Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho (born December 15, 1907) is a Brazilian architect who is considered
one of the most important names in international modern architecture. He was a
pioneer in the exploration of the constructive possibilities of reinforced
concrete.
Although he was a defender of utilitarianism, his creations did not
have the blocky coldness frequently criticized by post-modern critics. His buildings have
forms so dynamic and curves so sensual that many admirers say that, more than an architect, he
is a sculptor of monuments, a trait some critics consider to be a defect.
Oscar Niemeyer and his contribution to the construction of the city of Brasília is portrayed
and somewhat parodied in the 1964 French movie L'homme de Rio (That Man From Rio),
starring Jean-Paul Belmondo.
Early life
Oscar Niemeyer was born in the city of Rio de Janeiro in 1907 in Laranjeiras neighborhood, on a street that later would receive the
name of his grandfather Ribeiro de Almeida. He spent his youth as a typical young
Carioca of the time: bohemian and relatively unconcerned
with his future. He concluded his secondary education at age 21. The same year, he married Annita Baldo, daughter of
Italian immigrants from Padua. Marriage gave him a sense of responsibility: he decided to work and enter university.
He started to work in his father's typography house and entered the Escola de Belas Artes (Brazil), from which he graduated as engineer architect in 1934. At the time he had financial difficulties but
decided to work without fee anyway, in the architecture studio of Lúcio Costa and
Carlos Leão. He felt unsatisfied with the architecture that he saw in the streets and believed he
could find a career there.
In 1945, already an architect of some repute, he joined the
Brazilian Communist Party. Niemeyer was a boy at the time of the
Russian Revolution of 1917, and by the Second
World War he became a young idealist. He was an enthusiastic communist, a position which would cost him much later in his
life. During the military dictatorship of Brazil his office was raided
and he was forced into exile in Europe. The Minister of Aeronautics of the time reportedly said that "the place for a communist
architect is Moscow." He visited the USSR, met with diverse
socialist leaders and became a personal friend of some of them. Fidel Castro once said:
"Niemeyer and I are the last Communists of this planet."
First works
In 1936, Lúcio Costa was appointed by Education Minister Gustavo Capanema architect of the new
headquarters for the Ministry of Education and Public Health in Rio de Janeiro. In 1939,
Niemeyer assumed the leadership of the team of architects (Lúcio Costa, Carlos Leão, Affonso Eduardo Reidy, Jorge Moreira, Ernani
Vasconcellos and Oscar Niemeyer, with Le Corbusier acting as a consultant in 1936)
responsible for the Ministry that had assumed the task of shaping the ‘novo homem, Brasileiro e moderno’ (new man, Brazilian and
modern).
Following Niemeyer's request, it was renamed Palácio Gustavo Capanema in 1985. It was the first state-sponsored
modernist skyscraper in the world, and of a much larger scale than anything Le Corbusier had
built until then. Completed in 1943, the building which housed the regulator and manager of
Brazilian culture and cultural heritage developed all the elements of what was to become recognised as Brazilian modernist movement: it employed local materials and techniques, like the azulejos linked to the Portuguese tradition; the revolutionised Corbusian brises-soleil, made adjustable and related to the Moorish shading devices of colonial architecture; bold
colours; the tropical gardens of Roberto Burle Marx; the Imperial Palm (roystonea
oleraceæ), known as the Brazilian order; further allusions to the icons of the Brazilian landscape; and the integrated, specially
commissioned works of Brazilian artists.
In 1939 Niemeyer with Lúcio Costa designed the Brazilian pavilion at the New York World's Fair (executed in collaboration with Paul Lester Wiener). Impressed by the
executed Pavilion, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia awarded Niemeyer the keys of the city of New York. Costa explained that the
Brazilian Pavilion adopted a language of ‘grace and elegance’, lightness and spatial fluidity, open plan, curves and free walls,
which he termed ‘Ionic’, contrasting it to the contemporaneous stern Modernist architecture, which he termed ‘Doric’. By
mid-twentieth century, Brazilian architectural Modernism had been recognised as the ‘first national style in modern architecture’
(Reyner Bahnam). The international architectural periodicals of the 1940s and 1950s dedicated hundreds of dithyrambic pages to
the ‘chosen land of the most original and most audacious contemporary architecture’, followed by monographs on individual
architects like Oscar Niemeyer and Affonso Eduardo Reidy.
The Pampulha project
In 1940 Niemeyer met Juscelino
Kubitschek, who was at the time the mayor of Belo Horizonte, capital of the
state of Minas Gerais. He and Minas Gerais Governor Benedito Valadares wanted to develop a
new suburb to the north of the city called Pampulha, and commissioned Niemeyer to design a
series of buildings to be known as the "Pampulha complex". Brazil’s first listed modern monument was Niemeyer’s Pampulha Church
of São Francisco de Assis, in Pampulha, made part of the national high art canon in 1943, one year after its completion. The
Pampulha complex included a casino, a dance hall and restaurant, a yacht club, a golf club, and a 100 room hotel (unbuilt),
distributed around the artificial lake. A weekend retreat for the Mayor was also constructed near the lake.
