Designed by Oscar Niemeyer, completed 1960 Brazil
The free and vigorous forms of Oscar Niemeyer’s works, such as Pampulha (1943)
and Canoas House (1954), were already internationally recognized when he visited
Europe in 1954. Niemeyer was impressed by classical buildings he saw there—their
monumentality and their sense of permanence. This led him to introduce new concepts in
his architecture. Niemeyer started to emphasize pure and concise forms as well as single
volumes die-tated by structure in order to achieve monumentality. The opportunity for
Niemeyer to concretize this new vision came when he was commissioned to design the
buildings of Brasilia, the new planned capital of Brazil, built between 1957 and 1960.
Adopting the main principles of modern urbanism, Lucio Costa’s plan for Brasilia
achieved an appropriate expression of a capital with two axes crossing each other in right
angles. The composition, resembling a plane, is very simple, unified, clear, and elegant.
In the curved wings of the north-south axis (road axis), Costa placed the residential areas.
The east-west axis (monumental axis) is a sort of dorsal spine that organizes the entire
plan. At the east end of the monumental axis, Costa located the governmental center,
Three Powers Square, as a focus of the composition.
The Three Powers Square is a great esplanade for public ceremonies and provides an
aesthetic and symbolic space for all the city houses. Following Costa’s triangular scheme,
Niemeyer placed in each vertex a building representing the three main powers: Planalto
Palace (executive), National Congress (legislative), and Supreme Court (judiciary).
Niemeyer concentrated his major efforts on the creation of this ensemble.
Niemeyer conceived these palaces as an entity, conferring formal unity and a general
classical monumentality on them. He created three poles of visual attraction with many
perspectives. The buildings are self-contained objects in the vast landscape, separated by
Entries A–F 845
large surfaces of stone paving that provides a free space to admire them and creates a
scenic civic place. The ensemble of the Three Powers is a unique architectural complex
in which classicism is joined with lightness.
From far away, the powerful National Congress (1958–60) appears,
announcing the termination of the axis. Niemeyer placed two domes on a
vast platform that emphasizes the horizontality of the complex. Based on a
play of volumes, the complex was intended to express formally the duality
of the two assemblies. According to Bruand, the inverted dome, the
Chamber of Deputies, symbolizes the more democratic facet of this
assembly, whereas the smaller dome, the Senate, appears to be more
reclusive (see Bruand, 1971). Between the domes, two high thin slabs are
placed, housing the secretariat. The balance of the final composition is
also achieved by contrasts between vertical and horizontal lines, between
curves and straight lines, and between the pure forms of platform, twin
towers, and domes. It was designed in order to preserve the openness of the mall while maintaining
its symbolical importance.
In the other vertices of the triangle are the Planalto Palace and the Supreme Court
(1960). Both buildings are rectangular glass boxes encased in a peristyle with
magnificent colonnades. Niemeyer, in order to enhance the whole, reduced the number of
formal elements and emphasized the single motif of the curving colonnade as the
strongest facet of the composition. The delicate and curving colonnades, barely touching
the ground, endow the buildings with lightness and grace. The widely projecting roof
slabs supported by thin columns create many opportunities to frame the vast landscape.
As they are inscribed in a larger composition, they have similar features, differentiated by
disposition and size that confer unity upon the esplanade as imagined by Costa. Whereas
the Planalto Palace is taller and more delicate, the Supreme Court is closer to the ground,
communicating stolidity and stability. Whereas Planalto’s long side is facing the square,
the Court has its narrow side facing it. This arrangement creates different perspectives but
maintains axiality and unity, which provide the classical character required by
institutions.
The innovative motif of colonnades is a variation of that of Alvorada Palace (1958),
the official residency of the president, located near the ensemble although not part of it.
One of his most acclaimed works, Alvorada Palace had its image widely diffused and
became a symbol of the country. The curving and slender columns, delicately touching
the ground, graciously support the shaded veranda. As David Underwood noted, the airy
structure “synthesizes Brazilian charm with European decorum, classical nobility with
baroque plasticity.” Niemeyer’s ethereal and fluid suspended palaces are meaningful
freestanding objects in the vastness of the square.
