Oscar Niemeyer

Oscar Niemeyer was a Brazilian architect who helped shape modern architecture. He is most famous for designing the government buildings in Brasília, Brazil’s planned capital city that opened in 1960, and for working with other architects on the United Nations headquarters in New York. His work with reinforced concrete, especially its curved forms, had a major impact on architecture in the late 1900s and early 2000s.

Supporters called him a great artist and one of the best architects of his time, while critics saw him as a “sculptor of monuments.” Niemeyer said Le Corbusier strongly influenced him, but he also noted that this did not stop his work from taking its own path. He was known for using abstract shapes and curves. In his memoirs, he wrote that he was not drawn to straight lines, which he saw as hard and man-made. Instead, he preferred free-flowing, sensual curves like those in Brazil’s mountains, rivers, ocean waves, and the body of a loved woman. He believed curves made up the entire universe.

Niemeyer studied at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. After graduating, he worked at his father’s typography shop and as a draftsman for local architecture firms. In the 1930s, he interned with Lúcio Costa, and together they designed the Palácio Gustavo Capanema in Rio de Janeiro. His first major project was a series of buildings in Pampulha, a planned suburb north of Belo Horizonte, at the invitation of its mayor, Juscelino Kubitschek. The Church of Saint Francis of Assisi, part of this project, earned critical praise and international attention.

During the 1940s and 1950s, Niemeyer became one of Brazil’s most productive architects, working both at home and abroad. He designed the Edifício Copan, a large residential building in São Paulo, and collaborated with Le Corbusier and others on the United Nations Headquarters. This work led to invitations to teach at Yale University and the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

In 1956, Brazil’s new president, Juscelino Kubitschek, asked Niemeyer to design the government buildings for the new capital, Brasília. By 1960, he had designed the National Congress, the Cathedral of Brasília, the Palácio da Alvorada, the Palácio do Planalto, and the Supreme Federal Court. These buildings were experimental and shared common design features. This work made him the first head of architecture at the University of Brasília and earned him honorary membership in the American Institute of Architects.

Niemeyer had left-wing political views and was a member of the Brazilian Communist Party. After the 1964 military coup, he left Brazil and opened an office in Paris. He returned in 1985 and won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1988. A lifelong socialist and atheist, he spent time in Cuba and the Soviet Union during his exile. After returning, he served as president of the Brazilian Communist Party from 1992 to 1996.

Niemeyer kept working into the late 1900s and early 2000s. He designed the Niterói Contemporary Art Museum in 1996 and the Oscar Niemeyer Museum in 2002. Over 78 years, he completed about 600 projects. He died in Rio de Janeiro on 5 December 2012, at age 104.

Niemeyer was born in Rio de Janeiro on 15 December 1907. He once said his full name should have been Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida de Niemeyer Soares, but the foreign surname stuck. As a young man, he was a typical Carioca: bohemian and not too focused on his future. In 1928, at age 21, he left Santo Antonio Maria Zaccaria priory school and married Annita Baldo, whose parents were Italian immigrants from Padua. He then studied architecture at the National School of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro, graduating in 1934.

After graduating, Niemeyer worked at his father’s typography shop. Even though money was tight, he insisted on working as a draftsman in the architecture studio of Lúcio Costa, Gregori Warchavchik, and Carlos Leão, even when they could not pay him. He was skilled at drafting—Le Corbusier later praised his “beautiful perspectives.” Working with Costa helped Niemeyer mature as an architect. Costa had briefly explored the Neocolonial style but came to believe that the International Style from Europe was the future. His ideas about blending Brazil’s traditional colonial architecture with modernist principles became the foundation for the work he and his peers, including Affonso Eduardo Reidy, would later create.

In 1936, when Niemeyer was 29, Education Minister Gustavo Capanema chose Lúcio Costa to design the new Ministry of Education and Health building in Rio de Janeiro. Costa was unsure how to proceed, so he gathered a team of young architects—Carlos Leão, Affonso Eduardo Reidy, Jorge Moreira, and Ernani Vasconcellos—and insisted that Le Corbusier be brought in as a consultant. Niemeyer was not originally on the team, but Costa later agreed to include him.