Thaindian News

December 16, 2010 (Pen Men at Work): Renowned and revered Brazilian architect, Oscar Niemeyer, has commemorated his 103rd birthday on Wednesday by inaugurating a museum of his work, the Oscar Niemeyer Foundation (ONF), outside Rio de Janeiro. The ONF consists of the drawings and models from the career of this modernist architect, which has spanned 70 years. Another latest creation of his, the dome of which was also launched on Wednesday, is the Oscar Niemeyer Cultural Center (ONCC) at Aviles in northern Spain. The bureaucrats associated with the ONCC desire that the ONCC renovate the existence of Aviles akin to the magnificent transformation of Bilbao by the Gugenheim Museum from a deteriorating industrial city to a vibrant cultural hub.

The edifice of the ONCC will consist of an lecture hall, a tourism tower, a display centre and a bulky outdoor plaza that will function as a site for cultural renditions when it is initiated in March 2011.

Niemeyer has designed more than 600 edifices in the globe. Niemeyer, a pupil of the legendary French architect, Le Corbusier, was pleased by the presence of his buddies at the launch of the ONF at Niteroi outside Rio de Janeiro. The ONF, fashioned by Niemeyer, is a museum that boasts of the aesthetic concrete curves that have characterized his distinct modernist manner and have converted him into one of the world’s most prominent architects. Niteroi is already the destination of a number of archetypal Niemeyer edifices, counting a present-day art museum and a theatre.

Niemeyer, who has shaped the UN edifice in New York, is generally remembered for his designing of Brasilia, which was constructed as the fresh federal headquarters in the 1950s. His audacious ultramodern designs in Brasilia symbolized the Brazilian optimism about its future and also turned Brasilia into an entity that was emblematic of contemporary architecture. Niemeyer gained famousness for his inimitable style typified by severe concrete and sweeping curvatures, with Niemeyer voicing that the fashionable swoops in his edifices were motivated by the Brazilian females’ curves.

He has suffered from sicknesses incessantly in the last 12 months, but is still at work, exhibiting his penchant for radical architecture. His works contain a suite of the Brazilian governmental structure in the national headquarters, Brasilia. Niemeyer’s design for the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte consisted of 14 edifices, one of which is a gigantic structure lodging the fresh seat of the provincial administration. His plentiful honors consist of the Pritzker, which he acquired in 1988, with the Pritzker equated with the Nobel Prize in the world of architecture.