65 Facts About Oscar Niemeyer

Oscar Niemeyer said his architecture was strongly influenced by Le Corbusier, but in an interview, assured that this "didn't prevent [his] architecture from going in a different direction".

Oscar Niemeyer was most famous for his use of abstract forms and curves and wrote in his memoirs:.

Oscar Niemeyer was educated at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and after graduating, he worked at his father's typography house and as a draftsman for local architectural firms.

Oscar Niemeyer's first major project was a series of buildings for Pampulha, a planned suburb north of Belo Horizonte.

In 1956, Oscar Niemeyer was invited by Brazil's new president, Juscelino Kubitschek, to design the civic buildings for Brazil's new capital, which was to be built in the centre of the country, far from any existing cities.

Oscar Niemeyer returned to Brazil in 1985, and was awarded the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1988.

Oscar Niemeyer died in Rio de Janeiro on 5 December 2012 at the age of 104.

Oscar Niemeyer was born in the city of Rio de Janeiro on 15 December 1907.

Oscar Niemeyer's great-grandfather was a Portuguese immigrant who, in turn, was the grandson of a German soldier who had settled in Portugal.

Oscar Niemeyer spent his youth as a typical young Carioca of the time: bohemian and relatively unconcerned with his future.

In 1928, at age 21, Oscar Niemeyer left school and married Annita Baldo, daughter of Italian immigrants from Padua.

Oscar Niemeyer pursued his passion at the National School of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro and graduated with a BA in architecture in 1934.

Oscar Niemeyer joined them as a draftsman, an art that he mastered.

Oscar Niemeyer assembled a group of young architects to design the building.

Oscar Niemeyer insisted that Le Corbusier himself should be invited as a consultant.

In 1937, Oscar Niemeyer was invited by a relative to design a nursery for philanthropic institution which catered for young mothers, the Obra do Berco.

However, Oscar Niemeyer has said that his architecture really began in Pampulha, Minas Gerais, and as he explained in an interview, Pampulha was the starting point of this freer architecture full of curves which I still love even today.

In 1940, at 33, Oscar Niemeyer met Juscelino Kubitschek, who was at the time the mayor of Belo Horizonte, capital of the state of Minas Gerais.

Oscar Niemeyer expanded upon Corbusier's idea of a promenade architecturale with his designs for floating catwalk-like ramps which unfold open vistas to the occupants.

Oscar Niemeyer stated that Pampulha 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.

Works of this period shows the traditional modernist method in which form follows function, but Oscar Niemeyer's handling of scale, proportion and program allowed him to resolve complex problems with simple and intelligent plans.

Stamo Papadaki in his monography on Oscar Niemeyer mentioned the spatial freedom that characterized his work.

In 1947, Oscar Niemeyer returned to New York City to integrate the international team working on the design for the United Nations headquarters.

Hitchcock's seminal essay in the Painting toward architecture book included an illustration of Oscar Niemeyer's design, and in an associated 28-venue exhibition, Burle-Marx's Design for a garden was exhibited in several shows, as was a photo mural of Church at Pampulha.

Oscar Niemeyer produced very few designs for the United States because his affiliation to the Communist Party usually prevented him from obtaining a visa.

In 1953, at 46, Oscar Niemeyer was appointed dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, but because of his political views the United States government denied his visa therefore preventing him from entering the country.

In 1948 Oscar Niemeyer departed from the parabolic arches he had designed in Pampulha to further explore his signature material, concrete.

Oscar Niemeyer developed V-shaped pilotis for the project, which became fashionable for a time.

In 1954 Oscar Niemeyer designed the "Oscar Niemeyer apartment building" at the Praca da Liberdade, Belo Horizonte.

Also in 1954 as part of the same plaza Oscar Niemeyer built a library the.

However, his residential masterpiece is considered to be the 1953 Canoas House Oscar Niemeyer built for himself.

