Brasil­ia, a cap­i­tal cre­at­ed ex nihi­lo in the cen­tre of the coun­try in 1956, was a land­mark in the his­to­ry of town plan­ning. Urban plan­ner Lucio Cos­ta and archi­tect Oscar Niemey­er intend­ed that every ele­ment — from the lay­out of the res­i­den­tial and admin­is­tra­tive dis­tricts (often com­pared to the shape of a bird in flight) to the sym­me­try of the build­ings them­selves — should be in har­mo­ny with the city‘s over­all design. The offi­cial build­ings, in par­tic­u­lar, are inno­v­a­tive and imag­i­na­tive.