Oscar Niemeyer Biography

Architect (1907–2012)
NAME
Oscar Niemeyer
OCCUPATION
Architect
BIRTH DATE
December 15, 1907
DEATH DATE
December 5, 2012
PLACE OF BIRTH
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
PLACE OF DEATH
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
FULL NAME
Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho

The work of Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer

demonstrates his appreciation for free-flowing
design. Examples include the Contemporary Art
Museum in Niterói.

QUOTES
“The architect's role is to fight for a better world, where he can produce an architecture
that serves everyone and not just a group of privileged people.”
—Oscar Niemeyer

Niemeyer landed his first major project in 1941, planning buildings for the Pampulha
Architectural Complex. His designs were noted for their free-flowing forms. Other projects
included working on the United Nations building, and designing the Contemporary Art
Museum in Niterói and major buildings in the capital city of Brasília

Early Career
He grew up in a wealthy family without any aspirations toward being an architect, though he
started drawing at an early age. "When I was very little," he later recalled, "my mother said I
used to draw in the air with my fingers. I needed a pencil. Once I could hold one, I have
drawn every day since
Costa and Niemeyer also worked together on Brazil's iconic pavilion in the 1939 New York
World's Fair; legendary Mayor Fiorello La Guardia was so impressed with Niemeyer's design
that he declared him an honorary citizen of New York.

In 1941, Niemeyer launched his solo career by designing a series of buildings called the
Pampulha Architectural Complex in the city of Belo Horizonte. Here, Niemeyer started
developing some of his design trademarks, including the heavy use of concrete and a
propensity toward curves. "I consciously ignored the highly praised right angle and the
rational architecture of T-squares and triangles," he said, "in order to wholeheartedly enter the
world of curves and new shapes made possible by the introduction of concrete into the
building process."

Brasilia Buildings
In 1956, Juscelino Kubitschek, the president of Brazil and a close friend of Niemeyer, came
to the architect with a proposal, asking Niemeyer to become the new chief architect of public
buildings in the country's new capital, Brasilia, a Modernist civic metropolis being built from
scratch in the interior of the country. Niemeyer eagerly accepted, designing buildings that
went along with his utopian vision of government. "This was a liberating time," he said. "It
seemed as if a new society was being born, with all the traditional barriers cast aside .... when
planning the government buildings for Brasilia I decided they should be characterized by
their own structures within the prescribed shapes ... I tried to push the potential of concrete to
its limits, especially at the load-bearing points, which I wanted to be as delicate as possible so
that it would seem as if the palaces barely touched the ground."

He also turned to designing furniture, which also included his trademark use of sinuous
curves.

Niemeyer explained his design philosophy: "My architecture followed the old examples—
beauty prevailing over the limitations of the constructive logic. My work proceeded,
indifferent to the unavoidable criticism set forth by those who take the trouble to examine the
minimum details, so very true of what mediocrity is capable of. It was enough to think of Le
Corbusier saying to me once while standing on the ramp of the Congress: 'There is invention
here.'"

he once said, "that the architect think not only of architecture but of how architecture can
solve the problems of the world. The architect's role is to fight for a better world, where he
can produce an architecture that serves everyone and not just a group of privileged people."

“What attracts me are free and sensual curves,” Niemeyer once remarked. “The curves we find in
mountains, in the waves of the sea, in the body of the woman we love.”

Niterói Contemporary Art Museum, 1991-96

Designed by Oscar Niemeyer with the assistance of structural engineer Bruno Contarini, who
had worked with Niemeyer on earlier projects, the MAC-Niterói is 16 meters high; its cupola has
a diameter of 50 meters with three floors. The museum projects itself over Boa Viagem (“Bon
Voyage,” “Good Journey”), the 817 square metres (8,790 sq ft) reflecting pool that surrounds the
cylindrical base “like a flower,” in the words of Niemeyer.

A wide access slope leads to a Hall of Expositions, which has a capacity for sixty people. Two
doors lead to the viewing gallery, through which can be seen the Guanabara Bay, Rio de
Janeiro, and Sugarloaf Mountain. The saucer-shaped modernist structure, which has been
likened to a UFO, is set on a cliffside, at the bottom of which is a beach. In the film Oscar
Niemeyer, an architect committed to his century,[1] Niemeyer is seen flying over Rio de Janeiro in
a UFO which then lands on the site, suggesting this to be the origin of the museum.