308 Sul, the Model Superblock

The superblock was a concept adopted by Lúcio Costa in his project to build Brasilia. The idea marked a new way of living in a city. 

It's no accident that the word superquadra only started to appear in Portuguese dictionaries after Brasilia was built. Some even claim that Lúcio Costa's superblock solution is Brasilia's greatest contribution to global urbanism. 

The superblock is part of a neighborhood unit, a concept dating from the 1920s and reworked by Lúcio for Brasilia. Each neighborhood unit consists of four superblocks, forming small neighborhoods with their own shops, schools, church, and movie theater.

In order to convince civil servants to move from Rio de Janeiro to the new capital—and to have somewhere to house them when they arrived—a number of superblocks were built in Brasilia's Asa Sul district even before the city was inaugurated. One of those new superblocks was 308 Sul, which was built by the Banco do Brasil between 1958 and 1961 for its employees.

308 Sul was planned as a model superblock, a prototype for all the other superblocks that would be built in the city.  However, this block is the only one to have landscaping by Roberto Burle Marx, the famous landscape architect who worked with Lúcio Costa on the Brasilia urban project. The nine residential buildings were designed by the architects Marcelo Campello, Sérgio Rocha, José Ricardo Abreu, and Luiz Acioli.

Brasilia is made up of four scales: the monumental (its axes), the gregarious (its civic buildings), the bucolic (its open spaces), and the residential. Each scale corresponds to certain functions in the daily lives and routines of the city's residents. In the words of Lúcio Costa:

Having a maximum of six stories, the low buildings are always surrounded by dense afforestation. This greenery helps shelter the block's interior areas, creating a quiet space that is shielded from the surrounding urban landscape.

Both the afforested areas and the pilotis (ground-level columns) are key features of the superblocks and of Brasilia itself. In the superblocks, only the pilotis touch the ground, with the first floor being completely open and the apartments themselves being built from the second story upwards. This open first floor is essential for integrating the blocks as it allows the area to function as a public space, where everyone can move around freely without any walls blocking their path.

Modern tiled panels are often found on the pilotos and the decorative tiles on 308 Sul are some of the best loved by Brasilia's residents

Pilotis reconfigured how people live in apartments. The first floor became an open public space, unimpeded by walls.

Offering an open view of the urban landscape, it provides easy access to the gardens, children's playgrounds, shared spaces, schools, and other public facilities, as well as being a place for neighbors to meet.

“As for the residential problem, I came up with the solution of creating a series of large blocks with a stretch of road on both sides and framed by a large strip of densely forested land," he wrote in his Brasilia Pilot Plan Report.

Burle Max's landscaping is a key feature of the 308 Sul superblock. It embodies Lúcio Costa's idea for a city built in open country, with gardens and green spaces a major component. 

The landscaping at the model superblock surrounds the entire block and includes a water mirror feature with ornamental carp, the Praça do Cogumelo area for children, and the Serpentário.

Breeze blocks add a beauty of their own to the federal capital's buildings. They are often used as fencing, especially along 308 Sul's long corridor of buildings, which were designed as horizontal strips so as to accommodate more apartments without exceeding the maximum number of stories.

First used in Recife (PE), breeze blocks are now an architectural leitmotif in modern Brazilian architecture and are found in many buildings across Brasilia.

They have helped keep the superblocks and residential blocks open and in harmony with their external spaces, allowing natural ventilation of the apartments while shielding them from excessive sunlight. In other words, not only are they beautiful, they are also highly suited to architecture in the tropics. 

To the front elevation, the huge windows complement this perspective. The floor-to-ceiling frames feature eye-catching stained glass plates in blue, yellow, green … each block has a different color

Opened in 1958, the Our Lady of Fatima Church was the first church in Brasilia to be built of brick. Designed by Oscar Niemeyer, with doors and tiles by Athos Bulcão and frescoes by Alfredo Volpi, it became one of the city's main symbols. 

The Catholic church was built to fulfill a promise made by the First Lady Sarah Kubitschek to Our Lady of Fatima to thank her for curing one of her daughters of tuberculosis.

The church's structure is in the form of a small nave supported by three pillars that are arranged in a triangle so that the design resembles a friar's hood. 

On the external walls of the church, there is Athos Bulcão's only figurative artwork in tiles. The work represents the Holy Spirit as a dove and includes a reinterpretation of the Star of Bethlehem, which guided the three wise men to the baby Jesus.

In 2009, Francisco Galeno, a painter from the state of Piauí, was invited to paint the church interior. The church had been left with plain white walls after the original panels by Alfredo Volpi had been destroyed decades earlier.

Heavily inspired by Volpi's work, Galeno included elements from popular culture, such as kites, small flags, and spools of thread, in this commissioned work.