How Brasília Turned Me On to Modern Architecture’s Sexy Side
On a trip to Brazil’s capital, a model of urban planning built in the 1950s, a design fan weary of modernism’s rigidity discovers its sensual potential.
SOME COUPLES spend holidays on beaches. My husband and I bond over journeys to often-barren areas, visiting works by mostly dead architects.
When we were engaged in Rio de Janeiro 17 years ago, we vowed to someday visit Brasília, some 700 miles away, the planned metropolis which became the nation’s new capital in 1960. Championed in 1955 by democratically elected President Juscelino Kubitschek and conceived by urban planner Lúcio Costa with fellow-Brazilian and architect Oscar Niemeyer (1907-2012), the city was intended to...