Oscar Niemeyer, a towering patriarch of modern architecture who shaped the look of modern Brazil and whose inventive, curved designs left their mark on cities worldwide, died late Wednesday. He was 104.
Niemeyer had been battling kidney ailments and pneumonia for nearly a month in a Rio de Janeiro hospital. His death was confirmed by a hospital spokesperson.
Starting in the 1930s, Niemeyer's career spanned nine decades. His distinctive glass and white-concrete buildings include such landmarks as the United Nations Secretariat in New York, the Communist Party headquarters in Paris and the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Brasilia.
He won the 1988 Pritzker Architecture Prize, considered the Nobel Prize of Architecture for the Brasilia cathedral. Its Crown of Thorns cupola fills the church with light and a sense of soaring grandeur despite the fact that most of the building is underground.
It was one of dozens of public structures he designed for Brazil's made-to-order capital, a city that helped define space-age style.
After flying over Niemeyer's pod-like Congress, futuristic presidential palace and modular ministries in 1961, Yuri Gagarin, the Russian cosmonaut and first man in space, said the impression was like arriving on another planet.
In his home city of Rio de Janeiro, Niemeyer's many projects include the Sambadrome stadium for Carnival parades. Perched across the bay from Rio is the flying saucer he designed for the Niteroi Museum of Contemporary Art.
The collection of government buildings in Brasilia, though, remain his most monumental and enduring achievement. Built from scratch in a wild and nearly uninhabited part of Brazil's remote central plateau in just four years, Brasilia opened in 1960.
Top Comments
Disclaimer & comment rulesHeavens! Besides being absolutely hideous, Brasília encapsulates everything which is morally wrong with Latin America. I wonder if Argentina could accept it in lieu of the Falkland Islands.
Dec 06th, 2012 - 10:23 am 0RIP, Oscar-the-Great.
Dec 06th, 2012 - 02:01 pm 0You are not to be blamed for the travesties of governance that have passed through your public buildings.
A visionary of his time.
Stop criticising this man. The world has lost a great Architect and Artist.
Dec 06th, 2012 - 11:06 pm 0Commenting for this story is now closed.
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