Seminars on urban design and the constitution of the discipline in mid-1980s Brazil

ABSTRACT A series of seminars held in Brasilia in the mid-1980s institutionalized Urban Design as a discipline in Brazil. It triggered a new approach to urban interventions, in consonance with the country’s re-democratization process and the critical debates fostered by the new political condition, following the end of the dictatorship. This paper explores the seminars’ outcomes in order to account for the rationale of urban design in Brazil, when social milieu, cultural character and participatory processes became fundamental design tools. By examining this turning point, the paper adds to the historiography of the genesis of Urban Design in Brazil while highlighting the particularities of the local approach to the global term.