Precerpt from In with the East Wind: A Mary Poppins Kind of Life - Brazil: Brasilia
Brasilia Looking out the airplane window as we descended toward Brasília, I felt a jolt of disorientation. The city below looked—there was no other word for it— Soviet. Broad, geometric avenues. Monumental buildings arranged with almost military precision. A city planned rather than grown. I murmured something about it to the man seated beside me, a Brazilian returning home, and he smiled the patient smile of someone who has heard this comparison before. He gave me a short history lesson as we dipped lower through the haze. Brasília, he explained, was the brainchild of President Juscelino Kubitschek, who wanted to propel Brazil into the future— fifty years of progress in five , as the slogan went. The architect, Oscar Niemeyer, had been deeply influenced by European modernism, especially Le Corbusier. And yes, my seatmate admitted, there was a certain ideological kinship between the sweeping monumentalism of Brasília and the socialist aesthetics of mid‑century Eastern Europe. Niem...