Contemporary Urbanism Brazil: Beyond Brasília

Foreword

Foreword Almost all, if not all, design professionals know of the design of Brasília and can sketch a conceptual diagram of the city’s layout. Many laypeople know of it too. Many people know of the planning and design of Curitiba during the 1980s and 1990s, for it has been widely described in the popular media. The experience there has already influenced planning and design decisions in cities outside Brazil, such as Bogotá and Los Angeles. Few, however, know of the issues confronting planners in Curitiba today . Some scholars may know of recent innovative planning activities and of some internationally acclaimed urban open spaces in Rio de Janeiro’s Corredor Cultural or in Porto Alegre’s Largo Glênio Peres market square revitalization. Not much is known about what else is happening in those cities or, for that matter, anywhere else in Brazil, however. That is a pity because as Brazil flexes its growing economic muscles and its cities burgeon, the rest of the world can learn much from the success and limitations of recent planning and urban design work in that country. It is often thought that the major urban design paradigms and design ideas all originated in Western Europe and the eastern United States and then were transmitted across the world through the globalization of investment markets, education, and professional practice. Indeed, many did. Many planners and architects from other countries have been educated, particularly at the graduate level, in the United States and Western Europe, and consultants from those countries have taken their design knowledge and attitudes from home and have planted them in alien territory. Often those design models have been applied in sociopolitical and geographical contexts very different from those in which they were developed. Some design concepts have flourished everywhere but many have not. There is much truth in all these assertions, but the picture is really more complex. Design ideas have flowed back and forth across the continents and oceans of the world. The development of modernist architecture and urban design is one example. Many ideas now considered to be those of the Bauhaus or of Le Corbusier had their xiii roots in the Soviet schools of architecture. The City Beautiful had antecedents in Mughal gardens as much as in the baroque. The influence of Japan on the picturesque tradition in Europe is well known. In addition, the work of European architects abroad shaped their ideas and thus what they did at home. French architects explored design possibilities in France’s colonies in North Africa and Indo-China before applying them in France (to the extent they could in less authoritarian contexts than existed in the colonies). There is nothing new in these observations, even if they are yet to be fully documented. The contribution to the world scene of design in Latin America has, however, been largely neglected. The layout and architecture of precincts of cities as diverse as Buenos Aires, San­ tiago de Chile, and Brasília show their debt to European models, particularly those of French architects, their design ideas, and their philosophical attitudes embedded in the Napoleonic code. Sometimes subtly but often boldly, the transformation of European architectural paradigms in Latin America has had a largely unrecognized impact on urban design everywhere. This observation is particularly true of modern architecture and urban design in Brazil. In the 1950s and 1960s the sculptural qualities of Brazilian modern architecture and the enthusiasm with which it was created and built were inspirations for architects throughout the world, particularly those in the economically developing world. Consider the reflections of the first of India’s modern architects, Habib Rahman: “We returned from our training abroad full of the ideas of Brazil and the manner in which architects there had embraced modernism” (interview by Lang, 1984). Since then Braz­ ilian architects have had to confront the contradictions in modernist thought, particularly in the urban design precepts promulgated in documents such as CIAM’s Athens Charter. Much has been built in Brazil since the audacious concept of Brasília, the boldness of its design, and the rapidity of its implementation—largely in the hands of two people, Lucio Costa as planner and Oscar Niemeyer as architect—captured the world’s attention. For all its strengths and weaknesses and the opportunity costs it incurred, the city has a firm place in international architects’ minds. Misguidedly, many of them believe that is all Brazilian planning, urban design, and architecture have to offer the world. Much has indeed...