7.6 – Brasilia urban signage

The Brasilia signage project is by architect Danilo Barbosa and was developed by his team at the Companhia de Planejamento do Distrito Federal (Federal District Planning Company) – Codeplan at the end of the 1970s. Danilo was born in São José do Rio Preto, came to Brasilia in 1968 to study architecture at the University of Brasilia, worked professionally in different Federal District Government institutions and retired in 2017.

The signs were designed to make finding locations by pedestrians and drivers easier. To this end, the standards from the InterAmerican Sign Manual were adopted. The process for planning the signage was considered so as to not interfere with the landscape and to seek to assimilate the city scales. At first, the signs were installed using a plaster of Paris structure. It was only in the 90s that these structures were replaced with steel. Each color used has a meaning:

Green indicates the direction of a determined location;

Blue indicates the place the person is;

Brown indicates tourist sites.

In 2010, the Brasilia signage project was submitted to the design committee at the Museum of Modern Art (Moma) in New York and, in 2012, the signs received a place in the permanent museum display. The model chosen to represent the capital signage was the blue model that identifies the direction of Supersquares (107/ 307, 108/ 308 South).