Design strategy and urban configuration: morphological study of two new towns in mid-twentieth century Brazil

Abstract

Cianorte and Angélica are two new towns planned in Brazilian hinterlands’ pioneering agricultural colonization zone. Both designed in the early 1950s, each one is linked to a specific town planning tradition: Cianorte late resonated the notion of the city as a work of art, alongside with some features of the garden city; Angélica early exemplified in Brazil the rationalist urbanism for a functional city. By contrasting the urban forms of the two cities, this paper explores the adopted design strategies, and points out their potentialities and weaknesses. As a result, this morphological study unveils, on the one hand, the layout of a town according to classical precepts of composition and the creation of a unique townscape; and, on the other hand, the configuration of a radically modern, functionally standardized and uniform town. In both cases the adopted design strategy impacted the development of the urban form: in Angélica, the land use pattern and the built form did not follow the revolutionary, modernist configuration of the morphological elements; in Cianorte, the urban growth ignored the city-beautiful layout and did not materialize the planning proposals.