerce. The same way, two underground lines were created, directly connecting the satellite-towns in the west to Brasília's business district. All these initiatives are signs of a new approach, of a less secluded Pilot-plan, what may be a great step forward.

In parallel, large works started to be undertaken within the protected zone to cope with the external pressure over it. As mentioned before, in his Brasília Revisitada Lucio Costa assigned six zones (A,B,C,D,E and F, see fig. 30) where to be erected new 93

In the end it kept the heritage status, but under clear warning to improve the authorities' control over the Pilot-plan, notably regarding the changes in the W3 avenue and the maintenance of some areas that have become derelict, like the central bus station.

94 Information extracted from UNESCO's website : http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1096 95 FRAMPTON ; 2007 ; p. 256 44

BrasĂ­lia

Tel Aviv

Le Havre

Fig. 31-33 : Heritage threat indicators (given by the amount of threat repports) for BrasĂ­lia, Tel Aviv and Le Havre. The difference between the Brazilian capital and these two other cities is notable. Such indicators were not available for Changigarh. (source : UNESCO)

residential blocks, amongst which four were located in the heritage area. Up to this date, the zone A has been fully occupied with “economical blocks” (see fig. 34) ; but unfortunately this neighbourhood ended up being divided into a “noble sector” and a “poor sector” ; the former consisting of a scheme similar to the super-blocks, and the latter consisting of three-storeys high buildings without elevators 96. The zones C and D remained undefined, without any specific intervention. The largest intervention, the works for which have already started, is to come in the zone B : it will welcome a whole new “green” neighbourhood, allegedly respectful to Costa's fundamental principles of urbanism (see figs. 35, 36). We will see, however, that these claims may not be exact.

Fig. 34 : Lucio Costa's project for the “economical blocks”, which was realised by the end of the 80's. The concept of the garden city was kept in the project, but suffered from the same phenomena afflicting the Superquadras. (source : jobim.org)

Setor Noroeste What started in the 90's as a serious continuation of Lucio Costa's work suddenly became a stain of arbitrary post-modernity on the modern landscape of the Pilot-plan.

Surely, the typical lack of rigour and control from Brazilian authorities – that ignored the project's architectural and social flaws – contributed to the doubtful quality of the northwest sector. But it suffered above all from an undefined position towards heritage, between copy and innovation, that clearly harmed the whole project. An identity crisis of a sector whose character was inevitably predefined by the “historical” surroundings but also needed to respond to a new conjuncture ; and in the end it did neither one.

“First ecological neighbourhood of Brazil, it relies on high, first-world technology and infrastructure, what allows the perfect union to those who want the comfort of the city and the pleasure to live in an eco-village.” On these words, the entrepreneurs sell this huge undertaking on their website. The northwest sector has indeed high technology building-integrated features, from photovoltaic panels to rainwater capture systems.

Moreover, “while Superquadras include one long shopping boulevard that discourage 96

De SOUZA TENORIO, Gabriela, GERMANO dos SANTOS JUNIOR, Reinaldo ; Setor Noroeste, Brasília: can an elite neighborhood be considered green? ; 2010 ; p. 2 46

1 Superquadras 2 Local commercial street 3 Regional commercial street 4 Burle Marx park 5 Expansion area 6 Pilot plan’s North Wing Area under direct influece

Fig. 35 : The Northwest Sector occupies a large area within the Pilot-plan. The images above show its situation and the distribution of the program. (source : De SOUZA TENORIO, GERMANO dos SANTOS JUNIOR ; 2010)

Fig. 36: Picture of the sector’s worksite, published in june 2012. (source : correiobraziliense.lugarcerto.com.br)

Fig. 37-39 : The different typologies of buildings proposed by the northwest sector project, varying between residential and mixed-use programs. (source: meuprimeironoroeste.com.br) 48

residents from walking or cycling, Noroeste will have shopping areas every two blocks.

To that end, more pedestrian walkways and 44 km (27 miles) of bicycle paths will allow residents to ditch cars.”97 But, although new “sustainable” mobility and technology systems characterise indeed this project, the improvements stop there.

