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Biography of Oscar Niemeyer Soares FilhoName: Oscar Niemeyer Soares FilhoBirth Date: December 15, 1907 Death Date: N/A Place of Birth: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Nationality: Brazilian Gender: Male Occupations: architect Oscar Niemeyer Soares Filho The Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer Soares Filho (born 1907) was the leading exponent of the International Style in Latin America. He is especially identified with the public buildings of Brasilia, Brazil's new capital.Oscar Niemeyer Soares Filho was born on Dec. 15, 1907, in Rio de Janeiro, the son of a well-to-do family. He attended the National School of Fine Arts (1930-1934), and for many years he regarded his work more as a sport than a profession. Both his brilliance and his much decried haste can be attributed to this attitude, although after the mid-1950s he began to take himself and his work more seriously.In 1936 Niemeyer began work with a team of young Brazilians on a project directed by Le Corbusier, the Swiss architect, to design a building to house the Ministry of Education (executed 1937-1942). They experimented with several bold ideas, erecting part of the structure on pillars that straddle a gardened …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…in Brasilia that he designed after 1956. There he found room in which to exercise his powerful imagination, keen sense of proportion, and plastic sensibility. The Palácio da Alvorada (official presidential residence) has a simple grandeur. Tiny white supports suggest that the building floats lightly beyond a reflecting pool from which the eye glides smoothly toward the upward curves that frame the glass walls of the main foyer. Other major achievements in Brasilia are the Congress complex, the Palace of the Dawn, and the flowerlike Cathedral (still being constructed in 1971), which reveal a sculptured quality only reinforced concrete could lend them. On the other hand, his massive apartment buildings are monotonous and monolithic, besides being poorly designed from both an engineering and a social standpoint. Further Reading Two works by Stamo Papadaki describe and evaluate the work of the Brazilian architect: Oscar Niemeyer: Works in Progress (1956) and Oscar Niemeyer (1960). |