{"id":432854,"date":"2022-04-26T13:31:28","date_gmt":"2022-04-26T16:31:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=432854"},"modified":"2022-04-26T13:31:28","modified_gmt":"2022-04-26T16:31:28","slug":"more-than-just-a-city-of-monuments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/more-than-just-a-city-of-monuments\/","title":{"rendered":"More than just a city of monuments"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bras\u00edlia can be described in many ways: a monument to architectural modernism, the fulfillment of a political ambition, a city hostile to pedestrians. Whatever its description, three names stand out as key figures in the city\u2019s construction: architects Oscar Niemeyer (1907\u20132012) and L\u00facio Costa (1902\u20131998), and president Juscelino Kubitschek (1902\u20131976). Kubitschek applied the full weight of his political capital toward the city\u2019s construction, taking it from concept to completion in a single term. Costa won a design competition for Bras\u00edlia\u2019s main urban core, known as the Plano Piloto<\/em> (\u201cPilot Plan\u201d). Niemeyer, in turn, designed many of the iconic buildings in the city\u2019s administrative core. Now, new insights and conflicting narratives are beginning to emerge in the story behind the rapid construction of Brazil\u2019s capital, in a wilderness of midwestern Cerrado (wooded savanna); documents recently discovered in different archives are shedding new light on how Bras\u00edlia was built in record time atop Brazil\u2019s Central Plateau, between 1957 and 1960. More than half a century since its completion, many scholars are now revisiting and reinterpreting the history of the modernist metropolis, says Maria Fernanda Derntl, a professor of architecture at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Bras\u00edlia (FAU-UnB).<\/p>\n

A wealth of materials has been newly discovered. These include blueprints of large areas in the Federal District (DF), stored in the National Archives in Rio de Janeiro, and tentative sketches by Niemeyer of the \u201cThree Branches Plaza\u201d (Pra\u00e7a dos Tr\u00eas Poderes) on the inside cover of his personal copy of Leo Tolstoy\u2019s (1828\u20131910) War and Peace<\/em>. Two architects\u2014Rafael Urano Frajndlich, a professor at the School of Civil Engineering, Architecture, and Urban Design of the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), and Alexandre Benoit, a professor at Escola da Cidade, an architecture school in S\u00e3o Paulo\u2014found the book amongst other materials at the Oscar Niemeyer Foundation library in Rio.<\/p>\n

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Public Archives of the Federal District<\/span><\/a> Construction workers perched on the dome of the Federal SenatePublic Archives of the Federal District<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Rural units<\/strong>
\nThe territorial blueprints Derntl found show that the city plans were more than just about monuments and the city\u2019s now-famous urban core, the Plano Piloto<\/em>. \u201cA wide assortment of large blueprints has recently been found in the National Archives, depicting food-supply systems, industrial areas, and satellite towns,\u201d says Derntl. \u201cTypically, research about Bras\u00edlia is based on documents found in the city\u2019s own archives, which are an excellent source and have been extensively digitized. But under a partnership agreement between Companhia Urbanizadora da Nova Capital [NOVACAP, the state-owned development corporation responsible for the city\u2019s construction] and the Food Supply Board, a Federal agency, all documents related to food supply were placed in storage in Rio.\u201d<\/p>\n

Derntl is leading a research group, called Capital e Periferia<\/em>, at FAU-UnB that is extending the scope of research beyond the city\u2019s core, the primary interest of most historians and city planners. \u201cOne of the chief criticisms that has been leveled at Bras\u00edlia since early in its construction has been an alleged lack of regional planning: apart from L\u00facio Costa\u2019s blueprint for the center area, the rest of the region seemed to have been neglected. The satellite towns that grew around the city are thought to have been haphazard offshoots from the Plano Piloto<\/em>. But that\u2019s not the whole story,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s true that there was a lack of systematic and methodical planning, under the consistent oversight of dedicated city planners. But we\u2019ve found a large number of blueprints that, combined, clearly reveal attention being paid to the broader region.\u201d<\/p>\n

Besides the satellite towns, a significant amount of planning effort appears to have gone into agricultural production and food supply for the new capital. Inspired by the modernist urban planning ideas that permeated the first half of the twentieth century, food supply for the new city was planned to be sourced from its immediate surroundings.\u00a0 It was hoped that a third of the migrant construction workers, called candangos<\/em>, would later settle permanently in agricultural zones within the then-sparsely populated Federal District.<\/p>\n