The northwest sector was supposed to follow Lucio Costa's indications described in Brasília Revisitada ; instead, it seems that the only aspect it respected was the height limit. As a matter of a fact, while Costa clearly stated the additional housing areas aimed the lower and middle classes that had been expelled from the Plan, the apartments in the northwest sector started being sold at a price five times higher than in the neighbouring Northern Aisle98. In the end, this project just accentuates the phenomenon of social homogenisation of space that reflects well the Brazilian society.

Urban researchers Dr. Gabriela Tenorio99 and Reinaldo Germano100 remember how “a few years ago, [in the southwest sector assigned by Lucio Costa for residential expansion], two episodes demonstrated the frame of mind of some residents from the 'noble' part of the neighborhood: in the first, they lined up against the construction of public schools, claiming it would be only 'for the children of the cleaning ladies', and in the second they positioned themselves against the construction of sports courts 'to avoid the gathering of poor people'. »101 Social aspects aside, it is striking to see the kind of architectural aberrations being promoted by this undertaking (see figs. 37-39) where mediocre interpretations of the super-blocks are composed with buildings whose materiality go beyond the kitsch and oppose the principles of calm and harmony imposed by Oscar Niemeyer fifty years earlier. Moreover, the pilotis, willingly deprived of any continuity at ground-floor level, consciously become artifices, formal compensation for the conceptual gap with the original residential blocks. It is like the architectural elements are there, not to fulfil their function but to pretend a certain “integration” to the surroundings.

The garden city is still partially there, as the open spaces remain generous and the vegetation plays an important role in the landscape. But one can question the relevance of such choices at a moment when the main concern in any city in the World is density. Should the garden city really be kept as model for the capital, as ordered in Brasilia Revisitada ? Maybe not : in addition to a retrograde societal conjuncture that rejects such democratic spatial configurations, we have already demonstrated the negative impacts of this model, manifestly unsustainable.

There is no doubt the garden city brought an innovative insight for urban living : it was a legitimate, valuable experience at a time when everywhere cities were booming and demanded for spatial improvement in order to remain inhabitable. However, one should use the half century that separates us from this experience to observe its flaws in the long term and learn from them. Considering the present conjuncture, maybe we should acknowledge the need to break with this bucolic concept that shaped Brasília and start to investigate a new model, more responsive to our days' context – what modernism was actually about. Specially, we should not fear the use of a new architectural language (if coherent) next to the “old”.

Just like the neocolonialists' proposals from almost a century ago, the northwest sector is an anachronistic project that reuses preterite architectural elements without their essence, without understanding, as Lucio Costa did, that architecture is the mirror of its time and must express the contemporary values and needs of society.

In this regard, if we look at the modernist experience with heritage in Brazil we can find good examples of how the marriage of old and new architectural grammars mutually emphasises the presence of both. In all scales, punctual or large, urban, it is possible to valorise historical buildings – or cities – with the insertion of a new architecture that dialogs with it – instead of copying it. From Niemeyer's hotel in Ouro Preto to Costa's 97

KAYE, Leon ; Making Brasília a Model Green City ; Guardian Sustainable Business Blog ; October 10th 2011 98 FLOSCULO, Frederico ; Setor Noroeste ; A Bolha se Desfaz ; Brasília 247 ; August 4th 2012 99 Universidade de Brasília (UnB) 100 Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) 101 De SOUZA TENORIO, GERMANO dos SANTOS JUNIOR ; 2010 ; p. 3

city-planning strategies to maintain Rio de Janeiro's historical landscapes, there is much to be inspired from in past experiences. The latter proved how cities could evolve without necessarily having their heritage either irresponsibly consumed by the new or unilaterally ossified by conservatism. This lesson should be more often used by present architects and planners, and especially ICOMOS itself.

