When we think of mod­ern archi­tec­ture, we often think first of what’s called the Inter­na­tion­al Style, whose min­i­mal­ist, rec­ti­lin­ear, dec­o­ra­tion-free forms were cham­pi­oned by the likes of Wal­ter Gropius, Lud­wig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Cor­busier. Though they did build projects all over the world, that isn’t exact­ly the rea­son for the name. In fact, the Inter­na­tion­al Style rep­re­sents an attempt to devel­op a cul­tur­al­ly neu­tral aes­thet­ic for all built envi­ron­ments, deploy­able equal­ly in Europe, Asia, the Amer­i­c­as, and every­where else besides. That pre­tense to uni­ver­sal­i­ty may count as the most utopi­an aspect of an avowed­ly utopi­an move­ment — and the one whose imprac­ti­cal­i­ty came soon­est to light.

Before he became Brazil’s most famous archi­tect, Oscar Niemey­er sub­scribed to the prin­ci­ples of the Inter­na­tion­al Style. But then, as an acolyte of Le Cor­busier, he could hard­ly have done oth­er­wise. When the great man came to Rio de Janeiro in 1936 to design the new Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion and Health, Niemey­er was hired to work on the project.

The expe­ri­ence seems to have done its part to con­vince him that the Inter­na­tion­al Style was­n’t as inter­na­tion­al as all that, and fur­ther­more, that its rigid dic­tates would have to be bent to suit his home­land. This bend­ing would, in a sense, be lit­er­al: like Frank Gehry or Zaha Hadid after him, Niemey­er devot­ed his archi­tec­ture to the pur­suit of the curve, inspired by exam­ples seen in every­thing from the moun­tains of Brazil’s land­scape to the bod­ies of its women.

In 1956, the new­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent Jusceli­no Kubitschek imme­di­ate­ly real­ized the plan, writ­ten into the coun­try’s con­sti­tu­tion long before, of build­ing a new cen­tral city to relieve Rio of its sta­tus as the cap­i­tal. Chris­tened Brasília, it was to be con­struct­ed on a vast, emp­ty plateau entire­ly along ratio­nal, mod­ernist guide­lines, with defined dis­tricts orga­nized along a cru­ci­form city plan often likened to a bird or an air­plane and mon­u­men­tal struc­tures meant to project a for­ward-look­ing image. Niemey­er was select­ed to design those struc­tures, which imme­di­ate­ly became ele­ments of the city’s visu­al sig­na­ture upon its inau­gu­ra­tion in 1960: ever since, sel­dom has a pho­to­graph failed to include the twin tow­ers and domes of his Nation­al Con­gress or the Space-Age crown of thorns atop his Cathe­dral of Brasília.

The both admin­is­tra­tive and oth­er­world­ly form of cen­tral Brasília remains allur­ing, though the city itself began draw­ing crit­i­cism even before its com­ple­tion. “This is what you get when per­fect­ly decent, intel­li­gent and tal­ent­ed men start think­ing in terms of space, rather than place, and about sin­gle rather than mul­ti­ple mean­ings,” declared a frown­ing Robert Hugh­es in his 1980 TV series The Shock of the New. “It’s what you get when you design for polit­i­cal aspi­ra­tions and not real human needs. You get miles of jer­ry-built pla­ton­ic nowhere infest­ed with Volk­swa­gens.” Indeed, the dom­i­na­tion of car infra­struc­ture and strict sep­a­ra­tion of func­tions hard­ly proved con­ducive to the spon­ta­neous, con­vivial aspects of Brazil­ian life. But res­i­dents and vis­i­tors alike tend to report that Brasíli­a’s urban design has been improved as its pop­u­la­tion has grown, and mas­sive­ly, with com­men­su­rate improve­ments to its qual­i­ty of life over the decades. It may not inspire many bossa nova songs, but the cap­i­tal nev­er­the­less reflects a gen­uine facet of what Brazil is — and what it once dreamed of becom­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A is for Archi­tec­ture: 1960 Doc­u­men­tary on Why We Build, from the Ancient Greeks to Mod­ern Times

Leonar­do da Vin­ci Designs the Ide­al City: See 3D Mod­els of His Rad­i­cal Design

Why Dutch & Japan­ese Cities Are Insane­ly Well Designed (and Amer­i­can Cities Are Ter­ri­bly Designed)

Frank Lloyd Wright Designs an Urban Utopia: See His Hand-Drawn Sketch­es of Broad­acre City (1932)

The World Accord­ing to Le Cor­busier: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Most Mod­ern of All Archi­tects

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Brazil’s Nation­al Muse­um & Its Arti­facts: Google Dig­i­tized the Museum’s Col­lec­tion Before the Fate­ful Fire

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.