Brasilia is not a failed modernist experiment. Its strangeness is the very thing that should be appreciated. The city is dysfunctional and dystopian and it should be evaluated precisely on these terms: as an aesthetic object – a work of surrealist art – rather than as an example of good urban design. The surface of the city is primarily defined by voids. To any visitor, it appears as an urban desert or a wasteland in which architectural objects are situated like pieces on a chess board.

Brasilia had to represent the modern. By doing so, it operated as a form of cruelty on the people who were to inhabit the city. It suppressed the desires of many by removing anything which refuted the formal city. Since its creation, however, people have learned to appropriate the residual spaces to define their own needs. This thesis gives form and iconic value to these programs which have previously been marginalized.

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