Hard and soft revisited.

In the postscript to The Social Logic of Space (1984), Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson argue that there are two versions of modernism in urban space: hard and soft. The former invests in continuity and density of the urban fabric, but with a proliferation of barriers resulting in labyrinthine schemes typical of housing estates. The latter invests in distances, discontinuities, sprawl and vast tracts of open unoccupied land. Brazil's federal capital, Brasília, presents both versions. Over time, the hard version became predominant in the gated communities of satellite dormitory nuclei; the soft version materialized in the Pilot Plan designed by Lucio Costa. Hard parallels deserted public spaces; soft teems with life and is accordingly highly praised by inhabitants. This flatly contradicts the tenets of the critical international literature on Brasília. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]