Entries A–F 847
The mall also includes two rows of ministry buildings. These discrete and anonymous
blocks are aligned consecutively in order to create a sort of scenic and ceremonial space,
directing the attention to the Three Powers Square. Closer to this square are the
Ministries of Justice (1960) and Foreign Affairs (1965–67), designed differently from the
others. In these buildings, Niemeyer adopted a Brutalist aesthetic; at same time, however,
they are refined and sophisticated. Instead of delicate colonnades, Niemeyer opted for
heavy concrete porticoes as expressive ele-ments. At the end of the mall is located the
Metropolitan Cathedral (1958–70), one of Niemeyer’s masterpieces. The volume is
formed by a structure of 16 boomerang-like ribs, expressing the essence of the cathedral.
The entrance through an underground passage leads the spectator to experience a
dramatic contrast from the shadows to an intensely illuminated and mystical space. The
most recent contribution by Niemeyer is the Pantheon of Democracy (1985), a poetic,
fluid, and dynamic structure that closes the open side of the Three Powers Square.
As soon as Brasilia was completed, it was both praised and criticized. In the
architectural field, it was celebrated by many critics. However, others pointed out the
failure of the climatic adaptation of the buildings and its rupture with traditional Brazilian
living. Siegfried Giedion criticized the lack of coherence of the monumental axis, as it
fails to reproduce a theatrical perspective. Although the capital was conceived as a
coherent whole, it is not felt by the pedestrian, who feels powerless in such a vastness.
Sybil Mohóly-Nagy pointed out the autoritarianism and the monumentalism of the new
city. James Holston shows how Brasilia failed regarding its social purposes (Holston,
1989). In a moment in which the principles of modern urbanism were under fire, Brasilia
seems to have been born already old.
Nevertheless, the attacks on modern urbanism and the fact that Brasilia was a social
failure eclipsed some positive aspects of its architecture. First was Brasília’s role in the
discussion of modern architecture and monumentality. Niemeyer’s delicate and lighter
classicism proved that modern architecture could also be monumental and symbolic
without regressing to the massive authoritarianess of 1930s government buildings.
Second was Brasília’s unique image. Niemeyer sucessfully created an image for the city
based on a repetition of some patterns, fostering formal unity although admitting
variations in textures and materials that contributed to the city’s inclusion in the World
Heritage List of UNESCO. Third was Brasília’s role as a symbol for the country. Brasilia
was planned to foster a new Brazilian man, a proof of the capacity of a country to build
its future. Much more than housing institutions, the main achievement of Niemeyer was
the creation of a cultural image for a modern state, providing poetic and symbolic forms.
FAVELA
the term that identifies shantytowns in Brazil, originates from poverty settlements in Rio
de Janeiro and is derived from a type of bush that is abundant in the semiarid Canudos
Entries A–F 841
area in the northern state of Bahia. Rio’s favelas coincide with the occupation of the
Santo Antônio and Providência hills (morros ) in the city center. In 1897, soldiers who returned
from the Canudos War—a military campaign in the northeastern region of Brazil—
received permission to temporarily settle on these sites, where they built shacks of
cardboard and wood. Morro da Providência received the name Morro da Favela (favela
hill) in reference to the previously mentioned bush. In 1904, 100 houses existed, and by
1933 the number had grown to 1500.
By the 1920s, favelas had spread to other hills of the city: Morro dos Telégrafos,
Mangueira; Morro de São Carlos, Vila Rica (Copacabana area); Pasmado (Botafogo); and
Babilônia (Leme). This expansion even reached the city suburbs. The growth of favelas
was driven by the lack of a government policy to address the housing problems of the
poorest members of society. In 1888, Brazil proclaimed a law of freedom for slaves; it
was the last country to do so in Latin America. The urban reforms of the early part of the
20th century almost eliminated tenement houses (cortiços ) in the city center; such houses
sheltered approximately 100,000 people in 1890.
The peasants’ migration from the northeastern rural areas to the capital intensified the
settlement in the hills wherever vacant land was available near workplaces. The same
development took place in areas near primary transportation lines that connected the city
center to the northern zone of the city where industries were located: railroads and, later,
wide avenues. By the 1920s, one of the main suburban favelas had emerged near the
Madureira railroad station, right in front of the Imperial Palace (Quinta da Boa Vista).
