Braslia: The Federal Capital of Brazil Author(s): William Holford Reviewed work(s): Source: The Geographical Journal, Vol.

128, No. 1 (Mar., 1962), pp. 15-17 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1794106 . Accessed: 20/06/2012 03:41
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BRASlLIA:

THE SIR

FEDERAL WILLIAM

CAPITAL HOLFORD

OF

BRAZIL

the spring of 1956, in Landscape, a magazine of human geography edited in IN Santa Fe, New Mexico, Senhor J. O. de Meira Penna, of the Brazilian Foreign Office, published an article entitled 'Brazil builds a new capital'. This was written at the turning point of a long series of discussions, lasting well over a century, which were only just about to become eventful. At that time nobody knew what the new city was to look like, nor even whether President Juscelino Kubitschek would be able to persuade his countrymen to turn this ancient dream into reality. Meira Penna seems to have been confident of the outcome. His study was extended to embrace the administrative history of all the more important new capital cities of the world, from Thebes and Constantinople, through St. Petersburg and Washington, to Ankara, Canberra and Brasilia. This was published as a book, in Portuguese, dur? ing 1958 with an introduction by Dr. Israel Pinheiro, President of the National Capital Development Commission that was to build Brasilia. Its title was Quando mudam as capitais (When capitals are moved). This book has now been revised, brought up to date and translated into English and at the moment is seeking a publisher in this country. From it I have derived something of the inner history of this extraordinary and controversial achievement. The pilot plan competition: 1957.?Meanwhile, I was able to collect some evidence at firsthand. During March and April 1957 I was appointed to act as an adviser to Novacap (the Development Commission for the New Capital) and to sit on an international jury of three to assess, with our Brazilian colleagues, the submissions of groups of architects, engineers and others of a pilot plan for the new city. I thus had what might be described as a 'walking-on part' in the second act of this opera; and those who have walked into any kind of South American revolution, however bloodless, will know how suddenly and how dramatically one gets caught up in the action. It was so with us. Our French colleague, Andre Sive, died just over a year ago. The quiet American with a Greek name, Stamo Papadaki, and I, have survived. Speaking for myself I found this Brazilian experience one of the most stimulating of my whole life; and it remains a major interest. To anyone who is a student of the growth of towns and of man's capacity to order his own environment, Brasilia must appeal, even if in some respects the actuality disappoints: it is a phenomenon of our times. It is an act of will as formidable as that which founded the new capital of Constantinople in a.d. 330; and the vision of Brasilia goes back nearly 170 years. The plotters of what is known as the Inconfidencia of 1789, plotted to remove the then capital of Brazil from the coast to the central provinces, but in 1808 the arrival of the Portuguese court, in flightfrom Napoleon, created Rio de Janeiro as the capital of the 'United Kingdom of Portugal and Brazil\ Independence was proclaimed in 1822, under the Emperor Peter I, and it was then that Jose Bonifacio de Andrada (the Patriarch) wrote a 'Memoir on the Necessity and Means of Building a New Capital in the Interior of Brazil'. This was the firstadministrative plan for Brasilia. The historian Varnhagen, Viscount of Porto Seguro, followed in 1834 w*tn a srte f?r the city 'on the high plateau where the three great river basins begin?Amazon, Sao Francisco and Plata1'. The firstRepublican constitution, of 1889, granted a reservation of 14,400 square kilometres for the future Federal District; a commission under 1 More accuratelythe Parana, which flowsinto the Rio de la Plata.

16

brasIlia:

