Free City

Download or read book The Modernist City written by James Holston and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1989-09-08 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The utopian design and organization of Brasília—the modernist new capital of Brazil—were meant to transform Brazilian society. In this sophisticated, pioneering study of Brasília from its inception in 1957 to the present, James Holston analyzes this attempt to change society by building a new kind of city and the ways in which the paradoxes of constructing an imagined future subvert its utopian premises. Integrating anthropology with methods of analysis from architecture, urban studies, social history, and critical theory, Holston presents a critique of modernism based on a powerfully innovative ethnography of the city.