Oscar Niemeyer is Looking Well Today

Edificio Niemeyer behind the Banco de Brasil, Praça de Liberdade, Belo Horizonte

When I first entered architecture school way back in 1977, the history of architecture was taught in a straight line. Doric columns, gothic arches,  baroque churches, and so on, an almost entirely Western European narrative broken only by references to ancient Egypt. The lectures on modernism were equally predictable and dealt solely with the heroic deeds of great white men. Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Mies Van der Rohe, Alvar Aalto, I seem to remember Gaudi got a look in, and then there was a  strange Brazilian, Oscar Niemeyer. An old school Communist who designed the party headquarters in Paris, he was forced into exile during the dictatorship, befriended Fidel Castro, received the Lenin peace prize, and in 1992 became president of the Brasilian Communist Party. Somewhat remarkably given his political affiliations, he became a national icon, due in no small part to the fact that like Pelé and Ayrton Senna he was globally renowned and his buildings can be found literally all over world from Berlin, to New York, and Tripoli. Inevitably he sits at the centre of the history of Brasilian architecture and most  Brasilian cities boast a Niemeyer building including a whole portfolio of works in Belo Horizonte. The fragment above is of the Edificio Niemeyer (1955), an apartment block that repeats the forms of his more well-known Edificio Copan  in São Paulo (1951). There is nothing I can add to the discourse surrounding Niemeyer. Like the other famous figures of modern architecture, he is the subject of countless books, articles, and critical essays. The one thing I would say is that whatever their functional shortcomings, such as the Niteroi Gallery that is useless for exhibiting art but a fantastic alien spaceship, his buildings are undoubtedly photogenic, inspired so the cliché goes by the curves of Rio’s hills, waves, and women.