Ode to the Void

Written between 1999 and 2015, the texts in this book were previously published in the Vitruvius online journal. This republication, however, is not a simple collection, but a compilation of essays that seeks to provide synergy to texts once isolated and that here define a more coherent and articulated narrative. The more incisive of them is "The true Nature of Brasília", a praise to the cerrado (a Brazilian savannah) and a dreamlike reverse way of seeing the city: Brasília did not conquer the cerrado - on the contrary, the cerrado has conquered the city (or it is about to conquer it). Despite the Pilot Plan's superquadras begging for more architectural substance, what actually happens is that the voids are much more eloquent than the solids: it is a sparse city amid of a sea of grass that should be reconsidered by the potential of these ignored weeds, which are the insidious and real protagonists of that landscape.