Sixty-two years separate the inauguration of Brasília and the opening of the 22nd edition of the FIFA Men's World Cup, hosted in 2022 in Qatar. Of course, it is not only their placement in time and space that differentiates these two historical occasions; we must also add the geopolitical context, the character, the actors, and the interests surrounding each. What, then, remains as a link between them? Beyond the fact that the emirate now has its own model city (Lusail)—built in the wilderness of the peninsula under the playbook of the latest urban and technological trends, echoing to some extent the avant-garde spirit of Brazil's Federal District at the time of its construction—the inextricable link between the two events lies in the construction sites that materialized the architecture hosting them.
The built environment of both places was shaped through the systematization of physical and psychological abuse perpetrated against the bodies of thousands of workers. The state-of-the-art, high-tech engineering promoted by the Qatari government as the declaration of a new era comes at the cost of proven human suffering. Decades earlier and more than 11,000 kilometers away, the ambition to recast a nation's identity through the yardstick of modernist rationality demanded equivalent sacrifices. These were episodes in which the state made unavoidable concessions to assert its progress, even if it meant naturalizing human and labor rights violations.
A New Qatar
