Brasilia - Monumental Axis

Brasilia is an interesting city which was built in only 41 months from 1956 to 1960, to become the new capital of Brazil (previously Rio de Janeiro). This design was led by Lucio Costa, Oscar Neimeyer and Roberto Burle Marx. The original concept was a modernist federal district with a maximum of 5000 inhabitants, however the city has since grown and developed, currently with approximately 2,500,000 within the city and the metropolitan area.

Today I explored the Monumental Axis area, which contains all of the political and administrative buildings, such as the national congress and the ministries. This area was designed to incorporate a large park and allow easy access for vehicles. The Modernist view of favouring vehicles is relatively outdated in contemporary city planning, as there is now a much bigger focus on sustainability, which is difficult to achieve with so many inhabitants using private vehicles to access the city areas. This contrasts the encouragement of pedestrian areas in both Sao Paulo and Curitiba. In Sao Paulo, I visited Paulista Avenue, which is closed every Sunday to vehicles, encouraging pedestrians and cyclists to use the area for art, culture and activities.

The monumental axis area has been developed for vehicles and to create a sense of over sized buildings to impose over the surrounding area, with very limited access for pedestrians. The park in the middle of this area does not work, from my experience, as it is very difficult to access - you must cross one of the large roads, with 5/6 lanes, and there are very few pedestrian crossings. I witnessed many people running across the roads in small gaps of the traffic multiple times today. There is also very little to do in the park area - it is a big, open area which is very dry and there are no activities. This is in stark contrast to parks in Sao Paulo, which had cycling, exercise classes, cultural foods, and many species of plants.