3/25/2023 0 Comments Hilbersheimer highrise city![]() The extreme contrast between Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia is not fortuitous. One is occupied by the senate and the other, inverted and much larger is occupied by the Chamber of Deputies. Here, elevated on the ground plane, are two half spheres. ![]() A monumental axis with open space in the center frames a large elevated platform then we find a ten-meter separation between the office slabs, oriented east-west in alignment with the sun. ![]() Here I am also reminded of Teotihuacán, mixed up with Leonidov’s Dom Narkomtjazjprom 1933 project on Moscow’s Red Square. The infinite expanse of the landscape, and the fluid movement through its highways-overpasses without traffic lights-is interrupted by the repetitive alignment of identical government high-rise slabs reminiscent of Ludwig Hilberseimer’s ideal city projects. Within this horizontality, the monumental government buildings, symbolic of a new country, are modest interruptions in this powerful, almost extraterrestrial, landscape. The result is an empty city built on a “higher plane” from which we feel that we are always looking at the horizon. Its infinite vista-first seen in Vaux le Vicompte and then perfected in Versailles-is superimposed on the universal and abstract space of Mies. Here in Brasilia, this idea is moved forward into a real space and a real city. This emptiness in Brasilia is the clearest example of how the desire for a “tabula rasa” (not as in a blank slate, but as according to the Sanskrit, a plane of essence) as the foundation for a new architecture could only exist on paper. It was Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe’s concept of “universal space” that inspired Niemeyer.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |