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te constructively - it is possible, according to an optimistic prognosis, to decrease the elemental force that is present in space at the moment.
Assist, prof. Tadeja. Zupančič Strojan, Ph.D., architect, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of architecture, Ljubljana E-mail; tadeja.zupancic@arh.uni-lj.si
Matevž Juvančič, architect, Arhiteka d.o.o., Ljubljana E-mail: matevz.juvancic@l<iss.uni-lj.si
For sources and literature turn to page 43.
Notes;
ni W. M, Eysenck, M. Keane, 2000; 244.
12J K. Rattenbury, 2002:1
i^I A. Perez-Gomez, 2002: 3.
l''] H. Hertzberger, 1991.
[5| K. Rattenbury, 2002: XXI, XXIII.
[6] A. Voigt.et.al., 2002.
G. Ucelli et al, 1999: 539. [S] A. Obeid in A. F. Ibrahim, 1999: 33. [^I P. Bosselman, 1998. noi T. Zupančič Strojan. 1999: 107.
T. Dierckx et.al, 2002.
Illustrations
Figure 1: Conceptual presentations
The group of conceptual presentations used in the research (Presentations prepared on the international urban ism worl<shop in Komen 2001, supplemented, and alternated for the needs of the research). Figure 2: Experience based presentations
The group of experience based presentations used in the research (Presentations prepared on the international urbanism workshop in Komen 2001, supplemented, and alternated for the needs of the research). Figure 3: Architects choice:
The group of presentations according to the choice of the planner - a mixture of conceptual and experience-based presentations (Presentations prepared on the international urbanism worl<shop in Komen 2001, supplemented, and alternated for the needs of the research). Figure 4: Research ~ questionnaire
Interviewees were faced with a web questionnaire. The left side contained a group of presentations, and the right a group of closed, and semi-open, questions.
Špela HUDNIK
Architecture and communication
1. Introduction
Ideas about popular culture are tightly connected to theories of mass culture. The latter even more so with Marchall Mc-Luhan's legendary quotations: »the media is a message« and "the world is a global village«, which are being unstop-pably and quickly achieved with the ongoing revolution in electronics. Richard Hamilton, the British pop-artist describes the new aesthetics of the sixties - pop culture - as »popular, transitional, consumerist, cheap, massive, youthful, funny, sexy, glamorous and commercial.« The sixties were therefore the time that had the strongest influence on the vision of the future. It was a time that bridged the gap between architecture and other artistic fields. It was the time of popular culture that was full of symbols and metaphors, new visual sensibility, which demanded changes, pleasure and novelties. New technologies evolving from completed projects by NASA, development of the media, science fiction and pop culture influenced the mergence of futuristic fashion, design, art, music, city planning and urban regeneration. The terms mass society, communication and consumerism were given significance even in architecture. This was the first time that an entire generation of artists and architects worked globally and despite geographical differences (London - Archigram, Vienna - Coop Himmelblau, Hollein, Missing Link, Haus-Rucker-Co, Florence - Archizoom, Su-perstudio, Tokyo - Metabolists etc.) offered common visionary concepts about cities and architecture. Influenced by Andy Warhol, Cleas Oldenburg, Roy Liechtenstein and Tom Wesselmann, the most distinguished representatives of pop art, they projected their visions by various media (collage, film, performances, installations, newspapers, posters). Warhol reproduced millions of icons of the media society and became the trademark of Coca Cola, Campbell, Brillo and other commercial products. In the film Barbarella (1967), directed by Roger Vadim, Paco Rabanne dressed Jane Fonda in a metal dress. A fantastic world of sensible, sensitive and tactile surfaces and soft organic plastic forms was offered by Olivier Mourgue and André Courrčges for the psychedelic landscape in Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The »Poster Dress« with Bob Dylan as its motif, the modular system of chairs and interiors by Verner Panton, Pierre Cardin's space-age hat and spherical TV sets and chairs, designed by Eero Aarnio, represent innovations that are founded on technological promotion of the consumerist society. Consumerism and technology became the providers of human needs and desires.
