The Planned Capital Built from Scratch — Oscar Niemeyer and Lúcio Costa's 1960 modernist masterpiece rose from the cerrado savanna as a UNESCO World Heritage city before it was even 30 years old, a bold experiment in urban planning where the government district looks like a spaceship and every building is a sculpture
Brasília is the federal capital of Brazil — a city of 3.1 million in the Federal District on the central plateau at 1,100 metres elevation, built entirely from scratch between 1956 and 1960 by President Juscelino Kubitschek to move Brazil's capital from the coast to the interior. The city was designed by urban planner Lúcio Costa (master plan) and architect Oscar Niemeyer (all the major public buildings) and landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx (public gardens), in collaboration — one of the most ambitious urban planning projects of the 20th century, delivered in 41 months. Brasília became…
The idea of moving Brazil's capital to the interior was written into the 1891 constitution, but remained unrealised for 65 years. President Kubitschek, elected in 1956, made it the centrepiece of his 'fifty years of progress in five' development programme. The site was chosen in the cerrado (Brazilian savanna) of Goiás state, largely uninhabited except for indigenous peoples and rural workers. The construction workforce (candangos) lived in temporary camps that became the satellite cities ringing the Pilot Plan. Brasília was inaugurated on April 21, 1960, exactly 41 months after construction…