Living in a Flying City

We landed in Brasilia from Rio. It was hot, sunny, dry and dusty. Brasilia is the masterplanned capitol city of Brazil. The plan is literally in the shape of a plane- an airplane. The plane is flying in an eastward direction towards a large artificial lake. The entire city is aligned such that on April 21, a day to recognize the martyrs of Brazil's independence, the sun rises perfectly on axis. At the eastern end of the city are the main governmental buildings. The congress, a famous Niemeyer building with two towers rising from a platform that also is the base for a domed volume and it's inverse bowl form (the legislatures) is at the cockpit, eastern end of the city with sun rising between the towers. The wings of the plane house residential sectors, local commerce areas, hotel zones, entertainment sectors and designated zones for businesses and industries. For example all the banks are clustered together. Embassies are clustered and so too are hospitals. Hotels and shopping are split between the north and south wings. All of and their are no street names. Addresses are by block and building. For example our hotel address was sector SHS quad 1 block 3.

We got into Brasilia with most of the afternoon to walk around and hang out. So we went to the cathedral first. It is unlike any cathedral we've seen. Well it's the same architect as Rio so I guess one might anticipate something pretty special. It is a fantastic building. The entrance is via a subterranean ramp. At the end of the ramp one arrives in the main space, a round building in plan with an amazing ceiling of clear glass and blue mosaic tiles, supported by curving concrete columns. The wall curves down to become floor. Three large angel sculptures seem to hover at the center of the room. The curving concrete columns rise up creating the volume and then beyond the roof surface to puncture the sky.

Following the cathedral we checked out other buildings along the central part of the monumental axis like the library and the theater. The library looked like something out of a di chorico painting. The theater felt like a building in Hawaii with a lushly planted tropical lobby. Then as it was nearing dinner time and we didn't feel like hotel restaurants or taking a cab out to the local restaurant areas, we did like a Brazilian and went to the mall. Brasilians love to hang out at malls and their food courts are much better than American food courts.

The next day we basically covered the rest of the axis. We started at the center, going up to the observation level of the tv tower. From there we got our bearings for the entire city and masterplan. We took the bus to the tail section and went to the pretty time warpy museum/monument to JK, Brazils 20th century president responsible for the creation of Brasilia and many other reforms and construction projects in Brazil. The interior of the building was decked out in mid 20th century furniture, red shag rugs, and black marble. The exterior of the building is a trapezoidal/ pyramid volume with a ramped underground entrance and exit. In the front is a tall monument of JK standing on a pillar at the center of a crescent moon. We walked a little bit down the monumental axis under mango trees to the convention center and the had lunch at a gas station cafe. This is another thing we noticed in Brazil. Their gas stations are fancy, selling bottles of wine, expensive chocolates, ice cream bars for $6 US each. And they often have cafes with waiter service even, outdoor tables and umbrellas.

Following lunch we went to Dom Brasco church which is the biggest surprise architectural highlight of the trip thus far. I think the one thing that would describe this building is to say it made Ching Jen want to go to architecture school. Haha. It is a building packed with a great surprise. Outside it is a monolithic cube with 3 storey tall gothic arch like voids around the entire building. Inside one realizes those voids are filled with 18 different blue tinted stained glass panels. It is a dazzling effect, like being inside a kaleidoscope. It was so peaceful and wonderful to sit there that we stayed for a while and toon a ton of pictures.

After Dom Brasco we too the bus to the eastern end of the monumental axis. We walked the length of the ministries, individual government department buildings. The buildings are really impressive and overwhelming lined up like dominoes to either side of the axis. The buildings are clad in green vertical louvered panels on the west side, a glass curtain wall on the east side and white marble on other two, shorter sides. We checked out the Ministry of Justice building a pretty cool mid century building with huge oversized cantilevered waterfalls on the front facade. Nearby was the congress building and the Square of Three Powers. The presents palace/office building and the court building are similar to each other and flank the square. Each building has these very delicate concrete curving columns that suspend the first floor of the building in the air. The buildings appear to be floating. The entirety of the building is white marble and because of the structural design it looks like they could have been carved like an ivory figurines.

Brasilia wasn't all architourism though, we did a lot of people watching and trying to figure out what it would be like living in a city like this. For dinner the second night we ended up at a shopping center food court again, this time opting for Brazil's version of Mcdonalds, only at Giraffas they serve steak.

We spent the next morning running errands and trying to book travel to the amazon. Our flight to Salvador left in the afternoon.