Previous page, the Metropolitan Cathedral. This page, the National Museum of Brazil.
Inset, the glittering interior of the Palacio da Alvorada.
meet a shaded colonnade fronted by slender spikes of concrete that sweep upwards, barely appearing to touch the roofline. At ground level, these sculptural shapes hardly seem rooted at all - in Niemeyer’s words, “like feathers touching the ground”.
“The curve I find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuousness of its rivers, in the waves of the ocean and in the body of the beloved woman.”
Niemeyer used the same design of a colonnade surrounding a building for shade and shadow effect on his Itamaraty Palace, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is edged by wide reflecting pools. Speaking of the narrow columns running around the building he said,“ I set them apart from the façade, creating an empty space through which, as I bent over my work table, I could see myself walking, imagining their forms and the different resulting points of view they would provoke.”
Underground parking for ministry staff avoided the need for car parks at ground level that would have marred the impact of Niemeyer’s buildings and the sense of space around them. The National Congress, which shows the clearest influence to Le Corbusier in his Brasília designs, sits prominently on the Monumental Axis, clearly viewed along the central grassed avenue. The roofline meets the raised avenues that flank it at each side, with the main building stretched between them. A cupola marks the Senate Chamber inside, while a shallow upturned dish marks the Chamber of Deputies. Niemeyer had intended the roof to act as a public plaza, bringing the people close to the seat of government, but today security concerns have placed it out of bounds. The two central towers appear to be uncharacteristically regular rectangles, but Niemeyer resisted anything so cuboid, making them five-sided with subtly angled façades.
Architectural Traveller | Page 12
The most visited building in the capital is not a government department, however, but the cathedral, built between 1958 and 1970. Its ‘crown of thorns’ cupola is a striking expression of Niemeyer’s use of poured concrete to create elegantly curved silhouettes. The spaces between the thorns are filled with coloured glass, making the interior as striking as the exterior.
Costa and Niemeyer turned to painter and landscape designer Roberto Burle Marx to create gardens for the open spaces in Brasília that would complement the modernist buildings and utopian ideals behind the city. Using his own vibrant gouache plans for the Ministry of Army as his template, Burle Marx designed a garden made up of a pattern of arabesques filled with crushed stone and low-growing plants. Burle Marx, chiming with Niemeyer’s socialist beliefs, felt that well designed public spaces provided “dignity for the masses”.
While the architectural achievement of Brazil’s new capital is obvious, history has not perhaps been as kind to the overall ambition of Brasília. Its system of work and housing zones and its reliance on road connections never allowed for the blending of people, offices and shops that gives life to a city. Niemeyer himself had happy memories of labourers and engineers living side by side during the frenetic construction period. “On the inauguration day, with the President of the Republic, the generals in their full dress uniforms, the high-society ladies in their finest jewellery, everything changed. The magic was shattered in a single blow.” Niemeyer retreated to live and work in Paris in self-imposed exile.
Yet the city he envisioned with Lúcio Costa and Roberto Burle Marx has been celebrated both by UNESCO and by visitors as one of the world’s most outstanding expressions of the modernist movement, an enduring influence far beyond its original remit.
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