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Text Clotilde Luce
Photos Paul Clemence
A Centenarian Designing the Look of Our Future
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THE BRAZILIAN ARCHITECT OSCAR NIEMEYER turns 100
on December 15, and as the only great 20th-century Modernist living well into the next century, he is still — astonishingly enough — making his mark around the world. He received the Pritzker Prize at the age of 82, in 1989. In 2003, he designed the Serpentine Gallery’s temporary pavilion (one each year) in London’s Hyde Park, notable for its signature ramp, varying parabolic curves and cantilevered concrete. With more than 180 projects worldwide, Niemeyer’s first 100 years have been productive. Among them: a yacht club that would later make waves as far as France and Miami Beach; the Brazil Pavilion at New York’s 1939 World’s Fair, just before the war; the United Nations, which came just after; and recent plans for a monument to his ailing, albeit younger, friend Fidel Castro. (Niemeyer has long been a communist.) The Strick House in Santa Monica, Niemeyer’s only completed residential work in the United States, was designed in 1964. HOME M I A M I
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PREVIOUS SPREAD: The cantilevered rim of the Niteroi Contemporary Art Museum. THIS PAGE: The Niteroi hovers like a flying saucer over the coast. OPPOSITE: The undulating exterior of the Teatro Popular.
His greatest lasting legacy, built on a scale reserved for emperors and pharoahs, are Niemeyer’s 83 public buildings in Brasília. Often derided as an unlivable modernist manifesto, Brasília is redeemed by Niemeyer’s lyric humanist vocabulary made concrete. Even his buildings for bureaucrats communicate emotion and élan to the viewer, proclaiming Brazil’s new place in the world. And 50 years later, designing while in his late 90s and facing the century mark, he can still push cantilevered concrete to heartstopping limits, as in the startling new Ibirapuera Park Theater in São Paolo. Niemeyer’s “flying saucer” in Niterói, possibly his most identifiable work, is a contemporary art museum, but that there is art hanging there doesn’t bother the stream of non-specialist visitors who approach, mesmerized.
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against a shack. Events, an occasional hip-hop night or live music concert, are still rare in this gesture building for the people. As Brazil’s middle class is finally growing, the theater may find its public. In the meantime, it is as beautiful as a reclining, sunbathing, Henry Moore sculpture. The theater’s varying parabolas, a Niemeyer signature, also harken to his church of St. Francis of Assisi in Belo Horizonte, capital of the Minas Gerais state, which is inland and north of Rio. Rejected by its upscale congregation in 1943, it was abandoned, then used as a radio station, before reverting in recent times to its intended use as a church. Niemeyer’s seminal designs in Belo Horizonte include the Pampulha Yacht Club (1943), where hedonistic Brazilians can embrace sun, sand and sea, framed by unsupported curves in
HIS GREATEST LASTING LEGACY, BUILT ON A SCALE RESERVED FOR EMPERORS AND PHAROAHS, ARE NIEMEYER’S 83 PUBLIC BUILDINGS IN BRASÍLIA. Around a curve on the bay, past dank gritty slums near the docks, Niemeyer’s lovely new Niterói theater, which he inaugurated in April this year, is a project few impresarios would back. On the wrong side of the tracks, of the bridge, of the ferry crossing from Rio, it is bright and refreshing, yet forlorn. Superbly sited on the very edge of the bay, it is fenced off — the only sign of life being a tail-wagging dog and one guard, his gun propped up HOME M I A M I
suddenly glamorous white concrete. Pampulha, Niemeyer’s first such campus-like ensemble, would inspire later greater ever more public accomplishments, such as the magnificent Ibirapuera Park complex in São Paolo (held up for years by fractious infighting) and the vast theoretical ensemble of Brasília. Even Miami Beach is indebted to the Yacht Club for its concrete ribbon-like canopy that has been cloned in seaside resorts from
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France to Florida. Morris Lapidus, who met with Niemeyer and visited some of the sites, would later speak with great deference of both the man and his influence. In Italy, Niemeyer’s concrete spans broke world records. During 18 years in exile, while the military ran Brazil, Niemeyer designed expansive concrete-domed universities in Algeria and the stunning Communist Party Headquarters in Paris — now an empty tomb to a credo with barely 1.8 percent of the vote. Niemeyer’s resumé includes various artistic scuffles with the likes of Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier. They were not even ego scuffles, as the era of the brand name star-chitect had not yet dawned. Niemeyer’s earliest difference of opinion with Le Corbusier occurred over Corbu’s proposed massing of the Gustavo
WITH MORE THAN 180 PROJECTS WORLDWIDE, NIEMEYER’S FIRST 100 YEARS HAVE BEEN PRODUCTIVE. Capanema Palace, an ambitious civic complex planned in 1936 to be the first modern project in downtown Rio de Janiero. The stakes were high, and Le Corbusier had been flown in to advise. In the end, the younger local fellow prevailed, winning over the pope of modernism. Later, Niemeyer’s insistence again swayed Corbu to acquiesce to one large open plaza at the United Nations in New York. Apparently, neither had factored in the neon Pepsi sign now permanently in the background from across the East River. Already Niemeyer’s unwavering clarity of design, use of symbol in the name of “the people,” and sense of self often defined by defiance, were in place. If only for 60 years of astonishing shapes, of utilitarian concrete suddenly sleek and sensual and tropical, if only for having nudged modernists to bend a little, Muito obrigado Senhor Niemeyer. H THIS PAGE (from top): The view of Rio de Janiero from the Teatro Popular; Interior detail shots of the Teatro Popular (2); From the Teatro Popular, visitors can view the saucerlike Centro de Memória Roberto Silveira. OPPOSITE: The façade of the Ministério da Educação e Cultura, otherwise known as the Palácio Gustavo Capanema.
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