Description

CLOVIS DE MAGALHÃES. / INSTITUTO BRASILEIRO DE GEOGRAFIA E ESTATÍSTICA.

[Rio de Janeiro:] Serviço Gráfico do I.B.G.E. [Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística], 1958.

 

As Brazil passed the midpoint of the 20^th century, the country’s economy and politics were utterly dominated by Rio de Janeiro, the capital since 1763, and São Paulo, the national commercial centre, both located in the southeastern part of the country.  Much of the rest of Brazil, particularly its vast central and northern regions, languished as impoverished hinterlands with little say in the direction of the republic.

 

The populist President Juscelino Kubitschek (in office 1956-61) was elected on a promise to move the capital from Rio de Janeiro to a location in Central Brazil, in order to redirect some the nation’s energy out of the southeast.  It was also hoped that creating a new, clean, spacious and utilitarian capital of a powerful modernist design would bolster Brazil’s ambitions as one of the world’s great emerging industrial and cultural powers.

 

The notion of moving the capital out of Rio was nothing new.  In 1827, not long after Brazilian independence, José Bonifácio, an advisor to Emperor Pedro I, proposed the creation of a new capital, ‘Brasília’, at an undetermined location in central Brazil.  However, for political reasons the plan never got off the ground.  Going fast-forward, Brazil’s first republican constitution (1891) had an article which mandated moving the national capital to the country’s centre, but this do not occur due to pressing economic and political pressures.

 

It was only in the 1950s, when Brazil, buoyed by post-WWII optimism and economic expansion, that the dream of a new capital could be realized.  In October 1955, José Ludovico de Almeida, the governor of the central state of Goiás, proposed that a new capital be carved out of the territory of his state.  Such a measure would surely boost the weak regional economy.

 

Kubitschek took up Almeida’s mantle as soon as he assumed office in January 1956, immediately initiating plans to create to create a New Federal District (Novo Distrito Federal), carved out of the state of Goiás, within which the new capital city of Brasília would be built from scratch out of what was the almost complete wilderness of the highlands of the Planalto Central.

 

In 1957, an international jury selected a design for Brasília that was proposed by the architect and urban planner Lúcio Costa, a former student of Le Corbusier, from whom he drew much inspiration.  Costa was supported by an all-star team that included the legendary Modernist architects Oscar Niemeyer and the engineer Joaquim Cardozo, while landscaping was to be overseen by Roberto Burle Marx.

 

Costa’s design followed the ‘Plano Piloto’, as the core of Brasília was to be built in the shape of an airplane, located upon a peninsula within a mandate lake.  The Praça dos Três Poderes, named for the republic’s three branches of government, was to occupy the ‘cockpit’, while the ministries were to line a grand mall that ran down the ‘fuselage’.  The city’s ‘wings’, composed of numbered blocks, were to host designated sectors for specified functions, such as the Hotel Sector, the Banking Sector, and the Embassy Sector.  Brasília main public edifices were to be grand whitewashed Modernist structures, placed upon spacious, landscaped lots, while the city was to generally follow a ‘green city’ concept.  This was all intended to be a juxtaposition to the comparatively chaotic and crowded nature of Brazil’s other major cities.

 

Brasília was built at breakneck speed, although with considerable care, overseen by Costa and his all-star team.  The total cost of the city’s construction was US $1.5 billion (U.S. $25 billion it today’s dollars!), an astounding sum, especially for a developing country.  Brasília was completed as a functional city by the time that it was declared the capital of Brazil on April 21, 1960.

 

In the decades since, the Brasília project is roundly considered to have been a great success.  The capital is the wealthiest major city in Latin America, as well as having the highest standard of living.  It is a far more serene place in which to conduct official business than other major Brazilian cities, while it has managed to draw some energy from the Rio-São Paulo corridor to the centre and north of Brazil, although perhaps not as much as Kubitschek would have dreamed.

 

Today Brasília has a population of 4.5 million, with its original “Plano Piloto” being preserved and well maintained.  Several of its public building are amongst the greatest icons of Modernism ever produced, and the city became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.

 

The Magalhães Plan in Focus

 

The task of mapping the new capital went to Clovis de Magalhães, an architect and urbanist, who was the de facto chief official Brazilian cartographer, holding dual roles as the Superintendente da Divisão de Cartografia de Gabinete and chief cartographer of the

Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE), the latter being the organization which was to assist Costa and his team with geographical matters.

 

Magalhães’s present map is the official Brazilian government masterplan of the Novo Distrito Federal, showing the envisaged complete design of the ‘Plano Piloto’ and the suburbs and surrounding infrastructure.  Notably, in 1958, when the present map was made, what is shown was only partially built, although what would arise would precisely follow what is depicted.

 

The map embraces the complete expanse of the Novo Distrito Federal, which is shown to be a roughly rectangular tract of 5,670.8 sq. km, of what was until recently a largely underdeveloped part of the Planalto Central, caved out of Goiás state, adjacent to the Minas Gerais frontier.  Beyond Brasília, located on the shores of a newly created reservoir, Lake Paranoá, the map labels all fazendas, roads, rivers and ravines, with elevation expressed by contour linos.  Notably, a new railway and expressway are shown which connect the city to populated centres to the south.

 

The details of the new capital can be seen more sharply in the inset map, in the lower right, the ‘Planta geral da cidade de Brasília / 1:50,000’.  Here the Plano Piloto unfurls with 37 key sites identified by numbers in the key belew.  No. 1. the Praça dos Três Poderes, occupies the cockpit, while 2. the Esplanada dos Ministérios features the main government offices.  Beyond, are the sectors designated for various activities, including 4. Setor Cultural, 6. Setor of Bancos e Escritórios, 7. Setor Comercial, 8. the sector for hotels; 16. the Embassy Quarter; and 17. the Setor Residencial.  Other key sites include 3. the Cathedral, 20. Botanical Gardens, 21. Zoo, 24. Presidential Palace, 26. Fair Grounds and 30. Golf Club.

 

Until recently, Magalhães’s plan was thought to be the first printed map of the Novo Distrito Federal; however, this honour goes to an obscure and exceedingly rare work made by a local mapmaker, Joffre Mozart Parada, made for Goiás Governor José Ludovico de Almeida.  However, significantly the present map seems to be the earliest printed map of the Novo Distrito Federal to feature Costa’s ‘Plano Piloto’ design of Brasília.

 

A Note on Rarity

 

The present work is extremely rare.  It was likely made in only a small print run for official use, while its large size would have seen many examples perish due to wear and tear.  The only institutional examples we can trace worldwide are the 4 copies held by the Biblioteca Nacional do Brazil, although there are surely a handful of additional examples in Brazilian institutions that are not registered online.  Moreover, we cannot find any sales records for any other examples.

 

Th present large format map should not be confused with another, much smaller version which seems to have been made later (perhaps 1960), Magalhães’s Novo Distrito Federal, scale circa 1:230,000, measuring 47 x 29 cm (see OCLC: 11968515).

 

References: Biblioteca Nacional do Brasil (4 examples): ARC.017,07,034; ARC.017,07,035; ARC.033,10,009; ARC.033,10,009; OCLC: 10028450994 (but not specifying holding institution); BIBLIOTECA NACIONAL DO BRASIL, Boletim bibliográfico, Volume 11 (1961), p. 256; CORREIO BRAZILIENSE, Brasília, 40 anos: uma história que continua sendo escrita (2000), p. 32.