
All these steps were rec-orded from beautiful geometric angles by photographers Peter Scheier, Marcel Gautherot, Jean Man-zon, Mario Fontenelle and Jesco Puttkamer.Īs a complete work of art, Brasília displays all the characteristics of an open-air museum. Steel rebars and scaffolds mutated into unique new forms as they were gradually covered by concrete. The construction of the new Brazilian capital had to keep to a tight schedule. The ‘Pilot Plan’ model was specially designed for this exhibition using high resolution satellite images, measuring 6 x 4.8 metres, at a scale of 1:3,500.
#Lucio utopia tv#
With a total area of 21 x 17 km, Brasília is bordered on the south by JK International Airport on the north, by the recently built Digital TV Tower on the east, by the Paranoá Lake Dam and on the west by the Interstate Bus Terminal. One of these documents is the ‘Pilot Plan’ submitted by Lucio Costa. The effort of building Brasília, shared by civil servants, architects, artists and candangos, is clearly described in the historical documents displayed in Brasília – From Utopia to Capital. This is particularly true in the pillars of Alvorada Palace, inspired by the hammocks that adorned farmhouse verandas in the colonial period, and the arches that support Itamaraty Palace, which will be displayed in this exhibition as models. At the same time, we will be able to ad-mire the exceptional craftsmanship of those early candangos. Looking at this work, we may be in awe of the beauty of Lucio Costa’s urban design, the ‘Pilot Plan’, and the harmony and perfection of Oscar Niemeyer’s curved lines. Resonating with London’s brutalist architecture, fair-faced concrete does not admit mistakes or corrections.
#Lucio utopia how to#
In Brasília, they learned hands-on how to use and manipulate fair-faced concrete, a material that is very typical of Brazilian modernist architecture. The people who actually built Brasília – most of them unskilled workers from all different trades – became known as ‘candangos’.
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During the construction, which lasted three years and ten months, over thirty-thousand workers lived in Brasília’s precarious lodgings, such as the ones found in the Free City. The Central Plateau, land of the Brazilian cerrado, with its infinite horizons and red dust, became a construction site of epic pro-portions. Thus, they left the comfort of their homes and the company of their families and flocked towards the heart of the country. Ordinary people, mostly from the northeast, were moved by a desire to participate in the dream of building a new city, a new seat of government. The Brazilian Government’s decision to move the capital from the Atlantic coast to the centre west of the country in the early 1960s aroused a sense of developmental euphoria in the Brazilian population.
#Lucio utopia archive#
These artworks come from public and private Brazilian collections, such as the Moreira Salles Institute, the Public Archive of the Federal District, and Domício and Izolete Pereira’s Brasília Collection. This exhibition, curated by Danielle Athayde, displays a collection of approximately three-hundred works of art and documents, including models of iconic buildings designed by Oscar Niemeyer drawings and a photographic model of Lucio Costa’s urban plan sculptures by Maria Martins, Bruno Giorgi and Alfredo Ceschiatti and photographs by Marcel Gautherot and Mario Fontenelle. In ef-fect, abandoning the coastal settlement model traditionally adopted by architects and city-planners in the past.

Conceived as a complete work of art, the New Capital represented a step towards the establishment of the presence of the State throughout the country. Visitors will learn about the ideas, characters and the history behind the creation of Brasília in 1960 the city’s transformation into a synthesis of Brazilian modernist thought.
