Located in the Brazilian highlands in the country's Central-West region, it was founded by President Juscelino Kubitschek on 21 April 1960, to replace Rio de Janeiro as the national capital.

[6] Brasília is a planned city developed by Lúcio Costa, Oscar Niemeyer and Joaquim Cardozo in 1956 in a scheme to move the capital from Rio de Janeiro to a more central location.

Brasília was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987 due to its modernist architecture and uniquely artistic urban planning.

Laid out in the shape of an airplane,[note 2] its "fuselage" is the Monumental Axis, a pair of wide avenues flanking a large park.

[3][13] The term Brasília comes from the Latin translation of Brazil, which was suggested as a name for the country's capital in 1821 by José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva.

During this period, resources tended to be centered in Brazil's southeastern region, and most of the country's population was concentrated near its Atlantic coast.

He presented a plan to the General Assembly of Brazil for a new city called Brasília, with the idea of moving the capital westward from the heavily populated southeastern corridor.

The following year an international jury selected Lúcio Costa's plan to guide the construction of Brazil's new capital, Brasília.

It did not include land use schedules, models, population charts or mechanical drawings; however, it was chosen by five out of six jurors because it had the features required to align the growth of a capital city.

This axis includes the various ministries, national congress, presidential palace, supreme court building and the television and radio tower.

[20] The Residential Axis was intended to contain areas with intimate character and is considered the most important achievement of the plan; it was designed for housing and associated functions such as local commerce, schooling, recreation and churches, constituted of 96 superblocks [pt] limited to six-story buildings and 12 additional superblocks limited to three-story buildings;[19] Costa's intention with superblocks was to have small self-contained and self-sufficient neighborhoods and uniform buildings with apartments of two or three different categories, where he envisioned the integration of upper and middle classes sharing the same residential area.

[20] The urban design of the communal apartment blocks was based on Le Corbusier's Ville Radieuse of 1935, and the superblocks on the North American Radburn layout from 1929.

Some argue that his emphasis of the plan on automobiles caused the lengthening of distances between centers and it attended only the necessities of a small segment of the population who owned cars.

Due to the larger influx of vehicles, traffic lights were introduced to the Monumental Axis, which violates the concept of modernity and advancement the architect first employed.

[24] An interesting analysis can be made of Brasília within the context of Cold War politics and the association of Lúcio Costa's plan to the symbolism of aviation.

Despite Brazil's minor participation in the conflict, the airplane shape of the city was key in envisioning the country as part of the newly globalized world, together with the victorious Allies.

Oscar Niemeyer was the chief architect of most public buildings, Joaquim Cardozo was the structural engineer, and Roberto Burle Marx was the landscape designer.

[38] According to the 2022 IBGE Census, 2,817,381 people resided in Brasília and its metropolitan area, of whom 1,370,836 were Mixed (48.7%), 1,126,334 White (40%), 301,765 Black (10.7%), 12,810 Asian (0.5%), and 5,536 Amerindian (0.1%).

[45] In 2010, Brasília was ranked the fourth-most populous city in Brazil after São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Salvador.

[52] Brasília does not have a mayor or councillors, because article 32 of the Constitution of Brazil expressly prohibits the Federal District being divided into municipalities.

Brasília is associated with several significant declarations in the international political and social field, including: The major roles of construction and of services (government, communications, banking and finance, food production, entertainment, and legal services) in Brasília's economy reflect the city's status as a governmental rather than an industrial center.

The main agricultural products produced in the city are coffee, guavas, strawberries, oranges, lemons, papayas, soybeans, and mangoes.

[70] The city also hosts a varied assortment of art works from artists like Bruno Giorgi, Alfredo Ceschiatti, Athos Bulcão, Marianne Peretti, Alfredo Volpi, Di Cavalcanti, Dyllan Taxman, Victor Brecheret and Burle Marx, whose works have been integrated into the city's architecture, making it a unique landscape.

[71] The city is the birthplace of Brazilian rock and place of origin of bands like: Legião Urbana, Capital Inicial, Aborto Elétrico, Plebe Rude and Raimundos.

The building faces the Praça dos Três Poderes where the Palácio do Planalto and the Supreme Federal Court are located.

This is what you get when perfectly decent, intelligent, and talented men start thinking in terms of space rather than place; and single rather than multiple meanings.

The utopian buck stops here.The Cathedral of Brasília in the capital of the Federative Republic of Brazil, is an expression of the atheist architect Oscar Niemeyer and the structural engineer Joaquim Cardozo.

[84] The main building's third floor, with 12 thousand square meters, has a panoramic deck, a food court, shops, four movie theaters with total capacity of 500 people, and space for exhibitions.

[85] The airport is serviced by domestic and regional airlines (TAM, GOL, Azul, WebJET, Trip and Avianca), in addition to a number of international carriers.

Chan won the Gustav Lindenthal Medal[89] for this project at the 2003 International Bridge Conference in Pittsburgh due to "...outstanding achievement demonstrating harmony with the environment, aesthetic merit and successful community participation".