The sociological subject through the streets of Brasília

Abstract

This article discusses the sociological subject, as conceptualized by Stuart Hall (2006), in the modernist architecture and urbanism, using the city of Brasilia as an icon. The sociological subject is the result of modernity in transformation, with its characteristics of isolation and individualism, together with a process of decentralization and fragmentation of identities. This idea will be led through the streets of the city-symbol of our modernism, largely designed from the principles of the Athens Charter, which aimed to solve the problems caused by rapid growth of cities. We try to understand how the modernist principles of the Athens Charter, who are considered to be the most significant manifest of the International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM), are present in Brasilia and how both the collective and the individual interact as well as how the sociological subject can move about those spaces. To do so, we analyze the principles of the Athens Charter, applied to Brasilia’s urban design, and determine how our sociological subject in practice interacts with this “ideal city” by observing the interactions between the collective, the individual, the public and private, the center, and the periphery.  We also consider the political and economic conditions in Brasilia during the 1950s and early 1960s, under the developmental policy of President Kubitschek, combined with the precepts of the ideal modern city. Thus, our analysis focuses on the sociological subject, who is individualistic and changes modern society, interacting with the structures of the nation-state, industrialization, democracy, and modern capitalism, and is part of a modernist city, with aspirations of community and social and spatial order in a country facing the future, progress, and development.