Where the Streets Have No Name: Brasília.

I’ll tell you about Rio a bit later, as well as other notable events of my trip. But first I want to tell you about Brasília, the capital of Brazil – for it’s rather an intriguing place…

The city was built from scratch in the early 1960s (meaning it’s less than 70 years old!) specially to become the capital – Brazil’s state-administrative center. The main buildings were designed by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer – known for his leading role in designing the UN headquarters in New York…

With a population of about 2.5 million, the city’s shaped like a bird (or airplane) – a long, narrow central part with two “wings” on each side. Here it is on Google Maps:

On analog maps the bird-airplane shape is even more distinct:

Interestingly, most of the city’s neighborhoods and streets don’t have names – just numbers and directions (“south” and “north”)!

So, why did Brazil’s government decide to move here?…

Originally, the capital of Brazil was Rio de Janeiro, but government officials became fed up with the constant protests and other antisocial activities of the residents there. So it was decided to move the government apparatus to São Paulo. But that didn’t help much at all: officials felt uneasy there too. So in the mid-1950s, the decision was made to build a new capital from scratch. Four years later, 60,000 builders had completed the construction of a brand new city – all as per the specially designed plan.

Ok – now for some photos of the city. The TV Tower is perfect for that:

You just need to get up to the observation deck.

From the tower, around the 25^th floor, you get views like these. Here’s the view toward the government buildings:

The government buildings are the turquoise ones – each building is a ministry:

To the sides – hotels, banks, various media and other businesses. Apparently, there are no residential buildings in this district; the population lives “on the wings” and in the suburbs.

Here’s the view in the other direction:

And looking up ->

From the restaurant level (where we were having our client event), the views go like this:

And here’s moi, inside the tower, giving yet another presentation:

It seems there’s practically zero tourism in Brasília. For sure there’s something to see here for those interested in mid-20^th-century architecture and urban planning (after all, it is a UNESCO World Heritage site) – as a sample of modernist urbanism. But for us it was all work-work-work this time.

What else have I to tell you? Rumor has it that all transportation here is solely by car and that the city lacks sidewalks. But I closely examined the surroundings and sidewalks are present – sometimes even wide pedestrian promenades and bike paths, albeit not everywhere. But a couple of times we did see places where pedestrians had to walk along the edge of the sidewalk-absent road.

And that’s all from Brasilia! Farewell photo out my hotel room window:

And then it was the usual: taxi, airport, flight – this time -> home!

Yes, this marks the end of this month-long business tour-marathon. Moscow – Singapore – Cairo – Ajman (UAE) – Dubai – Rio de Janeiro – Brasília.

A great trip: busy, eventful and useful – just how I like it! Hooray!

The best hi-res photos from Brazil are here.