the federal

capital

of brazil

Luis Cruls, after travelling for two months in 1892 marked the boundaries of the federal quadrilateral, and reported on 'the majestic and severe peacefulness of the landscape'. The site surveyed.?In 1946, after the World War in which Brazil became our only South American ally, the new Constitution stated that 'the capital of the Union shall be moved to the central highlands . . . and the present Federal District (i.e. Rio de Janeiro) shall constitute the state of Guanabara'. Soon after that date definitive surveys started, and in 1955 a Commission under Marshal Pessoa eventually defined the area of 5850 square kilometers (within the Cruls Quadrilateral) in which Brasilia was to be built. The analysis of the five most favoured sites which led to the selection of the 'Brown' site for the city itself, was carried out by a team led by Donald Belcher of Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. I had the advantage of reading this and a number of other geographie and engineering reports when I visited Rio in 1957. The unanimous decision to move would, I think, have remained unanimous and entirely ineffective without the election of President Kubitschek in 1956. After he had signed his famous message from Anapolis in the State of Goias, creating the 'Companhia Urbanizadora de Nova Capital' (now known as Novacap) under the direction of Dr. Israel Pinheiro, the decision became more and more effective and less and less unanimous. Nevertheless, his promise to build the new city and transfer the capital from Rio on 21 April 1960?actually in the fourth year of his five-year term of office?was faithfully carried out (Plate 3). The cost of this development cannot by then have been less than the equivalent of ?120 million, and is more likely to have been near ?300 million. On the other hand, over 100,000 people now live where four years ago was completely deserted scrubland. Enormous real values have been created; and, if inflation does not cause the brakes to be applied too quickly during subsequent regimes, the momentum already gained might carry this adventure not only to a successful but to a profitable conclusion?profitable, that is to say, not to the developers of real estate, but to the nation now known as the United States of Brazil. modern cities have been built faithfully to a The architecture of Brasilia.?Few unified and inspired plan. Adelaide has fulfilled the simple precepts of symbolic, Colonel Light; Canberra has followed the geometrical outlines laid down by Walter Burley Griffin in the competition of 1911; Chandigarh owes much to the inspiration of Albert Mayer and the late Matthew Novicki, then to Maxwell Fry and Jeanneret, and now to the architectural dominance of Le Corbusier. Brasilia sprang fully armed from the brain of Lucio Costa who won the Pilot Plan Competition in 1957. This plan was executed in its main essentials in the following three years and was complete enough for the Inauguration on 21 April 1960 (Plate 1). It is thus the fastest and most astonishing translation of a great city from drawing board to actuality that has ever taken place. The architectural development of Costa's plan has again been the product of one highly imaginative designer, Oscar Niemeyer. Niemeyer was architect to Juscelino Kubitschek when he was Prefect of Belo Horizonte and subsequently Governor of the State of Minas Gerais; and when he became President he entrusted to Niemeyer the creation of the two firstbuildings in the completely deserted Federal District. The firstwas his own presidential residence, the Alvorada Palace (Plate 3), at the point of land soon to be surrounded on two sides by an enormous artificial lake; and the second was the officialhotel, or government hospitality centre: what the Greeks call a 'xenodocheion' or 'stranger-box'?a block on stilts of 300 double-bedrooms,

idea

idea

j. Brasilia, ig6o: foreground, the Alvorada ground, Government buildings

Palace;

right, Hotel;

back?

4. Supreme Court, seen across the Place of the Three Powers from windows of Presidents Office. Left, bronze figures symbolizing The Workers; right, the City's Monument

5. Cathedral under construction; floor and entrances below main pedestrian platform level, which also covers car park

6. Main road through the residential wings of city, showing underpasses and clover-leaf intersections

BRASfLIA:THE FEDERALCAPITALOF BRAZIL

17

with restaurant lounges and car-parking below. These two isolated buildings were begun before the Pilot Plan Competition was held and were comprised within it. But immediately the Costa conception had been accepted, Niemeyer translated his general ideas into three dimensions, and produced designs for the Parliament Buildings (Plate 2), the Supreme Court (Plate 4) and the President's Executive Office on the triangular Place of the Three Powers, for the Ministries on either side of the great Government Avenue, for a Banking Centre, a circular Cathedral (Plate 5), and a group of civic buildings including two theatres and a central hospital. In addition to this he organized an office to design housing types, from the big blocks of flats built by the Co-operative Societies to the small peasant houses in one of which he lived himself. In the middle of the residential neighbourhood (or 'superblocks' as they are called) he also designed small and characteristic chapels, market buildings, shops and primary schools. In spite of the constant pressure brought to bear on this work of architectural design by administrators, engineers and tenants, all anxious to proceed with their own responsibilities, there is not one of this enormous range of buildings which does not conform to the unitary spirit of the plan, and which does not at the same time make an original contribution to the fabric of a contemporary city. Some social problems.?On the other hand, where everything is new, the social, historical and atmospheric background which provides the great charm of longestablished towns is noticeably absent. It could not have been otherwise. The housing areas have not grown up slowly enough to look as if they were rooted to the ground. There has been no time to mould the contours, and the playgrounds, to respond to traditional human use and custom; to create established gardens, and to grow mature trees. Most of the constructions look as if they were poised for flight; indeed in a practical sense ease of communication by road and air, by car and bus and helicopter, is the keynote of the whole town plan. Main roads have no level crossings (Plate 6); pedestrians are well segregated from vehicles in the town centre; and in certain sectors the heavy trafficof trucks and lorries is relegated to a lower level, in cutting or tunnel. The main problems are likely to be social ones, and to range from the regional scale, at which supporting and satellite settlements?some of them industrial?will clearly be needed to offset the concentration of administrative and white-collar workers in the severely planned capital city itself, down to the local scale of low-rent housing which will have to protect itself somehow against overcrowding and a rapid decline into slumdom. One day the town will be a green town; at present it is red with the dust of the construction camps and of roads in the making. Already the lake has been flooded to its calculated level, and now trees are at last being planted. Water, sewerage and all the engineering services are already remarkably efficient,and trafficcongestion is being anticipated rather than faced after the event. Embassies and cultural buildings of an international character are being slowly and reluctantly planned, with many a regretful backward glance to Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. But, to the Brazilian mind, the point of no return has long been reached. A new centre of international communication, of national culture and of local consumption and employment has been established. It is attached to the great spinal column of Brazil?the road from Belem in the north to Porto Alegre in the south?and it is already a magnet to the unrecorded thousands living or roaming within 200 miles of it. So, for good or ill, Brasilia has come into the world as a prodigy, and also with a built-in capacity for leadership in a continent which already contains a remarkable run of contemporary cities.