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BRASILIAS from the Parallel Universes ( The Projects that competed with Lucio Costa's )

Index of our pages about the History of Brasilia

 

Here you will find out curiosities about some of the interesting projects that competed with Lucio Costa's proposal, and will see fascinating images of some of them. Seven circles instead of the two wings, gigantic residential buildings... know more about it here!

There were 41 projects presented by 26 competitors participating on the 1957 Contest for the Pilot Plan. The following ones were classified:

• 1st place - Project nº 22, by Lucio Costa (you may want to see Costa's original report for the Pilot Plan contest)
• 2nd place - Project nº 2, by Boruch Milman, João Henrique Rocha and Ney Fontes Gonçalves
• 3rd place - Projects nº 17 and nº 8 (the 3rd and 4th prizes were gathered)
• 5th place - Projects nº 1, nº 24 and nº 26.

Project nº2 (classified in 2nd place)

• Authors: Boruch Milman, João Henrique Rocha and Ney Fontes Gonçalves.
• The project planned a typical governmental city with a controlled development (maximum of 768,000 inhabitants) and urban satellites (small cities that would be built around the Pilot-Plan) with growth of an unlimited flexibility. The project planned that by 2050 the city would have 673,000 inhabitants.
• See bigger images from this project: picture 1 - picture 2

Project nº17 (classified in 3rd place)

• Authors: Rino Levi, Roberto Cerqueira Cesar and L. R. Carvalho Franco.
• It did not plan satellite cities. The maximum population expected was the same as in the edit of the contest (500,000 inhabitants).
• Gigantic residential buildings with 16,000 residents each, devided in six sectors of super-buildings. Total population, only in these 18 buildings: 288,000 people!
• Each building would be hundreds meters high, and would use 60,000 tons of steel! See one of these super-buildings in more details.
• It was a city planned for its citizens basically walk! As most of the population would be concentrated and would live no longer than a kilometer from the center, it was expected that the access of the super-buildings' residents to most of the public buildings would be done walking. "Walking on a larger scale than in other cities would increase the contact among the population, integrating the individual into the community."
• See other images from this project: image 1 - image 2 - image 3

Project nº8 (also classified in 3rd place)

• Authors: M. M. M. Roberto Arquitects.
• Seven urban units, each of them would hold 72,000 people. The possibility to enlarge to 10 or 14 units was planned. Each unity would be circle-shaped with 1.5-mile diameter, and would be like "a complete city ".
• Here people would also walk! They would live next to their working place, therefore, similar to the Project n° 17, it was expected that the inhabitants would move about mostly walking. Private or public transport would be almost unnecessary.
• The ideal population would be 630,000 inhabitants and maximum of 1,260,000. The 630,000 inhabitants would be distributed as follow, 504,000 in the "capital area", 104,000 in "rural districts" and 22,000 in "isolated buildings".
• Besides the circle-shaped urban units there would be a "Federal Park" (see image).
• See other images from this project: picture 1 - picture 2 - picture 3

Images from some of the other projects:

• Project nº 5 (did not classify)
• Project nº 9 (did not classify)
• Project nº 20 (did not classify)
• Project nº 24 (one of the 3 that were classified in 5th place)
• Project nº 26 (also classified in 5th place)

Sources / Notes

Sources:

• Revista Brasília, published by Novacap, 1957.
• A História de Brasília, by Ernesto Silva, 1997.
• Brasília Trilha Aberta, commemorative issue by the Government of the Federal District, 1986.
  
  We would like to specially thank Ernesto Silva and the Public Archive of the Federal District.

Notes:

• Lucio Costa's project received some important modifications after it was presented in 1957. If one of the other projects had been chosen, it would probably have received many modifications too.
• In one of our sources, "Brasília Trilha Aberta", the image of project nº 2 is presented as if it were from project nº 26.
• One of the architects from Project nº 2 is spelled "Baruch Milman" in one of our sources, and as "Boruch Milmann" in another. The correct spelling (as Boruch himself told us) is Boruch Milman.

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