Brasília: Life Beyond Utopia

Brasília today lies at the heart of a thriving metropolitan region, the Distrito Federal: a region of 5,800 km2 in the central plateau of Brazil, 1000 km inland from the previous capital, Rio de Janeiro. From its origin in the 1950s it has proved to be a pragmatic and successful response to the challenges of urban development.

Brasília was not, in fact, planned in any meaningful way. The lack of a comprehensive masterplan meant that the expansion of the city was not controlled by a development framework, and Brasília today faces many of the urban challenges common to other Brazilian cities: a burgeoning periphery, a shortage of both low-income and middle-class housing and serious traffic congestion. In any case, it is unlikely that any masterplan, conceived when Brazil was a mainly rural economy with a population of 62 million, would continue to serve an urban consumer society of 207 million 60 years later.

The success of Costa's architectural vision was such, however, that despite being the fastest growing metropolitan region in Brazil, the Distrito Federal has the highest standard of living in the country, equal to major European countries.

This talk was part of the Urban Transformation in Brazil Symposium which stemmed from the launch of the special issue of AD edited by Hattie Hartman Brazil: Restructuring the Urban.

The publication was accompanied by an exhibition at the McAslan Gallery.

Thomas Deckker is Senior Architect at John McAslan + Partners, a Geddes Fellow at the University of Dundee a Visiting Researcher at King's College, London., and author of The Modern City Revisited (Routledge 2000)

➲ Hattie Hartman: Urban transformation in Brazil: Rio and beyond
Hattie Hartman is Sustainability Editor of the Architects' Journal, author of "London 2012: Sustainable Design" John Wiley & Sons (2011)

➲ Dr Circe Monteiro: Recuperation of the Río Capibaribe, Recife: a study in Urban Sustainability
Dr Circe Monteiro is a Professor in the Departamento de Arquitetura e Urbanism, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco

click here to go to Brazil Institute, Kings College London website

Aerial photographs courtesy of Joana França, Brasília.