Today Velvet Underground and Nico are replaced by new pop-icons on the music scene: Madonna, Björk, Bowie. Martin Margiela, Maria Blaisee, Hussein Chalayan, Issey Miyake, Jean Paul Gaultier are fashion designers of technological membranes, message bearers, interfaces between bodies and architecture. Jeff Koons popularised Cic-ciolina, Martin Creed created soft, mobile environments and Jenny Holzer wrote art on electronic displays. She creates media spaces and searches for limits between information and propaganda. Even architecture is entering electronically stimulated environments. Mass consumerism and icons of
(Ji
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pop-culture are being euphorically produced in various »worlds and Las Vegases« as simulated reality that supports dynamic flows of capital investment, while offering concepts of media membranes, soft architecture, fluid and trans-liquid architecture, hyper-surfaces, hyper-bodies etc.
2. Landscape of megastructures
The sixties were strongly marked by the concept of multi-di-mensional relations, expressed with mobile, communicatlonal and biological urbanistic concepts, as well as changed basic principles of living i.e. »comfort and satisfaction«, enabled by technological advancement and growing possibilities of individual mobility. In such society of megastructures and mobility the analogy between anatomical structure and architecture, intertwined with communication flows of transport and media, manifests itself by concepts of: temporality, Hexibility, translation and transition. Multiplication of space is »in the function of slanting planes«, whose mutual interaction supports "Continuous, fluid motion that forces bodies to adapt to instability,... to create a sensory relation with architecture'^'^]. It is the time of simultaneous individual and social bodies. Following ideals of the automobile or mobile home, the independent living unit thus became Fuller's Dymaxion House (1942), a mobile entity of increasingly more automated industrial production "... that has to be as a human, as independent and self-maintaining as possible, with its own character, pride and beauty or harmony<<\'^\. It becomes a transitory and temporary consumer product, which incredibly »resembles the idea of continuous changing of clothesa hybrid of architecture and transport as the mode of mobility that is repeated on the dynamic organism's grand scale - the mega-structure, which is composed of construction grids of particular units locked into infrastructure systems. Colonisation of these huge, extreme, antigravity, empty spaces thus influenced radical transformation of the body and architecture. Space emerges as the alternative living space, which demands symbiosis of body and technology for survival.
2.1 Communication flux
Constant growth and transformation of systems with small, rapidly changeable cells or capsules correspond to growing personal mobility or autopia, the concept by Archigram -. The automobile city and individual transportation vehicle, »which isn't only a transportation mode, but a way of life ... representing freedom, choice, mobliity status symbol, ... it is a communication medium"\^\. Their projects: Plug-in City, Instant City, Walking City, are metropolis travelling on telescopic hydraulic appendages or air cushions that travel and offer new media universes and mobility in packages. Space as a self-regulated mobile hydraulic machine with autonomous mobile capsules, programmes limited in time with changeable contents and multi-level diagonal communication systems are reactions to constancy, rigidity and psychological surfaces of security. Properties of megastructures, such as mobility, communication, sensitivity and flexibility, are diminished properties of microstructures, while abilities to adapt to processes of change are properties of the body.
2.2 Metabolic flux
Biological systems of growth and change are formed by transgression in scale from particular functional cells to me-
gastructures and complex relations between particular cells, mobile units and forms. Japanese Metabolists introduced processes of biological metabolism, dynamic urban flows that are the theoretical rationale behind material and energy metabolism, with projects, such as »coils«, »multi-di-mensional matrix« and »levitating factory«.
» We use the word metabolism in the widest sense, which includes growth and metamorphosis. Biological metabolism pertains to changes and exchange of substance within living organisms. We manage relations between intertwined flows of human information patterns, things and energy (energy metabolism) and spatial units of separated service and living cells with respect to differing rhythms of metabolism (material metabolism). Systems of growth that include expansion of quantity show themselves as metamorphosis within the whole form of the system,
Dispersed dynamic flows in transport and communication networks, active invisible processes, cease to be external communication systems, but merge with or penetrate the architectural body, intervene in its internal structure and enable the transformation of particular structural systems.
2.3 Anthropological module
The anthropological model of the capsule and expansion of psycho-physiological body functions for extra-terrestrial experiencing of limitless space were undertaken through the media and directly by architecture »that substitutes the physical plan with a psychological one; there are no walls; spaces are pulsating balloons; the heartbeat becomes space; the face is the fagade.«\^\ Proposals by Coop Him-melb{l)au's group and Haus-Rucker-Co see internal structures of bodies, together with their organs and organisation as Utopian projects of pneumatic and inflatable structures. Architecture assumes the form of transparent, sensitive bodies of complex media systems and technologies, with attributes of temporality and communication.