The favela, throughout its history in Rio de Janeiro, was considered mainly an
undesired component of the urban structure. This vision was present at the beginning of
the 20th century in the programs of Mayor Pereira Passos (1903–06) and with the Agache
Plan in the 1930s.
The importance of the favela and its presence in the city context were recognized and
taken into consideration only to control public hygiene and epidemics. From the 1940s to
the 1960s, the slums were considered to be an urban-order disruption, and their
population was seen as alien to the urban society, so the government policy for favelas
was simply to remove them from areas near the “formal” city. The Alliance Progress, a
U.S. government aid program, was created to resettle the favela dos, who rejected the program,
which foresaw single apartment blocks located far in the periphery. At the same time,
religious organizations, municipal initiatives, and sensitive architects (such as Carlos
Nelson Ferreira dos Santos) helped several communities transform precarious shacks into
houses of bricks and concrete and to furnish technical infrastructures, such as stairs,
electricity, water supply, sewage, and garbage systems. Most of the favelas are still
concentrated along the railroad system in the northern area of Rio; others are old,
traditional settlements near the “noble” southern neighborhoods, such as Botafogo,
Copacabana, Ipanema, Leblon, and São Conrado, with a privileged view over the
marvelous natural environment. Rocinha, one of the largest and steadiest favelas of the
city, has almost 100,000 inhabitants; Vidigal has 10,000, and Santa Marta 5000. The
latest report shows that in 1999, one million people were living in 600 favelas in Rio de
Janeiro.
One could define as romantic the claim that there are some positive social, cultural,
and urban components in those settle-ments, denying the negative opposition between
“formal” and “informal” city. The free articulation of volumes and colors of housing
units along the hills was admired by Le Corbusier during his visit to Rio in 1929. Bernard
Rudofsky, who lived for several years in Brazil, recognized the spatial and formal quality
of irregular urban structures and its vernacular huts before writing his book Arch itecture without Architects. The
relationship between medieval cities and modern metropolises as defined by the French
historian Jacques Le Goff is present in the favelas’ urban structure. However, this free
composition is related to individual and social appropriation of space that creates for
inhabitants a sense of community and solidarity. This is reaffirmed by religious activities
that make up the syncretism of Afro-Brazilian rituals and by the meaning of popular
music (samba) and carnival shows, icons of carioca culture around the world. Some of the most
important and oldest escolas de samba of Rio’s carnival belong to traditional favelas: Salgueiro,
Mangueira (Estação Primeira de Mangueira); Serrinha (Império Serrano); Formiga; and
Borel (Unidos da Tijuca). Writers, poets, singers, and film directors used favelas as the
main subject of their creative work. In Brazil, several films assumed this popular
Entries A–F 843
environment: in the 1950s, Frenchman Marcel Camus directed the film Orfeo Negro, which diffused
the life and music of Rio’s favelas, as did Favela dos meus amores (Humberto Mauro, 1935), Rio 40 graus (Nelson Pereira
dos Santos, 1955), Como nascem os anjos (Murilo Salles, 1990), and Orfeu (Caca Diegues, 1998). However, there
is a dark side of favelas: In the last two decades, lottery managers and drug dealers have
taken over control of the population.
In the 1990s, the municipal government of Rio de Janeiro, with the initiative of the
former secretary of urbanism, architect Luiz Paulo Conde (city mayor in 1997), and the
secretary of housing, architect Sergio Magalhães, decided to develop a longterm plan to
integrate the “informal” city (favelas) into the “formal” urban structure. The key change
in the municipal government’s programs is the replacement of the idea of dealing only
with the deficit of adequate housing for a policy that focuses on “producing the city”
through readdressing the urban deficit.