\u201cReconnaissance teams sent to the Central Plateau area had been planning future land uses since the 1940s. Under its bylaws, NOVACAP had a mandate over a territory that extended beyond the immediate Plano Piloto area. And food supply was a central concern,\u201d says Derntl. \u201cThe idea was that people settling in rural areas would help to prevent urban sprawl. These ideas were expressed in a number of blueprints for rural communities, with a fairly high level of detail. The communities surrounding Bras\u00edlia were planned as rural subdivision developments.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Mario Fontenelle, Public Archives of the Federal District <\/span><\/a> Construction workers photographed in Bras\u00edliaMario Fontenelle, Public Archives of the Federal District <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

There was an added dimension to the plans for both the urban core and surrounding areas of Bras\u00edlia: city planners hoped that they would be a first step toward the future of urban and territorial planning in Brazil. \u201cThey were intended to serve as a modern blueprint for broader Brazil, helping it to break away from the past and the problems plaguing large cities,\u201d says Derntl. \u201cIt was a new model for a new civilization, and this is visible in the city plans. Communities were designed with supporting rural infrastructure, food processing facilities, administrative facilities, schools, libraries, and churches.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rapid construction of a city with grand architectural ambitions, in a project that involved thousands of workers and attracted international public interest, would be associated with and seen as a personal achievement of Juscelino Kubitschek, who became Brazil\u2019s president in 1955 and was able to complete the works before the end of his term in 1960. In 1975 he wrote the book Por que constru\u00ed Bras\u00edlia<\/em> (Why I built Bras\u00edlia; Bloch Editores). Derntl highlights the almost prophetic tone of his book, in which Kubitschek presents himself as the orchestrator\u2014and Niemeyer and Costa as \u201cinterpreters\u201d\u2014of a national ambition going back to colonial Brazil.<\/p>\n

\u201cTraditional relationships between statesmen and their architects were typically via personal correspondence, such as letters. But we find very little of this form of communication when it comes to Bras\u00edlia,\u201d says Frajndlich. \u201cSo we\u2019ve had to change our methodological approach and use a wider variety of sources. For example, we\u2019ve extensively researched dispatches and other official communications between Niemeyer, Kubitschek, and NOVACAP.\u201d Exploring sources such as these dispatches, newspaper articles, and even forgotten sketches by Niemeyer, says Frajndlich, \u201chas shed new light on the historical relationship between architecture and the State.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of our findings is that the image of Kubitschek as a person with quasi-autocratic authority over the construction of Bras\u00edlia is inaccurate. \u201cCarrying out the president\u2019s plans required a great deal of political deftness. It proved particularly difficult, for example, to pass the proposed project through Congress in 1956. The Federal Government also had to create a dedicated development corporation for construction, NOVACAP. During his presidential campaign, Kubitschek prevaricated about his ambition to pursue the project, but when he finally made the decision to take it forward, he soon realized he had his work cut out for him and would need to recruit the support of different political actors.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Revista Bras\u00edlia Ano I N\u00ba 4\u2009\/\u2009Public Archives of the Federal District<\/span><\/a> On the right, Juscelino Kubitschek (left<\/em>) is shown with L\u00facio Costa on a site visit during the construction of Brazil\u2019s new capital, in 1957Revista Bras\u00edlia Ano I N\u00ba 4\u2009\/\u2009Public Archives of the Federal District<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Before unveiling the city plans developed by L\u00facio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, the previous plans that had been developed under the oversight of Marshal Jos\u00e9 Pessoa Cavalcanti de Albuquerque (1885\u20131959) had to be abandoned. Since 1956, Albuquerque had overseen the Federal Capital Construction and Transition Planning Commission, the successor to the New Capital Siting Commission, which he had presided over since 1954. Early proposals to relocate Brazil\u2019s seat of government to the Central Plateau date back to the First Republic: between 1892 and 1896, two expeditions led by the Belgian engineer Louis Cruls (1848\u20131908) had explored the region. The 1946 Constitution formally outlined plans to transfer the capital, establishing a period of 60 days to initiate preliminary studies. President Eurico Gaspar Dutra (1883\u20131974) instituted the siting commission that same year, under the leadership of General Djalma Polli Coelho (1892\u20131954), head of the Army’s Geographical Service. Albuquerque\u2019s team selected the site where the city would be built based on a technical report known as the Belcher Report, published in 1956 based on a two-year survey that had been commissioned by Albuquerque\u2019s predecessor, General Aguinaldo Caiado de Castro (1899\u20131963). Albuquerque had also developed a blueprint of his own, and even proposed a name for the city: \u201cVera Cruz.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a prestigious figure who had organized the preparations to build the new capital, set up the commission office, and decided who he wanted to onboard on the project team, starting with French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier [1887\u20131965]. The material we found in the archives provides a better understanding of how Albuquerque\u2019s plans were gradually dismantled by modernist groups linked to Kubitschek,\u201d says Frajndlich, noting that the mid-twentieth century was a period in which architects enjoyed a fair degree of political influence in Brazil. \u201cArchitectural projects were often prominently featured in newspaper articles, for example. And this helped to shape the capital as we know it today.\u201d<\/p>\n