>>We are people from the eighteenth and nineteenth century but we have to live in environments of the twentieth and twenty first century.«U\ The dynamism of constant social changes radically reaches into interiors of extant individual envelopes by introducing various media (telephone, radio, television), thus completely changing human perception of space. They offer experiences and test reactions of bodies in media and audiovisual spaces.
The idea about minimal individual dwelling as a form of electronic attire was most radically expressed in the projects Cushicle and Suitaloon by Mika Webb, which provided »all necessary services: a) motion, b) enlargement of the envelope, c) energy ... the possibility for two people to live in one envelope or linl<s to other envelopes
3. Nomadic landscape
The nomadic landscape is a landscape of media and migration flows. It is a vast network of variable relations, knots emitting and receiving various dynamic information flows. The homogenous, hierarchical structure is replaced by a transitional, faceless, blooming media space. Public and private spaces become a hybrid between body and landscape, body and architecture, architecture and landscape. Car-
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tesian axes, geometry and radial nets are replaced with at-tractors. The architectural theoretician Betsky described them as »points of events that are momentary, transitional, points of maximised concentration and emptiness «. Furthermore, they are »defined by digitai media and capitai flows of large corporations, which constantly unite, divide and die, while their products change cities. They leave behind large voids, invisible floating networks and screens that materialise unpredictably and again disappear
Arjun Appadurai defines this landscape of dynamic flows (people, technology, media, finance and politics) as »a landscape of irregular form, composed of metropolis and characterised by international capital...« I^o] urban structures become impersonal, uniform, transitional spaces of io-cal and global transfers. The trademark Coca Cola appears as a landscape's face and iiquid tied to the metabolism of the modern nomad populating the landscape, Modern nomads operate in combined environments (material and immaterial) on platforms of global economy, whose infrastructure is becoming »their day-to-day living, cultural, working and leisure space as a consequence of changes in time and spatial dimensions« as put by the Dutch theoretician Roemer van Toorn.nil They constantly travel on the main arteries of global economy, running between London, New York, Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo. They don't have a permanent or actual address.
Changes in content of nomadic landscapes and bodies that are in constant transition become key stimuli for achieving architecture, whose durability of form dissolves into spatial vibrations.
3.1 Media screen
The architectural surface is becoming an important media, bearer of information that enables experiences, knowledge and evaluation of the world. Light displays are not only instruments of communication, representation and consumerism, but also a system of landmarks, markers and signposts. They are changing into screens, »techno-pictures", as put by the media.theoretician Vllém Flusser, »they reach and programme us in colours.«l'^^ This new form of changeable surfaces establishes the physicallty of numerical processes and forecasts the translation of sensory, dynamic and communicatio-nal human properties into constructed environments. The surface acts as a skin, neural system, as an acoustic or visual membrane. Space ceases to be a vacuum inhabited by solid bodies, but becomes a media for the diffusion of information. Transformation of walls into hyper-surfaces doesn't separate the body from the environment, interior from the exterior, but becomes a surface for different relations and mutual ties that behave as systems of change, in which architecture exceeds Its limits of formal manifestation.
3.2 Private space
The modern nomad that has expanded one's bodily functions with digital appendages stops relating through forms but through landscape, transport and architectural information codes, i.e. desists from the utopia of the transportable, mobile environment of the Walking City or autopia of the motor car as the communication media and enters info-topia. Existence as such is expanded into various worlds of material and immaterial networks seen as material-digital suits.
To build the Identity of private nomadic space during processes of changing speed, efficiency and marketing, the body buys fashionable technological novelties from the global market.
Capital corporations become part of their living environment, working and metabolism, The function and emotional significance of living space change. Personal space of new forms of economic power transform into a hybrid of public space and private identity - personal suitcase. When the suitcase becomes a room or as Elisabeth Diller put it: »mobile unit of home and suit - room for the body<<['^^i, it is the form of mobile, temporary, changeable and adaptable architecture, which a society in transition needs. It is an architecture that changes identity, needs and taste and changes its exterior and interior. The assembled and folding environment of furniture and clothes becomes the mobile personal space of the nomadic body. It researches interfaces between the object and body, which erase limits between the body and space. The personal space becomes a momentary event on the common territory of the transit network -people, material and information. It becomes a diagrammatic model of time. The suitcase becomes a merged architecture of material, construction, circulation and programme. Its interior becomes the exterior of public media images of control, communication and business strategy. It becomes information »that is accessible, controlled and transformed from anywhere in the world
4. Psychedelic landscape
Architecture and culture are becoming models of the spatial-time global network and network algorithms. This implies redefinition of architectural proportions, which cease to correspond to proportions of the body, but to information and time. Values of the material and virtual systems are integrated in one organisational structure.
