ABSTRACT
The quotation from James Holston’s book on Brasilia raises an interesting question. What impact does modernist architecture have on our lives and, for our purposes, on the lives of the tourists who visit a modernist city? He offers Brasilia, the national capitol, as a quintessential example of architectural modernism in that it was planned by modernist urban designers and its buildings were designed by a modernist architect. And what has been described as a “utopian modernist” city was created according to their plans. Brasilia has also been described as a dystopian, anti-human modernist horror. Modernism in architecture replaced neoclassical, art nouveau, and Victorian styles of architecture, and was, in turn, replaced by postmodernist architecture and urban design.
