Aliens land in Brasilia

Homage to Kubrick, view of Brasilia from the top of the telecommunications tower, 2001

Icon of modernist architecture, photogenic symbol of Brasilian democracy, disfigured utopia, institutional template for a centralised capitalist state, geo-political claim on Amazonia, graveyard for construction workers, mecca for Latin American architecture students, a 19th century Portuguese priest’s vision of a new civilisation, the city of Brasilia is all these things and more. When I first went to architecture school in the 1970s, the discourse on modern architecture was dominated by all the great white men; Walter Gropius, Mies Van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto and of course Oscar Niemeyer who took Lucio Costa’s enigmatic sketch of an anchor and blew it up into three dimensions.  Photographed endlessly and written about probably more than any other work of Brasilian architecture, there is not a lot I can add apart from to tell you about mad cults and aliens. From the very beginning there was something out of kilter about Brasilia. It is a characteristic that it shares with other new build capital cities born out of sentimental patriotism and nationalist delusion. For those born in Brasilia, they will not hear a word said against the place. It’s far more than the sum of its architectural monuments, and if you are willing to embrace it, you will learn to live with the constant swirl of red dust that coagulates in nose, ear, and throat. You will get used to the lack of pavements, for this is a Fordist car town of spiralling roads and shopping malls. You will also become accustomed to regular sightings of UFOs and charlatan prophets. The preponderance of Ambassadorial jets, drones, politician’s helicopters, and military aircraft means that the night-time skies around Brasilia are thick with curious luminous objects. The abstract cones, towers and domes of Niemeyer’s buildings add to the sense of otherworldliness.[1] Then, there are the crazies. On the day I visited, a group off about thirty individuals dressed in long white flowing robes were circulating around the telecommunications’ tower. In an ambulatory trance they handed out scraps of paper with an illuminati like eye, open book, beams of crystal light, and an invitation; join us friend on a journey into the stars, the ship is coming at any moment.

[1] The surreal SF landscape of Brasilia is well captured in the documentary film, A Machine to Live in, 2022, by Yoni Goldstein and Meredith Zielke.