Brasília is a city built from scratch in 1956, in a clearing in the Amazon Rainforest, built specifically to be the country’s capital. The layout of the city, designed by Lúcio Costa in his pilot plan, emerges from its two axes: The Eixo Rodoviário (Highway Axis) and the Eixo Monumental (Monumental Axis). These axes form the shape of an airplane, although it has also been likened to a bird or a cross. The Highway Axis runs roughly North-South and acts as an arterial road, while the Monumental Axis runs roughly East-West and culminates in the West with many important governmental buildings such as the Supreme Court, National Congress, and Presidential Palace, among other things. Understandably, the Monumental Axis has super-scale buildings, large open spaces, and grand views, producing a mood of monumentality.
In addition to these two axes, the city is divided up into numerous sectors and superblocks.
The dependence of the local economy on the state derives, of course, from the fact that Brasília is an administrative capital. In Brazil, however, cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Recife, and Salvador are also administrative capitals of their respective regions and yet have far more diversified economies. The nearly total dependence of Brasília’s economy on the government derives from a principle of planning which these other cities do not share: Brasília was conceived in the modernist paradigm of settlements in which cities are solely administrative in function[8]
Not only is the modernist upbringing of Brasília reflected in its creators desire for a purely functional administrative capital, but the fact that Brasília has dedicated sectors at all shows the thought process of the designers; form follows function. A hotel owner in any other large city would want to put their hotel in the center of a shopping district, or near a historical area or landmark to be as competitive as possible, but in Brasília, all hotels fit neatly into the aptly named Hotel Sector, because that is what, at least to the designers, is the simplest and most functional solution. Looking at the bigger picture, the layout, too, is as minimalist as can be, only two main axes, with all roads never straying far from them. And while the original pilot plan has been expanded somewhat, the figure of the airplane is still distinct and visible from above.
Fig. 4 & 5: Satellite and street plan view of Brasília, taken from Google Maps[9]
Works Cited:
[1] Knox, P. (2014). Atlas of cities. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
[2] The Plano Piloto is the original plan for Brasília, and is the center of the city. Unlike other Brazilian cities being municipalities, Brasília is a federal district composed of 31 “Administrative Regions”, the first of which is the Plano Piloto, with others being added on over time as the city grew. (GOVERNO DO DISTRITO FEDERAL. (n.d.). Retrieved August 2, 2018, from http://www.brasilia.df.gov.br/administracoes-regionais)
[3][7][8] Holston, J. (2000). The modernist city: An anthropological critique of Brasília. Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press.
[4][5][6] Oliveira, Marcio. (1997). The relocation of squatter settlements in Brasília.
[9] (n.d.). Retrieved August 2, 2018, from https://www.google.com/maps/place/Brasilia
UNESCO World Heritage Centre. (n.d.). Brasilia. Retrieved August 2, 2018, from https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/445
Brasilia 