Oscar Niemeyer
September 10 - October 26, 2008
Regarded as one of the major contributors to the development of modern architecture, Oscar Niemeyer has produced roughly 700 public works in his homeland of Brazil and abroad. He is best known for designing the city of Brasilia, and for his dream-team collaboration with Le Corbusier for the United Nations building in New York.
In addition to being still actively working –as well as getting married in 2006 at the age of 98, Niemeyer has recently designed a stadium for the 2014 World Cup Soccer Championships that will be hosted by Brazil.
The Oscar Niemeyer exhibit features original plans and sketches, video and photography footage, scale models of major projects, and timelines of Niemeyer’s life and career.
Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1907, Niemeyer grew up as a carefree bohemian youth before marriage at the age of twenty-one grounded him into a sense of interest in his future, driving him to enter University. Upon completing his degree in architectural engineering from the Escola de Belas Artes in Rio, he took notice of his surroundings and a desire to inject new life into the streets and buildings began to fuel his early works.
It was in 1940 that Niemeyer was commissioned to design a new suburb to the north of the city of Belo Horizonte. The result was Pampulha. Its curves and straight lines interplaying with elements of rationalism converged with free-form and organic influences. The Pampulha complex is widely regarded as the birthplace of modern Brazilian architecture.
In the late 1940s, Niemeyer traveled to the United States to take part in the design of the United Nations Headquarters in New York. The board of ten design consultants ultimately chose the collaboration between Niemeyer and Swiss architect and planner Le Corbusier, as the basis for the building’s final design.
The 1950s saw his continued influence ...More...
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