São Francisco de Assis Church,Belo Horizonte City, Minas Gerais, Brazil
The buildings were completed in 1943, and provoked some controversy. They received international
acclaim following the 1943 ‘Brazil Builds’ exhibition, at the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The conservative Church
authorities of Minas Gerais refused to consecrate the Church of Saint Francis of Assis until
1959, in part because of its unorthodox form, in part because of the altar mural painted by
Candido Portinari. The mural depicts Christ as the saviour of the ill, the poor and,
most importantly, the sinner.
Pampulha, says Niemeyer, offered him the opportunity to 'challenge the monotony of contemporary architecture, the wave of
misinterpreted functionalism that hindered it, and the dogmas of form and function that had emerged, counteracting the plastic
freedom that reinforced concrete introduced. I was attracted by the curve – the liberated, sensual curve suggested by the
possibilities of new technology yet so often recalled in venerable old baroque churches. […] I deliberately disregarded the right
angle and rationalist architecture designed with ruler and square to boldly enter the world of curves and straight lines offered
by reinforced concrete. […] This deliberate protest arose from the environment in which I lived, with its white beaches, its huge
mountains, its old baroque churches, and the beautiful suntanned women.' (Niemeyer, Oscar, 2000, The Curves of Time: The Memoirs
of Oscar Niemeyer (London: Phaidon), pp. 62 and 169-70).
The 1940s and 1950s
In 1947, his world-wide recognition was confirmed when Niemeyer travelled to the
United States to be part of the international team (Board of Design) working on the design
of the headquarters of the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Niemeyer's
'scheme 32' was approved by the Board of Design, but he eventually gave in to pressure by Le Corbusier, and together they
submitted project 23/32 (developed with Bodiansky and Weissmann), which combined elements from Niemeyer's and Le Corbusier's
schemes, but was primarily based on Niemeyer's scheme. Despite Le Corbusier’s insistence to remain involved, the conceptual
design for the United Nations Headquarters (scheme 23/32), approved by the Board, was carried forward by the Director of
Planning, Wallace Harrison, and Max Abramovitz, then a partnership. In the previous year Niemeyer had received an invitation to
teach at Yale University; however, his visa was denied. In 1950 the first book about his
work was published in the USA by Stamo Papadaki. In 1953, Niemeyer was selected for the position
of Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design. But his Communist Party membership meant that, for the second time, he was
refused a visa to enter the United States, and take his position at the university Richard Nixon had dubbed the ‘Kremlin on the
Charles’.
In Brazil, he designed São Paulo's Ibirapuera Park
(for the celebrations of the city's 400th anniversary) 1951, the Copan
apartment building (1953-66), and the JK Building in Belo Horizonte (1951). In
1952-53 he built his own house in Rio de Janeiro, the House at Canoas (Casa das Canoas), undoubtedly his domestic masterpiece, and in 1954-60 the Niemeyer luxury apartment
building, in Belo Horizonte.
In 1954-55 Niemeyer designed the Museum of Modern Art of Caracas (MAM Caracas). According to him, this project marked a new
direction his work was beginning to take, exemplified by his government buildings for Brasilia.
It was at the Canoas House that a euphoric Juscelino Kubitschek visited Niemeyer one September morning of 1956, soon after he
assumed the Brazilian presidency. While driving back to the city, the politician ‘eagerly’ spoke to the architect about his most
audacious scheme: ‘I am going to build a new capital for this country and I want you to help me […] Oscar, this time we are going
to build the capital of Brazil.’ (Niemeyer, Oscar, 2000a, The Curves of Time: The Memoirs of Oscar Niemeyer (London: Phaidon), p.
70).
Brasília
National Congress of Brazil, Brasília
Niemeyer organized a competition for the lay-out of Brasília, the new capital, and the
winner was the project of his old master and great friend, Lúcio Costa. Niemeyer would design the buildings and Lucio the plan of
the city.
In the space of a few months, Niemeyer designed a large number of residential, commercial and government buildings. Among them
were the residence of the President (Palácio da Alvorada), the House of the deputy, the National
Congress, the Cathedral of Brasília (a hyperboloid structure), diverse ministries, not to mention residential buildings. Viewed from
above, the city can be seen to have elements that repeat themselves in every building, giving it a formal unity. The cathedral of
Brasília is especially beautiful, with diverse modern symbolism. Its entrance is a dimly-lit corridor that contrasts with the
bright, naturally illuminated hall. Behind the construction of Brasília lay a monumental campaign to construct an entire city in
the barren center of the country, hundreds of kilometers from any major city. The brainchild of Kubitschek, his aims included
stimulating the national industry, integrating the country's distant areas, populating inhospitable regions, and bringing
progress to a region where only cattle ranching had a foothold (many historians compare the construction of Brasília with the
American colonization of its west). Niemeyer and Lúcio Costa used it to test new concepts of city planning: streets without
transit (Niemeyer would say that it is a disrespect to the human being that it takes more than 20 minutes in the transport of a
region to another one), buildings floating off the ground supported by columns and allowing the space underneath to be free and
integrated with nature. The project also had a socialist ideology: in Brasília all the apartments would be owned by the
government and rented to its employees. Brasília did not have "nobler" regions, meaning that top ministers and common laborers
would share the same building. Of course many of these concepts were ignored or changed by other presidents with different
visions in later years. Brasília was designed, constructed, and inaugurated within four years. After it, Niemeyer was nominated
head chief of the college of architecture of the University of Brasília. In
1963, he became an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects in the United States; the same year, he received a
Soviet prize, the Lenin peace prize.