The psychedelic landscape is becoming »a liquid data structure, architectural tectonics information and the brick a pi-It is a data-backed home of constructs of changeable situations that are not only objects but also three-dimensional interfaces. They can be stretched, elastic, mobile, adaptable and interactive net structures. Architecture with its programmed electronic interior and external elastic surface stretches and contracts like a body's muscle in a multi-user, multi-sensory net environment and enters real space.
4.1 Hyper and info-morphic body
The architecture of electronic components of artificial intelligence that solve algorithms of spatial and corporate problems is forecasting a trans-modern way of life of hyper- and info-morphic bodies. The hyper-body designed by the Dutch architect Kas Gosterhuis is a »body, which feeds on information, digests and excretes them in real time, it is a construct that communicates with itself and the world. Part of the body exchanges internal information to maintain the body's perfection, part of the body exchanges information with other bodies in the external world to define its own position.
Marcus Novak's info-morphic bodies are morphologically independent bodies that fluidly transform and are independent of the world's physical substance. They are intelligent entities. He defines the concept of fluid and trans-fluid arc-

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hitecture as the architecture of »effects by variables, algorithmic concepts, prototypes, Interactive homes, tele-pre-sence and tele-communication that create a new continuity between real and virtual space in the sense of adapting to conditions of constant transformation achieved in virtual space and constant ties to physical space. «I""^!
4.2 Bio-electronic bodies
Bio-electronic bodies, a combination of mechanical and programme equipment are becoming a system of real and virtual liquefacation of events, thus becoming an interacting animation of environments and bodies. These responsive and elastic systems that can stretch and contract, grow or expand, change their morphology in real time, are spaces of mutation of a body's biorhythm, its internal and external motion and external influences. The interior of architectural membranes is steadily becoming more organic, sensitive, flexible and interactive, It is aware of inherent changes and responds by activating specific behaviour. It assumes the form of translation of sensual, dynamic and communicative propertied of the body into constructed material environments.
»We are experiencing extreme liquefaction of the world, languages, sexes, our bodies ... We have entered a world where everything Is mediated, where all things and spaces merge with their media image, where all forms mix with Information« stated Lars Spuybroek and continued »Body architecture and technology are becoming a plasma of concrete and flesh. In which we can respond dynamically<<}'^^\
4.3 Bodies of population genetics
By introducing information into development systems with unlimited possibilities for mutation they are no longer bodies of symmetry and proportion, bodies are no longer parts of the »evolution process, where living creatures modify their information and demand others, but become live organisms designed and inspired by information.According to Greg Lynn, the embryological and morphological process defined by genetic parameters, which begins in the fertilised cellular core and continues into the fully developed body, becomes an unending topological surface that doesn't duplicate forms, but shifts them into various contexts of selection, mutation, migration and isolation. It is an embryological architecture of undetermined, unrepeatable morpho-genetic models of self-organised form »uniting genes, monstrous hybrids, architectural theory and cybernetic science flctlon«^^'^\ which don't grow in days, weeks or years, but in the electronic environment of the digital time process of interacting changeable information flows.
The symbiotic and metabolic balance between body and environment is taken over by the electronic space of simulated reproduction of form with variable genetic codes.
5. Conclusion
The effect of science, technology and capital strategies on changes in traditional forms and definitions of space, architecture and body can be seen in cross-sections of three landscapes: the landscape of megastructures, nomadic landscape and psychedelic landscape. During the last four decades all have offered illusions of the world but are awa-
re of radical changes brought by the development of media and space-age technology, information technology and electronic language. They present understanding of new processes of thought and living, which constantly transform into new dynamic time and spatial contexts. Mass use of information technology, consumerism and advertisements that offer worlds of illusion refer to emotional and visual sensitivity of the individual. In the name of capital they convince us with attractive, idealised, unattainable pop-icons on screens. In his novel 2.999 SIT l^i], Frederic Beigbeder wrote: »Whereveryou look, my advertisement reigns. The terrorism of novelty helps me in selling voids. If I stick yoghurt on the walls of your city, rest assured, you would buy it. You think of course that the right of choice Is yours, but some day you will recognise my product on a supermarket shelf and simply buy it, just to try it, believe me, I know my job ... I'm an advertiser.«
Thus confrontation and critical dialogue with new scientific and technological inventions, which still don't have massive effects on reality, is necessary, before they become an evolutionary fact.
