Lucio Costa Biography, Buildings and Best Books

Lucio Costa (1902-1998) was a Brazilian architect, urban planner and heritage expert, and the father figure of Brazilian modern architecture. He led the team that designed the Ministry of Education and Health in Rio de Janeiro with Le Corbusier as consultant, launched the careers of Oscar Niemeyer and Affonso Reidy, and in 1957 won the competition for the Pilot Plan of Brasília, the new capital whose monumental axis and residential superquadras he drew.

Toulon, Rio and the Beaux-Arts

Lúcio Marçal Ferreira Ribeiro Lima Costa was born in Toulon, France, in 1902 to Brazilian parents and studied in England and Switzerland before graduating from the National School of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro in 1924. Appointed its director in 1930, he tried to reform the school along modern lines and was dismissed within a year.

The Ministry of Education and Health

In 1936 Costa was asked to design the new Ministry of Education and Health in Rio. He invited Le Corbusier as consultant and led a team including Oscar Niemeyer, Affonso Eduardo Reidy, Carlos Leão and Jorge Moreira. Completed in 1945, the building, with pilotis, brise-soleils and Burle Marx gardens, became a model for modern architecture worldwide. In 1939 he and Niemeyer designed the Brazilian Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair.

Heritage and housing

Costa worked for decades at the national heritage service, SPHAN, studying colonial architecture and protecting historic towns. His Parque Guinle apartment buildings in Rio (1948-1954) adapted the modern slab to Brazilian climate and craft. In Paris he designed the Maison du Brésil at the Cité Universitaire, developed and built by Le Corbusier’s office (1959).

Brasília

In 1957 Costa won the competition for the Pilot Plan of Brasília with a few sketches and a short text: two axes crossing like the sign of the cross, one monumental and one residential, lined by superquadras. Niemeyer designed the main buildings, and the city was inaugurated in 1960. Brasília became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. Costa died in Rio de Janeiro in 1998.