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CONCLUSION

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CONCLUSION

By the end of this paper, we understand that the problem of Brasília is not just how to intervene within the historical area or in its vicinity, but above all how to deal with its central condition in a fragmented, segregated metropolitan area. The capital clearly needs a dual strategy, territorial and local, so that it can properly address the conflicts around heritage preservation. Ferreira and Mathieu insist that “conjugating the heritage area with its agglomeration is indispensable in order to define development policies and strategies, both to economically dynamise the latter and to effectively protect the former.”102 It is important to understand that Brasília is not only the area occupied by the Pilotplan, but also the whole seventeen satellite-towns that surround it ; a complex, interdependent, “constellation” of urban agglomerates. Therefore, the preservation of the Pilot-plan starts by also giving importance to its surroundings. If the Plan is so saturated and susceptible to speculation it is because of its own central role as the main provider of jobs and services in the Federal District. Hence, in order to desaturate the central parts of Brasília, the next step – already started by initiatives like the underground lines and the Aguas Claras neighbourhood – should be to reorientate the development towards the peripheral areas, making them a better place to live. Also crucial is the development of a local industry that could expand the job offer at the same time it makes the District less dependent on Federal funds. It is about time to bring the so longed regional progress to the hinterlands of Brazil.

The future of Brasília becomes hereby an elaborate project of metropolitan consolidation conjugated with heritage preservation : something that will certainly require polemical revisions of the city's planning charts, for they are manifestly too strict and inflexible, preventing any change in key elements such as infrastructure and zoning – even in the empty areas around the Pilot-plan.

In this regard, one may ask until what point should Costa's “bucolic scale” keep participating in the definition of Brasília's urban spaces, as the latter become actually suburban in character. The densification of the areas around the residential aisles should be considered more seriously and freed from nostalgic impulses. Instead of repeating the same discourse of half a century ago, as it happened in the southwest sector (Zone A) and now (partly) in the northwest sector (Zone B), these strategic areas should follow a new method of occupation that could better fit the present needs – which urge not only for housing units but for diversity, chronically missing in the Pilot-plan.

Of course, not all empty areas should be occupied, as cities also need green spaces.

But keeping in mind that these urban voids become all the more valorised when they happen punctually, and not constantly. The garden city paradoxically banalised the green open-spaces by abusing of its use, employing it everywhere. Moreover, the juxtaposition of two different urban fabrics – the new, dense one and the sparse Superquadras – would not erase the Pilot-plan's urban trace, as some may fear ; on the contrary, the difference between the urban patterns would distinguish them, and Costa's Plan would remain clearly visible.

Talking about the juxtaposition of urban fabrics, this author thinks of Barcelona, where the historical stratification is evidenced by the buildings themselves, physical remains of the different epochs, from the Romans until now (see fig. 40). But the comparison gets more interesting if we remember that Barcelona, just as Brasília now, had a fragmented urban tissue that needed to be consolidated. It is indeed useful to see how Ildefons Cerdà connected the bits of city that used to be the Catalan capital by extending his new grid over the territory, adapting it in the locations 102

FERREIRA, MATHIEU ; 2011 ; p. 14

tangent to the older neighbourhoods. And, until today, thanks to the architectural honesty of such intervention, anyone can easily distinguish the oldest bits of Barcelona from Cerdà's grid.

Fig. 40 : Barcelona's urban tissue is an interesting example of how architecture reveals the historical stratifications that progressively shape the city. (source : barcelonayellow.com)

In the same way, future interventions within the protected area of Brasília should not result in bad copies of architectural principles belonging to another epoch. The new constructions should instead fully embrace their condition of new objects, following the contemporary urban and architectural ideals ; they should investigate the themes of density and variety, which are the very definition of urban.

If the formal solutions may be very numerous and diverse, one thing is sure : the capital of the fifth world economy needs to assume its role as a metropolis, and consolidate its structure that is still not urban. Given the complexity of the task, it surely asks for a multidisciplinary approach – what has rarely happened, specially in Brazil. During a speech at the DOCOMOMO conference held in Brasília, in 2000, Milton Santos already said “I hope that urbanists will accept the help of other specialists in this task. Sometimes one gets the impression that they want no help.