Dr. Špela Hudnik, Ph, D., architect, Monochrome - Centre for architecture and new media, Ljubljana E-mail: monochrome@archnewmedia.org
Notes:
ni Lucan, J.: Introduction. In: Johnston, P. (ed): The Function of the Oblique. The Architecture of Claude Parent and Paul Virilio 1963-1969. AA Publications, London, 1996, p. 5.
12| Krausse, J., Lichlenstein, C. (ed): Your Private sky. R. Buck-minster Fuller. Art Design Science. Lars Müller Publishers, Baden, 1999, p. 127.
[31 AD: A Guide to Archigram 1961-74. Academy Edition, London, 1994, p. 66.
I'^l AD: A Guide to Archigram 1961-74. Academy Edition, London, 1994, p. 262.
[5| Kurokawa, N.: From the Machine-analogy to the Living-thing Analogy. In: Pettena, G.: Radicals. Design and Architecture 1960/75. II Ventilabro, Firence, 1996, p. 268.
[6| Coop Himmelblau: The Medium as a Construction Material. In: Ars Electronica 94: Intelligent Environment. PVS Verleger, Vienna, Partv 1, 1994, p. 58.
|7] Schmiedeknecht, T: The Ephemeral in the Work of Haus-Rucker-Co. In: AD: Ephemeral/ Portable Architecture. Academy Edition, London, Vol, 68, No.135, 1998, p. 38.
|8| AD: A Guide To Archigram 1961-74. Academy Edition, London, 1994, p. 207.
[9| Hudnik, Š.: Moderna telesa. Mednarodni festival arhitektura in novi mediji - bionični teritoriji. In: AB: Preobrazba/Trans-formations. Ljubljana, Vol.. XXX , No. 149-150, 2000, p. 72, Appadurai, A,: Modernity at Large. Culture Dimensions of Globalisation. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1996, p. 33.
["■■"I Hudnik, Š.: Moderna telesa. Mednarodni festival arhitektura in novi mediji - bionični teritoriji. In: AB: Preobrazba/Trans-formations. Ljubljana, Vol. XXX, No, 149-150, 2000, p, 72.
n^] Flusser, V.: Digitalni videz. Študentska založba, Ljubljana, 2000, p. 9. (Koda)
ns] Diller, E., Scofidio, R.: Flesh. Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1994, p. 205.
n^] Grether, R,: Breakthrough to the World Code: Etoy's Concept of Net Architecture. In; Koolhaas, R., Boeri, 8., Kwin-ter, S. Et al.: Mutations, Actar, Barcelona, 2000, p, 98.
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ps] Novak, M.: Transmitting Arctiitecture. transTerraFirma/Tids-vagNoIl v2,0, In: AD; Architecture in Cyberspace. Academy Edition, London, No. 118, 1995, p. 45. Oosterhuis, K.; Research survey. In: Hudnik, Š.: Mobilna arhitektura in možnosti njene uresničitve v realnem svetu, doktorska disertacija, Univerza v Ljubljani, Fakulteta za arhitekturo, Ljubljana, 2003, p. 181. n^] Novak, M.: Transarchitectures and Hypersurfaces. Operations of Transmodernity. In: AD: Hypersurface Architecture. Academy Edition, London, No.133, 1998, p. 87. ns] Zellner, P.: Hybrid Space. New Forms in Digital Architecture. Thames&Hudson, London, 1999, p. 112. I""®! Rifkin, J.: The Biotech Century. Phoenix, London, 1998, p. 188. [20] Lynn, G.: Foids, Bodies & Blobs. La Lettre Volée, Bruselj, 1998, p. 170.
|2il 99 Francs (French edition); 14.99 Euros (ED edition), 9.99 pounds (English edition).
For literature and sources turn to pages 51 and 52.