Esplanada dos Ministerios, Brasilia, D.F., Brazil, 2006. Several Niemeyer's buildings are shown: the National Congress in the
backgrpund, and to the right, the famous Cathedral, the new National Museum and the new National Libray
In 1964, after being invited by Abba Hushi, the mayor of
Haifa, Israel, to plan the campus of the University of Haifa, he came back to a completely different Brazil. In March president
João Goulart, who succeeded president Jânio Quadros
in 1961, was deposed in a military coup. General Castello Branco assumed command of the country, which would remain a dictatorship
until 1985.
Exile and projects overseas
The leftist position of Niemeyer would cost him much during the military dictatorship. His office was pillaged, the
headquarters of the magazine he coordinated was destroyed, his projects mysteriously began to be refused and clients
disappeared.
In 1965, two hundred professors asked for his resignation from the University of Brasília, in
protest against the government treatment of universities. In the same year he traveled to France
for an exhibition in the Louvre museum.
In the following year, his work hindered in Brazil, Niemeyer moved to Paris.
There he started a new phase of his life and workmanship. He opened an office on the Champs-Élysées, and had customers in diverse countries, especially in Algeria where, among others he designed the University of Constantine. In Paris
he created the headquarters of the French Communist Party (photos), Place du Colonel Fabien, and in
Italy that of the Mondadori publishing company.
In Funchal on Madeira, a 19th century hotel was removed to build a casino by Niemeyer. Another
prominent design of his was the Penang State Mosque in George Town the state capital of Penang, Malaysia in 1970s.
1980s to the present
Brazil's National Museum, Brasilia, D.F.
Oscar Niemeyer Museum (NovoMuseu), Curitiba, Brazil
The dictatorship lasted 21 years, until 1985. Under João
Figueiredo's rule it softened and gradually turned into a democracy. At this time Niemeyer decided to return to his
country. He himself defines this time as the beginning of the last phase of his life. During that decade he made the Memorial Juscelino Kubitschek (1980), the Pantheon (1985) and the Latin America Memorial
(1987), the last a beautiful sculpture representing the wounded hand of Jesus, whose wound bleeds in the shape of Central and South America.
In 1988 Oscar Niemeyer was awarded the Pritzker Architecture
Prize, together with the American architect Gordon Bunshaft.
He designed at least two more buildings in Brasilia, small ones, the Memorial dos Povos Indigenas
("Memorial for the Indigenous People") and the Catedral Militar, Igreja de N.S. da Paz.
In 1996, at 89 years old, he created what many consider his greatest work: the Niterói Contemporary Art Museum (in the city of Niterói, a city next to Rio de Janeiro).
The building flies from a rock, giving a beautiful view of the Guanabara Bay and the city
of Rio de Janeiro. Critics of the museum say the building is so exotic that it upstages the works of art inside it.
In 2003, Niemeyer was called to design the Serpentine
Gallery Summer Pavilion in Hyde Park London, a gallery that each year invites
a famous architect who has never previously built in the UK, to design this temporary structure.
On December 10 2004, a Niemeyer designed tombstone for
Communist Carlos Marighella, in Salvador da
Bahia in the north-east of Brazil, was inaugurated to comemorate the 35th anniversary of his death.
In 2005, one of his projects entitled "ESTAÇÃO CIÊNCIA, CULTURA e ARTES" was approved to be built at Joao Pessoa, the easternmost point of the Americas, at 34º 47' 38" west
longitude and 7º 9' 28" south latitude [1] (in Portuguese).
In 2006, Niemeyer (98) wed longtime aide Vera Lucia Cabreira (60) at his apartment in Rio de Janeiro's Ipanema district a
month after fracturing his hip in a fall.
On December, 15th, 2006, almost 50 years belatedly, Brasilia gained a couple of Niemeyer's buildings, the National Museum and
the National Library. The inauguration coincided with Oscar Niemeyer 99th anniversary. Both buildings are located at the
"Esplanada dos Ministérios", making part of the Republic Cultural Complex, next to Niemeyer's Cathedral.
Today, Niemeyer is over 99 and still involved in diverse projects, mainly sculptures and readjustments of old works of his
that, protected by national (and some cases international) historic heritage regulations, can only be modified by him. He is
currently designing a statue showing a tiger with its mouth open and a man fighting it raising the Cuban flag against the US
blockade of Cuba.
References
[citation needed]
Niemeyer, Oscar, 2000, The Curves of Time: The Memoirs of Oscar Niemeyer (London: Phaidon).
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