The Brazilian case seems to me exemplary of this near monopoly of thought and action on the city still held by urbanists.”103 On Heritage The consequences of the heritage label are still debatable. This paper has shown that, as a city, Brasília needs certain freedom to evolve and transform itself, and its inability to do so has generated patent political conflicts. Hence, this author agrees with the need to loosen the ICOMOS restrictions on the capital's planning and zoning, in order to gain more freedom to respond to the urgent needs of infrastructure and housing. Specially, this author is against the non-democratic way to preserve heritage, which, as we have seen in the previous chapter, has been the method employed so far. Also non-democratic has been the Federal District's Government 103

SANTOS, Milton ; A Third World Modern Urbanism ; in DOCOMOMO ; 2000 ; p. 36

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almost secret appointment of an office from Singapore to propose the planning for the capital's next fifty years.

Politics aside, the heritage label had considerable collateral effects in the way Brasília functions. It accentuated the centripetal logic of the agglomerate by elevating even more the status of the Pilot-plan, now not just the central business district but also a national monument. Consequently, the land prices went up again, augmenting the social tensions within the central areas. Such consequences prove the relevance of discussing an alternative way, more flexible, to protect heritage.

Even Lucio Costa, in his late years, finally acknowledged that Brasília reached a point where it has its own metabolism and transformations now are just a natural thing to happen, very hard to contain. In his words : “I think it is difficult to preserve [the Pilot-plan] integrally in the long term. The effort for the conservation of the original idea is natural, but life is always richer than you imagine. Reality is autonomous. Many times we think we can have an influence on it, but then there is a point where we can't do it anymore. It is bigger than us.” 104 To conclude, it seems the complexity of the preservation of the Pilot-plan comes from the fact it has never been, until recently, put in its metropolitan context. Still in 1987 Lucio Costa was arguing that Brasília should not become a metropolis ; but it did.

Now the very preservation of the capital's modern legacy will depend on its ability to dialogue with the exploding peripheral satellite-towns. A new way to see the capital, more global, is needed in order to protect what has been built by the modernist masters - and to legitimate its existence in the future.

Obrigado.

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Bibliography Specific BALDUCCI Alessandro (curator), BRUZZESE Antonella (curator), DORIGATI Remo (curator), SPINELLI Luigi (curator) ; Brasilia, a Utopia Come True / Un'Utopia Realizzata 1960-2010 ; Mondadori Electa ; 2010 Texts of particular interest in this publication : BALDUCCI Alessandro ; Brasilia, the (Un)Planned City ; pp. 18-31 SPINELLI Luigi ; A Capital on Trial ; pp. 146-163 BRUZZESE Antonella ; Brasília's Open Spaces : Public Grandeur and Possibilities of Private Appropriation ; pp. 164-183 BURGI Sergio (curator), TITAN JR Samuel (curator) ; Brasília, Marcel Gautherot ; Instituto Moreira Sales ; 2010 COSTA COUTO Ronaldo ; Brasília Kubitschek de Oliveira ; Record ; 2010 GORELIK Adrián ; translated by ANTONIETA PEREIRA Maria ; Das Vanguardas a Brasília ; Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais ; 2005 LINS RIBEIRO Gustavo ; O Capital da Esperança ; Universidade de Brasília ; 2008 NIEMEYER Oscar ; Minha Experiência em Brasília ; Revan ; 2006 PAVIANI Aldo ; Brasília a Metrópole em Crise ; Universidade de Brasília ; 2010 RODRIGUES Amadeu (curator) ; Brasília ; Carlos Rodrigues ; 1972 General CAVALCANTI Lauro ; Moderno e Brasileiro ; Jorge Zahar Editor ; 2006 DOCOMOMO ; Conference Proceedings : Fifth International DOCOMOMO Conference, Vision and Reality, Social Aspects of Architecture and Urban Planning in the Modern Movement ; DOCOMOMO ; 1998 Texts of particular interest in this publication : de HOLANDA Frederico ; The Morphology of Brasília : an Evaluation ; pp.