Figures (page 46 and 47)
1.	Coop Himmelblau: Villa Rosa, 1968
2.	Yuri Gagarin, 1968
3.	2001: A space Odyssey, 1968
4.	Pierre Cardin: Space-age helmet hat, 1966
5.	Coop Himmelblau: White Suit, 1969
6.	Marilyn Monroe, 1962
7.	A space Odyssey, 1968
8.	Deep Blue
9.	Screen for direct transmissions
10.	Open air cinema
11.	Perception of speed
12.	Kisho Kurokawa: Helix City, 1961
13.	Kisho Kurokawa: Floating Factory Metabonate, 1969
14.	Kisho Kurokawa: Box - Type apartments, 1962
15.	Haus-Rucker-Co: Environment transformer - Yellow Heart, 1968
16.	New Media
17.	Exhibition: Vision of Japan, 1991
18.	Pepsi Blue Launch Environment
19.	Exhibition: Vision of Japan, 1991
20.	The advertisment World
21.	Stephen Perrela: Hyper-surfaces - The Haptic Horizont, 1995
22.	Toyo Ito: Egg of Wind, 1988-91
23.	Advertisment for IBM
24.	Media Metropolis
25.	Suitcase - personal space - public image of information
26.	Hussein Chalayan: Coffee Table
27.	Matrix
28.	Distribution
29.	Migration Flows
30.	Fashion show: Brave New Unwired World 2000, Charmed Technology - model Lizzy
31.	Electronic artificial limb
32.	Chocolate tablet
33.	Marcus Novak: Data - Driven Forms, 1997-89
34.	Greg Lynn: blob
35.	Kas Oosterhuis: transPORTs 2001
36.	Recombined body by genetic engineering
37.	Space suit
38.	Maria Blaiss - Kuma Guma
39.	Kas Oosterhuis: transPORTs 2001
40.	Scene from the film Lawnmowerman
41.	Lars Spuybroek: Fresh Water Pavi 11 ion
42.	Kas Oosterhuis: Saltwater Pavillion
43.	Lars Spuybroek: Fresh Water Pavillion
44.	Recombined body by genetic engineering
45.	Greg Lynn: Digital embriologica! models
46.	John H. Frazier: The Interactivator
47.	Blasteroid
Roberto ROCCO
The image of the city Sao Paolo - Identity and crisis
1. Introduction - Brazil builds
In 1943, the MoMA of New York opened a spectacular photographic exhibition named »Brazil Builds: Architecture New and Old 1652 -1942«. Organised by architect Philip Goodwin, of MoMA International Relations Commission, and G. E, Kiddersmith, one of the greatest photographers of architecture in the XX century, the show introduced to the world what was then one of the most resourceful and original architectural movements in existence.
It was not a small surprise for art and architecture critics to find out that one of the largest and most paradigmatic modernist architectural projects had been carried out in Rio de Janeiro, In 1936, young architect Lucio Costa, closely assisted by Le Corbusier himself, had designed the building of the Ministry of Education, completed in 1944. It contained all elements Le Corbusier claimed for a modernist architecture, such as the pilotis, the toit-jardin, the brise-soleil and the pan-verre (Frampton, 1992: 254)
»Brazil Builds« introduced a whole new generation of young architects working feverishly somewhere else than Europe and North America: Oscar Niemeyer, Lucio Costa, brothers Marcelo and Milton Roberto, Afonso Reidy, Gregori Warc-havchik, Roberto Burle-Marx, Rino Levi, Alvaro Vital Brazil, among others. The architecture being made in Brazil became known as the »Brazilian School« and its exponents were distinguished by specialised critique as a »different branch of modernism" (Segawa, FSP: 30.09,2003),
As Frampton (1992) brilliantly summarises: »In Brazil, modern architecture had its origins in the mid-20's partnership of Lucio Costa and Gregori Warchavchik, en émigré Russian architect who had been influenced by Futurism during his studies in Rome and who had been responsible for the first cubistic houses in Brazil. With the revolution headed by Getulio Vargas in 1930 and the appointment of Costa as head of the schools of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro in 1931, modern architecture came to be welcomed in Brazil as a matter of national policy« (Frampton, 1992; 254). As World War II drew to an end, Brazil woke up from the turmoil of Getulio Vargas dictatorship and emerged as the »country of the future«. A spectacular economic growth was starting to come into view. Brazil would soon plunge into a period of remarkable prosperity and lasting democracy. Modern Architecture was intimately related to the project of modernisation of the country. This culminated in the construction of a brand new capital city, Brasilia, in the vast unoccupied lands of central Brazil,
Brasilia, planned by Costa, was erected from the scratch in a remarkably short span of time in the second half of the 50's, Its main buildings were commissioned to another young architect who had come into partnership with Costa during the construction of the Ministry of Education in Rio, Oscar Niemeyer. Frampton recognises that Brasilia, with its inhuman monumentality and intrinsic class separation, led