Brasília was built on empty savanna at 1,100 metres, and every photograph of it is the same picture: white reinforced concrete against a blue so saturated it reads almost as a solid. Niemeyer's curve — the Cathedral's sixteen hyperboloid columns, the Alvorada's tapered colonnade, the ramp at Itamaraty — only works because there is nothing else in the frame.

This system inverts the usual habit. The page is the sky, not the building. Concrete white becomes the type and the surface; cobalt azulejo, laterite dust and pool blue enter sparingly. Layouts stay nearly empty on purpose — one arc, one long horizontal, and a great deal of air.