7.2 – The lúcio costa project

Lúcio Costa was born in 1902 in Toulon, France and died in 1998 in Rio de Janeiro. He lived in England and Switzerland and moved to Brazil in 1917. In 1922, he graduated as an architect from the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro. He developed some neocolonial projects at the beginning of his career but later adhered to modernism, inspired by the work of Le Corbusier.

With the transfer of the capital to the Central Plain, the National Contest for the Pilot Plan in the New Capital of Brazil was organized in 1956, in which the architect submitted a project. The next year, the winning project was published, that designed by Lúcio Costa.

The Brasilia Pilot Plan project is a landmark of architecture and urbanism, was inspired by modern urbanism, included a hierarchical system of access roads and the separation of vehicles and pedestrians, applying principles of road and urban technique. The city was planned along two axes, on which the main axis the public buildings would be concentrated and on the other, the residential sector: the South and North Wings. At the intersection of the two axes, at the center of town, was the area designated for the bus station and the leisure and commerce sectors.

In 1987, the book Brasília Revisitada (Brasilia Revisited) was published by Lúcio Costa, where he included four phases of urban planning: residential, community, bucolic and monumental. These phases were instituted by means of Decree 10.829 on October 14, 1987.

Among his most notable works are the three apartment buildings of Parque Guinle (1948 and 1950); the preliminary draft of the Casa do Brasil (Brazil House) in the Cidade Universitária (University City) in Paris (1953); the main office for the Jockey Club in the center Rio (1956); the Banco Aliança (Aliança Bank) (1956), besides the Master Plan for the Barra da Tijuca in Rio de Janeiro (1969), and, not the least, the urban project for Brasilia, which gained him international acclaim.