The documents the researchers have found also show that, even before construction of the new capital began, projects such as Hotel Tijuco, in Diamantina (Kubitschek\u2019s hometown), and the Pampulha complex in Belo Horizonte, both in Minas Gerais, had involved close collaboration between Kubitschek\u2019s political group and Brazil\u2019s most prominent modernist architects, among them Niemeyer and Costa, but also Affonso Reidy (1909\u20131964) and Roberto Burle Marx (1909\u20131994). \u201cWe found that Juscelino\u2019s political circles interfaced with the intellectual, artistic, and architectural circles of the time. They communicated with each other indirectly,\u201d says Frajndlich.<\/p>\n

In Diamantina, he continues, \u201cwe found from our research that IPHAN [the National Institute for Historical and Artistic Heritage] was tasked with accomplishing the desire expressed by Kubitschek, then governor of Minas Gerais, to at once modernize and conserve the city\u2019s architecture.\u201d The small buildings that Niemeyer designed in the city\u2019s historical portion express this intermingling of modernization with conservation.<\/p>\n

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Public Archives of the Federal District<\/span><\/a> Three years later, the first housing units have been built in Candangol\u00e2ndiaPublic Archives of the Federal District<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

At once modern and traditional<\/strong>
\nBut the need to reconcile preservation with modernization was not a concern when it came to Bras\u00edlia, a city built from scratch. Brazil\u2019s oldest cities are typically built around a central square with a church. In Bras\u00edlia this tradition was broken: the Three Branches Plaza at the heart of the city is flanked by the Congress building, the Federal Supreme Court, and the presidential palace. The specifications for the design contest won by L\u00facio Costa did not include a church on the square.<\/p>\n

However, even if only briefly, a church was included in Niemeyer\u2019s tentative sketches for this space, such as the one found in his copy of War and Peace<\/em>. In the middle of the Three Branches Plaza he placed a small seashell-shaped church, which in sketches drawn in 1957 is no longer there. \u201cWe\u2019ll never know for certain whether Niemeyer ever actually planned to build a church there,\u201d says Frajndlich. \u201cL\u00facio Costa was adamant that the church be placed outside the Three Branches Plaza, symbolizing the separation of church and state. Indeed, the cathedral was ultimately located along the Monumental Axis. The unsuccessful design contest entries also had no church on the plaza. But Niemeyer decided to go ahead and add a chapel. We suspect it may also have been included in more detailed drawings, although we still haven\u2019t found any.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frajndlich believes the church may have been added to the plaza as part of the practice, often seen in modernism, \u201cof including something small but representative of a fresh foundation,\u201d he explains. \u201cA plaza with a parish church at the center of Bras\u00edlia could symbolize a renewed foundation of Brazil, just as the Pampulha Church represented, in a way, a refoundation of Belo Horizonte,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Bras\u00edlia has always existed as an icon of modernity or modernization<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From praise to criticism<\/strong>
\nBras\u00edlia has always existed as an icon of modernity or modernization, first in a positive and later in a less flattering light. In the 1950s and 1960s, the city attracted nothing but praise, says Derntl. The Plano Piloto<\/em> was seen as the pinnacle of modernity, and its creators as unrivaled geniuses. But in the early years of the military dictatorship (1964\u20131985), as noted by French historian Laurent Vidal, the capital became a taboo subject in the social sciences, associated as it had become with the military regime.<\/p>\n

