The main suggestion of this thesis is that the construction and original formatting of the Maracanã Stadium did not only concern the interests of national elites in projecting Brazil in the world, but also the popular integration, with their demands and representations, to that project. In the course of verifying this argument, we will examine the different architectural projects authorized for the construction of the stadium during the first half of the 20th century, the debates raised around the theme and the actors that mobilized them. From a theoretical point of view, we will take as a central axis the concept of the public sphere, as defined by Jürgen Habermas in the book The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry Into a Category of Bourgeois Society (2014), in permanent dialogue with the new contours that the concept was acquired in the later production of the author and his interlocutors.