Costa, Lúcio (1902–1998)

Lúcio Costa (b. 27 February 1902; d. 13 June 1998), Brazilian urban planner, best known for designing the city plan of Brasília. Born in Toulon, France, Costa was part of an extraordinary flowering of creative genius in Rio de Janeiro in the 1950s that included, among others, the architect Oscar Niemeyer, the landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx (Costa's neighbor), and the creators of Bossa Nova, such as Antônio Carlos Jobim and Luís Bonfa. Twenty-six plans, some with elaborate models labored over for months by entire architectural firms, were submitted in the 1955 design competition for the new capital. Costa produced his plan in sixty-four hours. His only expenditures were for paper, pencils, and an eraser. Disillusioned by Brasília's failure to catalyze social change, as he and Niemeyer had hoped, Costa said, "You don't solve the social problems of a country by simply moving its capital, and in Brazil the main problem is the huge base of poor in the country." He died in Rio de Janeiro in June 1998.

See alsoArchitecture: Modern Architecture .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alex Shoumatoff, The Capital of Hope (1980).

Additional Bibliography

Buchmann, A. Lúcio Costa: O inventador da cidade de Brasília, centenário de nascimento. Brasília: Thesaurus Editora, 2002.

El-Dadah, Farés. CASE: Lucio Costa, Brasilia's superquadra. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, 2005.

Miranda, Wander Melo. Anos JK: Margens da modernidade. São Paulo: Imprensa Oficial, 2002.

Nobre, Ana Luiza. Um modo de ser moderno: Lúcio Costa e a crítica contemporanea. São Paulo: Cosac & Naify Ediçoes, 2004.

Wisnik, Guilherme, and Lúcio Costa. Lúcio Costa. Säo Paulo: Cosac & Naify Ediçoes, 2001.

                                    Alex Shoumatoff