Flávio de Carvalho's 1930 Tropical Modernist Vision for a 'City of the Naked Man'

In 1930, at the IV Pan-American Congress of Architecture held in Rio de Janeiro, architect Flávio de Carvalho unveiled 'A cidade do homem nu' ('The City of the Naked Man'). As a member of Brazil's Antropofagia avant-garde group, he imagined a tropical city designed for a future society free from cultural limitations. Having studied in Durham and Newcastle-upon-Tyne before returning to Brazil in 1923, de Carvalho encouraged architects to tap into the anthropophagic essence of their continent and revive the primitive 'savage.' The Antropofagia movement, initiated by Oswaldo de Andrade in his 1928 'Manifesto Antropófago,' promoted the idea of cultural cannibalism. De Carvalho's ideas merged tropical modernism with anthropophagic philosophy during Brazil's modernist era.