Monday, March 29, 2004
Good first day. Lots of hand-shaking, card-distributing, and self-promotion. Learned a lot about sewage management and had a great session with VCP, Brazil's leading paper company. This will intensify, especially Wednesday, with four meetings on a day trip to Rio.
Digesting Brasilia (and lunch) Brasilia has some wonderfully creative modernist buildings, such as this Cathedral, but on the whole, as a city it left me cold. Perhaps the most strictly zoned capital on earth, Brasilia was built in the form of an airplane, with the government in the cockpit, residential sections in the wings, and commerce in the main cabin. Six-lane highways criss-cross around this outline, distances are enormous, leaving the pedestrian at a disadvantage. Thus, we have a car city where at least two-thirds of the people are probably too poor to own one.
Brasilia's glories are clustered around the "Plaza of The Three Powers" This refers to the three branches of government, represented by two out-sized pavillions with futuristic white columns that serve as the Presidential Palace and Supreme Court, and in between are the twin towers of Congress and their half-dome lawn ornaments. The grass-free concrete plaza also contains sculptures, a pantheon of national heroes, two museums, of which one contains a scale model of the city, and an odd brown pigeon shelter shaped like a clothespin.
Like so many dominoes, the dozen or so ministries are stacked up on both sides of the wide highway that leads to the Plaza. The ministries are identical white marble rectangles with green shutters, and on a Sunday there was almost nobody around, and it felt oddly like some eerie housing project right after a neutron bomb explosion. Two ministries, Justice and Foreign Affairs, have distinct and beautiful pavillions, the latter surrounded by a pond with greenery and sculpture. More on Brasilia to come...
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Modernist Ghost Town
Digesting Brasilia (and lunch) Brasilia has some wonderfully creative modernist buildings, such as this Cathedral, but on the whole, as a city it left me cold. Perhaps the most strictly zoned capital on earth, Brasilia was built in the form of an airplane, with the government in the cockpit, residential sections in the wings, and commerce in the main cabin. Six-lane highways criss-cross around this outline, distances are enormous, leaving the pedestrian at a disadvantage. Thus, we have a car city where at least two-thirds of the people are probably too poor to own one.
Brasilia's glories are clustered around the "Plaza of The Three Powers" This refers to the three branches of government, represented by two out-sized pavillions with futuristic white columns that serve as the Presidential Palace and Supreme Court, and in between are the twin towers of Congress and their half-dome lawn ornaments. The grass-free concrete plaza also contains sculptures, a pantheon of national heroes, two museums, of which one contains a scale model of the city, and an odd brown pigeon shelter shaped like a clothespin.
Like so many dominoes, the dozen or so ministries are stacked up on both sides of the wide highway that leads to the Plaza. The ministries are identical white marble rectangles with green shutters, and on a Sunday there was almost nobody around, and it felt oddly like some eerie housing project right after a neutron bomb explosion. Two ministries, Justice and Foreign Affairs, have distinct and beautiful pavillions, the latter surrounded by a pond with greenery and sculpture. More on Brasilia to come...
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