Architecture · Modernist
1907–2012 · Brazilian
Brazilian modernism — the curve in reinforced concrete
The architect who made reinforced concrete sensual. Niemeyer worked for more than seventy years, from the Pampulha complex of the 1940s to the monuments of Brasília and beyond, insisting that his inspiration was not the right angle but the curves of Brazil's mountains, rivers and women. A lifelong communist, he was exiled after the 1964 coup and built in France, Italy and Algeria before returning home. He died ten days short of his 105th birthday.
A 1943 chapel by a Belo Horizonte lake, a series of parabolic concrete vaults with a blue-tiled Portinari mural, refused consecration for fourteen years (1943)
Pampulha, Belo Horizonte, Brazil
The Pampulha church, built for the young mayor Juscelino Kubitschek; the Church finally consecrated it in 1959
A 1996 museum on a cliff across the bay from Rio, a white saucer on a single central stem above a red serpentine ramp (1996)
Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói — the architect compared it to a flower
A serpentine 38-storey São Paulo residential block with a brise-soleil façade that snakes for hundreds of metres, holding over five thousand residents (1966)
Centro, São Paulo, Brazil
The Copan Building — one of the largest residential buildings in Latin America
A presidential residence of 1958 whose glass box is fronted by a colonnade of white supports curving to touch the ground at a point (1958)
Brasília, Brazil
The Palácio da Alvorada — its column profile became the emblem of the Federal District
A 2002 gallery in Curitiba extended by a huge yellow-stemmed eye-shaped pavilion, opened when its architect was in his mid-nineties (2002)
Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil
The Museu Oscar Niemeyer, known as the Museu do Olho — the Eye Museum
A 1980 Paris headquarters for a political party, with a wave-fronted glass office slab and a white dome over a subterranean meeting hall (1980)
Place du Colonel-Fabien, Paris
Designed free of charge for the Parti communiste français during his years of exile