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Brasilia
Brazil's planned modernist capital, carved from the highland savanna
Conjured from empty highland scrub in less than four years, Brasilia is the boldest urban experiment of the twentieth century, a capital built from scratch to embody a nation's faith in the future. Laid out in the shape of an aeroplane or a bird in flight, its monumental axis of white concrete government buildings by Oscar Niemeyer rises from the savanna of Brazil's central plateau. Home to more than four million people across its metro region, the city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a living monument to mid-century modernist ambition.
Brasilia stands on the Planalto Central, the high savanna of the cerrado, at roughly 1,170 metres above sea level, beside the artificial Lake Paranoa created to soften its dry climate. The Pilot Plan by urban planner Lucio Costa arranges the city along two great crossing axes, one for monuments and ministries, the other for residential superblocks, all set among vast open spaces designed for the automobile age. The deliberately remote interior location was chosen to draw development away from the crowded coast.
President Juscelino Kubitschek inaugurated Brasilia in 1960, fulfilling a constitutional dream more than a century old to move Brazil's capital inland from Rio de Janeiro. Niemeyer's sweeping cathedral, congress, and presidential palace gave concrete form to a new national self-image. Critics have long debated whether the car-centric, monumental layout truly serves daily life, and a ring of populous satellite towns has grown up around the planned core. Yet Brasilia remains the seat of Brazilian government and an icon of modernist design.