Brasilia: Modernist disaster or deceptively brilliant?

this video is sponsored by curiosity stream and nebula nebula is the home for my new original series great cities my most recent video in that series which launches with this one is all about the design of another planned Capital City canra Australia that video is longer and higher budget than this one it's awesome if I do say so it also joins the other video in the series on paris's boulevards new videos in the great City series drop every month sign up to nebula so you don't miss any no planned Capital City captures the spirit of

postwar modernism quite like Brazilia Lucio Costa's plan for Brazil's new capital city is a prime example of planned rationality of using a plan to create order the plan called the Plano pilota or Pilot plan is quite simple and yes it definitely resembles an airplane the primary axes are set along a skeleton made of Highways this is a city designed first for the car then people the wings are primarily for residential blocks and residents can use that Central highway to get to the other districts of the city the area where the wings meet the fuselage is

the True Heart of the City the social space filled with theaters restaurants Cinemas and the central bus station most of the fuselage contains the Monumental sector which actually contains more than just monuments it does house the major buildings of the Brazilian government but also stores Banks and small Industries finally there are areas dedicated for open space and Recreation amenities and include amusement parks a zoo and a sports complex now there is even more complexity when you focus in on these areas in the residential sector you'll find that within the original planned city west of the

W3 Avenue is primarily single family row houses two rows of houses face a green space with pedestrian access on the other side of the wings along L2 you get affordable three-story apartment blocks but there is one part of the sector that's perhaps just as novel as the Plano pilota itself is this area in the center of the Wings made up of the super Quadra or super blocks each super block is 300 m x 300 M the residential buildings are six stories tall and raised on pillars the idea is that someone should be able to walk

from one side of a super quadrant to the other unimpeded it also accentuates the importance of the ground plane in landscaping today with 60 years for the trees to mature super quadras are quite verdant each one is also surrounded by a green space effectively acting as little green belts this despite their location in the residential sector super quadras are mixed use and meant to be miniature cities in their own right in Costa's plan each super Quadra would have an elementary school super blocks also have shops and the shops for one super block face the shops

of another Super block creating a local shopping street it's not the prettiest little Main Street but it's functional there's also a larger Park per group of four super blocks additionally the Plan called for one District Hospital per group of eight super blocks the whole system is very repeatable logical and modern perhaps the only analog to the super Quadra is the super block system found in Soviet cities you can learn more about those super blocks in my video on the topic I'll put a link below and in the corner of this video while the wings are

surprisingly interesting when you look more closely at the urban structure this is definitely less true when you look at the fuselage maybe there's some hidden depth to lining up government buildings like dominoes but I can't see it the entire space within the original plan of Brazilia is exactly the opposite of traditional City the kinds of cities modernists are critiquing and outright rejecting back in the 1950s when Brazilia was designed in traditional cities the buildings form the fabric of the city and it almost appears like the streets have been cut out of that fabric Brazilia flips

that equation and Open Spaces the default and the buildings are added to that space in architecture the terms are figure and ground traditional cities are more figure than ground and Brazilia is more ground than figure you could say Brazilia was a Pioneer because low density suburbs found in the postwar years more closely resembles Brazilia than Central London when buildings stand alone in the landscape it does give Architects an opportunity to do something interesting with their designs those buildings don't have to blend in with all the other nearby buildings now Brazilia does have its share of

uniformity cost to design Brazilia for the mixing of social classes and the uniformity of building design was part of his egalitarian Vision but he did give his collaborator Oscar neem a chance to flex his considerable architectural skills he got to design buildings in the most important places on the Plano palota each of them is bold using simple forms to achieve something rarely seen in architecture neem centuro National Theater occupies a space right where the wings and Fus Lodge meet along the major highway the cultural complex of the Republic home to the National Library and National

Museum as well as the iconic Cathedral of Brazilia are also located at the intersection of the fuselage and wings moving past the repetitive Ministry buildings you get more NE Meier icons they are everywhere the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building the Palace of Justice presidential offices Supreme Court building and of course the National Congress building the last three buildings are tied together by the ne designed three powers Plaza NE designed over two dozen significant buildings in the capital and took full advantage of having a lot of ground to put his figures on this Monumental architecture and

Urban Design is not usually compatible with a human scale City most of us would rather be strolling here than say here but if there's any time and place for an designer to create spaces for Monumental architecture it's in a newly designed Capital City capitals serve multiple functions of course they must house the bureaucrats that make the day-to-day operation of government work capitals also must be places for people to gather and express their political views assuming the country allows such speech and a capital must be a symbol of the nation itself and the Urban Design and

architecture are common ways to do this what then was Brazil trying to communicate to the world with the construction of Brazilia why relocate the capital from Rio de Janeiro a massive City well-known the world over president kubichek believed that building a modernist Capital City from scratch would have a positive effect on the creation of a more modern Brazilian Society Brazil at this time was obsessed with projecting a modern Progressive vision of its Nation to the world nowhere in the world adopted modern architecture so wholeheartedly than Brazil in the 1940s and 1950s Brazilia embodied this Progressive

futuristic ideal now Brazilia might have felt futuristic 60 years ago but today it can feel a bit dated back then designing a city around the car felt like the future but today people's tastes have changed many people would rather live or visit a city like this Brazilia became a UNESCO world heritage site in 1987 due to its modern planning and architecture but this now means it's very difficult to reconfigure the city to meet those modern tastes For Better or Worse the highway will always be at the heart of Brazilia there's one important postcript to the

Costa plan for Brazilia most residents of the city don't actually live in the planned area the airplane was only designed to hold 500,000 passengers or so but today the Brazilia metro area has over 4 million residents Brazilia suburbs are not the density of Rio or sa Paulo but they are certainly more normal looking than the super quadras of the Plano paloto for all of the thought Costa and nemi are put into their plan many if not most Brazilia residents don't even interact with that area on a daily basis the wings of the plane are home

to mostly wealthy residents while everyone else lives in the suburbs Costa criticized administrative incompetence as the main reason why the planning area did not end up having a mixture of different social classes living in all neighborhoods Costa's initial plan of expanding Brazilia for increased population capacity was to incrementally add more mixed income super blocks and other planned housing depending on need but as we can see that didn't happen it will always be a difficult task for an urban designer to design a national capital from scratch a bold Vision can often be eroded by the realities

of politics demographics and budget constraints Brazilia is a great example of this and so is canura the planned capital city of Australia it too featured an iconic design filled with new ideas for a new era and just like Brazilia reality didn't quite match up with the plan if you want to watch an entire video on canra one longer and fancier than this one go check it out over on nebula it's the second installment of my new series great Cities paris's Boulevard was the subject of my last video in shanghai's Metro system is coming next month

new episodes of my series drop every month so go sign up now so you don't miss any great cities joins my other content you can't find anywhere else like my video on planning Ancient Rome or the 13 short bonus videos or the 20 videos with extended endings on top of all that other great educational creators also Post hours of additional content on nebula creators like real life lore and went over Productions all of this content is ad free too signing up for nebula is a great deal and it's made even better thanks to to our

partnership with curiosity stream curiosity stream is the source for highquality engaging documentaries if you like learning about Brazilian cities curiosity stream has one called Rio the great Saga about the history of Brazil's most famous city and former capital it's a great followup to this video we have a deal where if you sign up to curiosity stream using the link below you'll get nebula for free that's not a free trial but free as long as you're a curiosity stream member and they're running a special deal where you can get an entire year for 26% off that's

less than $15 a year for nebula and curiosity stream signing up is a great way of supporting this channel as well as the dozens of other creators working to make nebula a success overall it's just a really good deal too so go click on the link on screen and get 26% off