Oscar Niemeyer recalled that Walter Gropius, who was visiting the country as a jury in the second Biennial exhibition in Sao Paulo, argued that the house could not be mass-produced, to which Oscar Niemeyer responded that the house was designed with himself in mind and for that particular site, not a general flat one.

Oscar Niemeyer even belittled Niemeyer's V piloti, as purely aesthetic.

Oscar Niemeyer himself admitted that for a certain period he had "handled too many commissions, executing them in a hurry, trusting the improvisational skills he believed to have".

Together with his own realisations of how Brazilian architecture had been harmed by untalented architects, this trip led Oscar Niemeyer to revise his approach, which he published as a text named Depoimento in his Modulo Magazine.

Oscar Niemeyer proposed a simplification, discarding multiple elements such as brises, sculptural piloti and marquees.

In 1955, at 48, Oscar Niemeyer designed the Museum of Modern Art in Caracas.

Oscar Niemeyer organized a competition for the lay-out of Brasilia, the new capital, and the winner was the project of his old master and great friend, Lucio Costa.

The brainchild of Kubitschek, Oscar Niemeyer had as aims included stimulating industry, integrating the country's distant areas, populating inhospitable regions and bringing progress to a region where only cattle ranching then existed.

Oscar Niemeyer is the first person to have received such recognition for one of his works during his lifetime.

Oscar Niemeyer's office was pillaged, the headquarters of the magazine he coordinated were destroyed and clients disappeared.

Oscar Niemeyer opened an office on the Champs-Elysees and found customers in diverse countries, especially in Algeria where he designed the University of Science and Technology-Houari Boumediene.

Oscar Niemeyer created an easy chair and ottoman composed of bent steel and leather in limited numbers for private clients.

In 1988, at 81, Oscar Niemeyer was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize, architecture's most prestigious award.

From 1992 to 1996, Oscar Niemeyer was the president of the Brazilian Communist Party.

Oscar Niemeyer was replaced by Zuleide Faria de Mello in 1996.

Oscar Niemeyer maintained his studio in Rio de Janeiro into the 21st century.

In 2003, at 96, Oscar 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.

Oscar Niemeyer was still involved in diverse projects at the age of 100, mainly sculptures and adjustments of previous works.

In January 2010, the Auditorium Oscar Niemeyer Ravello was officially opened in Ravello, Italy, on the Amalfi Coast.

Oscar Niemeyer died of cardiorespiratory arrest on December 5,2012, at the Hospital Samaritano in Rio de Janeiro.

Oscar Niemeyer had been hospitalised with a respiratory infection prior to his death.

Oscar Niemeyer subsequently had five grandchildren, thirteen great-grandchildren, and seven great-great-grandchildren.

In 2006, shortly before his 99th birthday, Oscar Niemeyer married for the second time, to his longtime secretary, Vera Lucia Cabreira at his apartment, a month after he had fractured his hip in a fall.

Oscar Niemeyer was a keen smoker of cigars, smoking more in later life.

In 1945, many communist militants who were arrested under the Vargas' dictatorship were released, and Oscar Niemeyer sheltered some of them at his office.

Oscar Niemeyer met Luis Carlos Prestes, perhaps the most important left-winger in Brazil.

Oscar Niemeyer joined the party in 1945 and became its president in 1992.

Oscar Niemeyer was a close friend of Fidel Castro, who often visited his apartment and studio in Brazil.

Some critics pointed out that Oscar Niemeyer's architecture was often in opposition to his views.

Oscar Niemeyer never saw architecture in the same way as Walter Gropius, who defended a rational and industrial architecture capable of molding society to make it suitable for the new industrial era.

Skeptical about architecture's ability to change an "unjust society", Oscar Niemeyer defended that such activism should be undertaken politically.

Oscar Niemeyer catered to the spiritual beliefs of the public who facilitated his religious buildings.

Oscar Niemeyer's projects have been a major source of inspiration for the French painter Jacques Benoit.

Oscar Niemeyer is featured in the film Urbanized discussing his design process and architectural philosophy.