Slade Lectures 2026: Urban Change and Representation

Brasilia: Planned Exclusion

Esther da Costa Meyer

5pm Wednesday 18 February

Auditorium, St John's College, University of Oxford

(Free Admission)

Inaugurated in 1960, the new capital of Brazil was designed by architects Oscar Niemeyer and Lúcio Costa. While the elegance of Niemeyer’s concrete shells elicited admiration, the workers who built Brasília were exiled in shantytowns far from the city.

Esther da Costa Meyer, Professor emerita in the Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, was the Vincent Scully Visiting Professor of Architectural History, Yale School of Architecture (2019) and the Kirk Varnedoe Visiting Professor at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts (2024). Her book Dividing Paris: Urban Renewal and Social Inequality, 1852-1870 (Princeton University Press, 2022) grew out of work on the architectural practices of the old colonial powers and their pervasive impact on historiography. Da Costa Meyer’s curatorial work includes Frank Gehry: On Line, at the Princeton University Art Museum (2008), and at the Jewish Museum in New York, Pierre Chareau: Modern Architecture and Design (2016) and The Sassoons (co-curated, 2023). In recent years, her research has also focused on architecture’s complicity with climate change and the architecture of refugee camps around the world.