BRASILIA,BRAZIL
(BBC News),
December 15, 2007:
Oscar Niemeyer, the visionary architect who co-designed Brazil's purpose-built capital Brasilia, had a working day today.
Today is his 100th birthday.
Architects may come and architects may go - but not Niemeyer, for 70 years Brazil's best-known architect.
The last giant of the modern movement, he is a very Brazilian modernist, sculpting curves from concrete.
For decades he has worked from this office, perched high in a curvaceous Art Deco tower known as the Mae West Building. Fittingly, his office overlooks Rio de Janeiro's famous flaunting haunt, Copacabana Beach.
Brasilia is the archetypal planned town, built from scratch on the desert-like Central Plateau in the late 1950s. Oscar Niemeyer, a protege of Le Corbusier, dreamed up buildings of planes and curves strung along a central boulevard known as the Esplanade of Ministries.
In the foreground of the photograph of Brasilia below stands his latest commission, the Republic Museum.
In the course of his long career, he has hoovered up just about every important commission going in that country - to some resentment from his peers.
The Museum of Modern Art in Niteroi, across the bay from Rio, typifies Niemeyer's style. Concrete, curves, colour. Visitors enter the saucer-shaped clifftop gallery - which Niemeyer has likened to a flower reflected in the pool at its base - via a snaking ramp.
To mark his birthday on December 15, a giant 100 hangs on the Copan building - which he, of course, designed - in Sao Paulo. And Oscar Niemeyer still keeps working, with a new city in Algiers on the drawing board, a cultural centre for Avila, Spain, and always dreaming up more projects for his homeland.Copyright: BBC News MMVII