266-271 GUILHERME FRANCISCONI Jorge, TAVEIRA de CAMARGO CORDEIRO Sônia Helena ; Evolutions of Forms and Functions in the Plano Piloto – Brasília, DF ; pp. 272-277 DOCOMOMO ; Conference Proceedings : Sixth International DOCOMOMO Conference, the Modern City Facing the Future ; UFBA, UnB, DOCOMOMO Brasil ; 2000 Texts of particular interest in this publication : SANTOS Milton ; A Third World Modern Urbanism ; pp. 33-37 BAUER Rosane ; Living with Brasília : a Residents' perspective of the confrontation between heroic vision and social reality ; pp. 69-75 FELDMAN Sarah ; A Legal System for Urbanism : the Modern Movement's Unseen Face ; pp. 77-82 ZIMBRES Paulo ; Brasília Facing the Future ; pp. 312-318

FERREIRA Jorge (curator) ; de ALMEIDA NEVES DELGADO Lucilia (curator) ; O Brasil Republicano ; Civilização Brasileira ; 2011 Texts of particular interest in this publication :

MARIA LOSADA MOREIRA Vânia ; Os Anos JK : Industrialisação e modelo oligárquico de desenvolvimento rural ; pp. 155-193 CAMBRAIA NAVES Santuza ; Novos Experimentos Culturais nos Anos 1940/50 : Propostas de Democratisação da Arte no Brasil ; pp. 273-299 FERREIRA Jorge ; O Governo Goulart e o Golpe Civil-Militar de 1964 ; pp. 343-403

FRAMPTON Kenneth ; Modern Architecture, A Critical History ; Thames & Hudson ; 2007 HERNANDEZ Felipe ; Patrimonio Arquitectónico y Sociedad en América Latina ; in Criterios de Intervención en el Patrimonio Arquitectónico del Siglo XX ; Ministerio de Cultura ; 2011 NOBRE Ana Luiza (curator) ; Encontros : Lucio Costa ; Azougue ; 2010

PESSÔA José ; CALDEIRA Marta ; The Telephone on the Eighteenth - Century Table : How Brazilian Modern Architects Conceived the Preservation of Historic City Centers ; in Future Anterior ; vol. 6 ; n° 2 ; pp. 32-47 ; 2009 SANTOS Milton ; A Urbanização Brasileira ; Universidade de São Paulo ; 2009 SUDJIC Dedjan ; Architettura e potere ; Laterza ; 2011 ZEVI Bruno ; Storia dell'Architettura Moderna ; Einaudi ; 1996 PDF documents CODEPLAN ; Pesquisa sobre o Tombamento de Brasília ; 2012 source : CODEPLAN, http://www.codeplan.df.gov.br

COSTA Lucio ; Brasília Revisitada ; 1987 source : Guia de Brasília, http://www.guiadebrasilia.com.br

De SOUZA TENORIO, Gabriela, GERMANO dos SANTOS JUNIOR, Reinaldo ; Setor Noroeste, Brasília: can an elite neighborhood be considered green? ; 2010 source : ISOCARP Paper Platform, http://www.isocarp.net

FERREIRA Ignez C. B., MATHIEU Marcia R. de A. ; Preservação do Patrimônio e Formação da Area Metropolitana de Brasília ; 2011 source : Docomomo Brasil, http://www.docomomo.org.br

FREYRE Gilberto ; Brasis, Brasil e Brasília ; 1960 source : Biblioteca Virtual Gilberto Freyre, http://bvgf.fgf.org.br IBGE ; Tendências Demográficas ; 2000 source : Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, http://www.ibge.gov.br

Websites GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS BLOG http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/brasilia-brazil-green-city-built-environment MEU PRIMEIRO NOROESTE http://www.meuprimeironoroeste.com.br MDC REVISTA DE ARQUITETURA E URBANISMO http://mdc.arq.br/2011/02/17/da-insustentabilidade-do-plano-piloto/ THE DENSITY ATLAS http://densityatlas.org/casestudies/profile.php?id=143 UNESCO http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1096 UOL NOTICIAS http://noticias.uol.com.br/ultimas-noticias/especial/2010/brasilia-50-anos/2010/04/15/brasilia-contrastariqueza-e-desigualdade-apos-quase-50-anos-de-existencia.jhtm

Dichiaro di aver redatto questo lavoro interamente di mio pugno, secondo gli articoli 37.1 e .2 del Regolamento degli studi (proibizione del plagio). Dichiaro inoltre di aver citato esaustivamente le fonti cartacee ed elettroniche dei passaggi riportati.

Vitor Pessoa Colombo