Sunday, March 1, 2009

A bowl and a dome

Brasilia is a beautiful city. It's the center of Brazilian government. Daniella tells me everyone here has somebody working for the government, and government work is the best jobs in Brazil.

This city was completely designed in the the 60s to be the capitol of Brazil, and so it's layout is amazingly planned. It feels like something out of Alduous Huxley's Brave New World, except not so dark. Remember that movie Gattaca? Sort of like that.

Many of the buildings look like they're from the 60s but the layout feels like the year 2250. The buildings are aligned, the lines are square, the buildings look symmetric, and everything has it's place. There's a banking district, residential districts, commercial districts, and shopping districts. The roads are wide, there's a world famous bridge with diagonal arches that looks amazing. You need a car to get around. The roads are massive. Even the lake here is man made, planned to the hilt, and the president's house is on it. There's no fence around the president's house. I guess nobody feels the need to harm the Brazilian leader.

There's a cathedral here where you enter from underground and the part you see above ground is only the roof. In the picture above is the congress building, but just the roof of it because the actual building is underground.

Oh yeah something I almost forgot to mention is that the governmental structure in Brazil is very much like the states, with 3 branches just like us, but with a lot more corruption (hard to believe I know) according to Daniella. There's a big "mall" of grass in the middle of the government buildings, a lot like Wash DC. I don't know if that's just a coincidence or on purpose.

Daniella told me they moved the capitol here from Rio in 1960 because this city is much more central within the country borders and therefore more convenient of a location to lead the country from.

Although the sun is incomprehensibly hot, it's much less humid here than it was in Salvador, so I've been walking around, admiring the buildings and the long fields of grass

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I only knew Brasilia is a model city for urban planning but not that they have many underground buildings. Why? I doubt it's for energy conservation. so just out of landscaping considerations?

March 2, 2009 at 7:56 AM  
Blogger Dani said...

Hey Jim! I hope you liked the "city tours" =))

March 2, 2009 at 3:41 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

There aren't so many underground buildings around here. The deputies' chamber and the senate are underground, but the congressmen's offices are not. And the Cathedral was partially inspired by the roman catacombs.

March 4, 2009 at 6:39 PM  
Blogger Jimmy said...

thanks for the lesson marcelo!

hi dani i see you :)

March 4, 2009 at 8:04 PM  

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