Derntl notes that both perspectives have their merits. By the 1960s, some of the modernist paradigms embodied in Bras\u00edlia\u2019s architecture were already showing signs of exhaustion, making Brazil\u2019s capital a \u201cswan song\u201d of the modernist period. As regards Costa\u2019s and Niemeyer\u2019s claim to genius, Derntl highlights that their creations\u2014although highly inventive to be sure\u2014shared aspects in common not only with the design proposals that were unsuccessful in the 1956\u201357 design contest, but also with some of the ideas developed for Vera Cruz by the commissions headed by Albuquerque.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Oscar Niemeyer\u2009\/\u2009Autvis, 2022<\/span><\/a> Sketches of the Three Branches Plaza drawn by Niemeyer on the inside cover of his copy of Tolstoy\u2019s War and Peace<\/em>\u00a9 Oscar Niemeyer\u2009\/\u2009Autvis, 2022<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

In the 1970s, studies critiquing the city shed light on a number of contradictions in its construction. In the 1980s, in his book The Modernist City: An anthropological critique of Bras\u00edlia<\/em> (Cia. das Letras, 1993), John Holston describes Bras\u00edlia as arid and hostile to both pedestrians and humans. The new city on the Central Plateau became a symbol of the excesses and mistakes of a modernism that attempted to make a blank slate of centuries of progress.<\/p>\n

According to Derntl, this recent reinterpretation of Bras\u00edlia builds on studies in the last decades that have broadened the scope of research to \u201cincorporate the living experience in the city.\u201d A series of papers compiled into a dossier about Bras\u00edlia, published in the journal Urbana<\/em> in 2018, examine life in the city through the lens of art forms such as graffiti, photography, and filmmaking. These papers throw light on realities beyond the monuments that earned Bras\u00edlia recognition as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. \u201cToday, we are able to contemplate this Brazilian metropolis beyond the key figures who built it,\u201d says Derntl.<\/p>\n

Project<\/strong>
\nPolitical and architectural landscapes: Niemeyer and Kubitschek 1940\u20131961 (n\u00ba 16\/13340-2<\/a>); Grant Mechanism<\/strong> Regular Research Grant; Principal Investigator<\/strong> Rafael Augusto Urano de Carvalho Frajndlich (FEC-UNICAMP); Investment<\/strong> R$15,086.45<\/p>\n

Scientific articles<\/strong>
\nDERNTL, M. F. Dos espac\u0327os modernistas aos lugares da comunidade: memo\u0301rias da construc\u0327a\u0303o das cidades-sate\u0301lites de Brasi\u0301lia<\/a>. Revista Resgate<\/strong>. vol. 27, no. 1, p. 11\u201334. Jan.\/June 2019.
\nDERNTL, M. F. Brasi\u0301lia e suas unidades rurais: planos e projetos para o territo\u0301rio do Distrito Federal entre fins da de\u0301cada de 1950 e ini\u0301cio da de\u0301cada de 1960<\/a>. Anais do Museu Paulista<\/strong>. vol. 28, pp. 1\u201332. 2020.
\nFRAJNDLICH, R. A. U. C. and BENOIT, A. H. Guerra e Paz: Os debates sobre a construc\u0327a\u0303o do centro ci\u0301vico em Brasi\u0301lia<\/a>. Revista de Pesquisa em Arquitetura e Urbanismo<\/strong>. vol. 19, pp. 1\u201320. 2021.
\nFRAJNDLICH, R. A. U. C. and BENOIT, A. H. A extinta pureza: a igreja da Pampulha e as capelas de Ouro Preto (Brasil)<\/a>. Oculum Ensaios<\/strong>. vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 291\u2013310. May 29, 2019.
\nSEGAWA, H. Bras\u00edlia: a p\u00e1tina do futuro<\/a>. Revista Urbana<\/strong>. vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 430\u201374. Mar. 15, 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Freshly discovered documents reveal alternative designs ultimately abandoned in the construction of Bras\u00edlia and its surrounding towns","protected":false},"author":613,"featured_media":423355,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[203,241,265],"coauthors":[1619],"class_list":["post-432854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humanities","tag-architecture","tag-history","tag-urbanism"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/613"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432854"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":433172,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432854\/revisions\/433172"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432854"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=432854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}