The new program, Favela-Bairro, started serving 90 favelas with a population of
300,000 inhabitants and counted on an investment of U.S. $300 million, of which 40
percent came from the City of Rio and 60 percent from the Inter-American Development
Bank (BID). To integrate the favela into the urban fabric of the formal city, the program
includes the following key actions: (1) completing or constructing main urban
infrastructures; (2) providing environmental changes that ensure that favelas look like
standard neighborhoods; (3) introducing visual symbols of the formal city as a way to
identify favelas as neighborhoods (paved streets, parks, urban furnishings, and public
services); (4) consolidating and inserting favelas into the planning process of the city; (5)
implementing social types of activities, such as setting up day care centers for children,
income generation processes, training programs, and sporting, cultural, and leisure
activities; and (6) promoting the legalization of land subdivision and providing individual
land titles.
In 1994, the housing secretariat organized, in cooperation with the Brazilian Institute
of Architects (IAB, Institute de Arquitetos do Brasil), a competition for designing a
methodology to develop improvements, beginning with 18 medium-size favelas (between
500 and 2500 dwellings). An important innovation was the organization of 15 teams, led
by architects who partici pated in the competition that presented new ideas and
methodological approaches. The competition included firms of young architects, such as
Planejamento and Arquitetura, Fábrica Arquitetura, Arquitraço Cooperativa, and Archi 5
studios, as well as those of older, prestigious works, such as Paulo Casé, Luis Aciolli, and
Maurício Roberto, who for the first time would undertake design for the poorest members
of Rio’s population. This initiative promoted a new relationship between technical
expertise and the degraded areas of Rio de Janeiro to attempt to improve the quality of
life of people living in favelas.
de Janeiro and is derived from a type of bush that is abundant in the semiarid Canudos
Entries A–F 841
area in the northern state of Bahia. Rio’s favelas coincide with the occupation of the
Santo Antônio and Providência hills (morros ) in the city center. In 1897, soldiers who returned
from the Canudos War—a military campaign in the northeastern region of Brazil—
received permission to temporarily settle on these sites, where they built shacks of
cardboard and wood. Morro da Providência received the name Morro da Favela (favela
hill) in reference to the previously mentioned bush. In 1904, 100 houses existed, and by
1933 the number had grown to 1500.
By the 1920s, favelas had spread to other hills of the city: Morro dos Telégrafos,
Mangueira; Morro de São Carlos, Vila Rica (Copacabana area); Pasmado (Botafogo); and
Babilônia (Leme). This expansion even reached the city suburbs. The growth of favelas
was driven by the lack of a government policy to address the housing problems of the
poorest members of society. In 1888, Brazil proclaimed a law of freedom for slaves; it
was the last country to do so in Latin America. The urban reforms of the early part of the
20th century almost eliminated tenement houses (cortiços ) in the city center; such houses
sheltered approximately 100,000 people in 1890.
The peasants’ migration from the northeastern rural areas to the capital intensified the
settlement in the hills wherever vacant land was available near workplaces. The same
development took place in areas near primary transportation lines that connected the city
center to the northern zone of the city where industries were located: railroads and, later,
wide avenues. By the 1920s, one of the main suburban favelas had emerged near the
Madureira railroad station, right in front of the Imperial Palace (Quinta da Boa Vista).
The favela, throughout its history in Rio de Janeiro, was considered mainly an
undesired component of the urban structure. This vision was present at the beginning of
the 20th century in the programs of Mayor Pereira Passos (1903–06) and with the Agache
Plan in the 1930s.
The importance of the favela and its presence in the city context were recognized and
taken into consideration only to control public hygiene and epidemics. From the 1940s to
the 1960s, the slums were considered to be an urban-order disruption, and their
population was seen as alien to the urban society, so the government policy for favelas
was simply to remove them from areas near the “formal” city. The Alliance Progress, a
U.S. government aid program, was created to resettle the favela dos, who rejected the program,
which foresaw single apartment blocks located far in the periphery. At the same time,
religious organizations, municipal initiatives, and sensitive architects (such as Carlos
Nelson Ferreira dos Santos) helped several communities transform precarious shacks into
houses of bricks and concrete and to furnish technical infrastructures, such as stairs,
electricity, water supply, sewage, and garbage systems. Most of the favelas are still
concentrated along the railroad system in the northern area of Rio; others are old,
traditional settlements near the “noble” southern neighborhoods, such as Botafogo,
Copacabana, Ipanema, Leblon, and São Conrado, with a privileged view over the
marvelous natural environment. Rocinha, one of the largest and steadiest favelas of the
city, has almost 100,000 inhabitants; Vidigal has 10,000, and Santa Marta 5000. The
latest report shows that in 1999, one million people were living in 600 favelas in Rio de
Janeiro.
One could define as romantic the claim that there are some positive social, cultural,
and urban components in those settle-ments, denying the negative opposition between
“formal” and “informal” city. The free articulation of volumes and colors of housing
units along the hills was admired by Le Corbusier during his visit to Rio in 1929. Bernard
Rudofsky, who lived for several years in Brazil, recognized the spatial and formal quality
of irregular urban structures and its vernacular huts before writing his book Arch itecture without Architects. The
relationship between medieval cities and modern metropolises as defined by the French
historian Jacques Le Goff is present in the favelas’ urban structure. However, this free
composition is related to individual and social appropriation of space that creates for
inhabitants a sense of community and solidarity. This is reaffirmed by religious activities
that make up the syncretism of Afro-Brazilian rituals and by the meaning of popular
music (samba) and carnival shows, icons of carioca culture around the world. Some of the most
important and oldest escolas de samba of Rio’s carnival belong to traditional favelas: Salgueiro,
Mangueira (Estação Primeira de Mangueira); Serrinha (Império Serrano); Formiga; and
Borel (Unidos da Tijuca). Writers, poets, singers, and film directors used favelas as the
main subject of their creative work. In Brazil, several films assumed this popular
Entries A–F 843
environment: in the 1950s, Frenchman Marcel Camus directed the film Orfeo Negro, which diffused
the life and music of Rio’s favelas, as did Favela dos meus amores (Humberto Mauro, 1935), Rio 40 graus (Nelson Pereira
dos Santos, 1955), Como nascem os anjos (Murilo Salles, 1990), and Orfeu (Caca Diegues, 1998). However, there
is a dark side of favelas: In the last two decades, lottery managers and drug dealers have
taken over control of the population.
In the 1990s, the municipal government of Rio de Janeiro, with the initiative of the
former secretary of urbanism, architect Luiz Paulo Conde (city mayor in 1997), and the
secretary of housing, architect Sergio Magalhães, decided to develop a longterm plan to
integrate the “informal” city (favelas) into the “formal” urban structure. The key change
in the municipal government’s programs is the replacement of the idea of dealing only
with the deficit of adequate housing for a policy that focuses on “producing the city”
through readdressing the urban deficit.
The new program, Favela-Bairro, started serving 90 favelas with a population of
300,000 inhabitants and counted on an investment of U.S. $300 million, of which 40
percent came from the City of Rio and 60 percent from the Inter-American Development
Bank (BID). To integrate the favela into the urban fabric of the formal city, the program
includes the following key actions: (1) completing or constructing main urban
infrastructures; (2) providing environmental changes that ensure that favelas look like
standard neighborhoods; (3) introducing visual symbols of the formal city as a way to
identify favelas as neighborhoods (paved streets, parks, urban furnishings, and public
services); (4) consolidating and inserting favelas into the planning process of the city; (5)
implementing social types of activities, such as setting up day care centers for children,
income generation processes, training programs, and sporting, cultural, and leisure
activities; and (6) promoting the legalization of land subdivision and providing individual
land titles.
In 1994, the housing secretariat organized, in cooperation with the Brazilian Institute
of Architects (IAB, Institute de Arquitetos do Brasil), a competition for designing a
methodology to develop improvements, beginning with 18 medium-size favelas (between
500 and 2500 dwellings). An important innovation was the organization of 15 teams, led
by architects who partici pated in the competition that presented new ideas and
methodological approaches. The competition included firms of young architects, such as
Planejamento and Arquitetura, Fábrica Arquitetura, Arquitraço Cooperativa, and Archi 5
studios, as well as those of older, prestigious works, such as Paulo Casé, Luis Aciolli, and
Maurício Roberto, who for the first time would undertake design for the poorest members
of Rio’s population. This initiative promoted a new relationship between technical
expertise and the degraded areas of Rio de Janeiro to attempt to improve the quality of
life of people living in favelas.
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